Day 8, July 4: Delaware River, Part Deux?

No pictures today. It would be that kind of day.

Last night’s spaghetti did little to calm my anticipation of my first day on the St Lawrence. I was in the boat at 5:15 in the morning, wanting to take advantage of the perfect calm and quiet of the hour in order to acclimate myself to the river ahead. Trois-Rivieres was only about 40 miles downstream and while I was confident about reaching it with plenty of time to spare, I didn’t want waning daylight as an added variable along with other unknowns that I might face along the way.

The absolute quiet of the morning reminded me that I was departing on my own for the first time in over 700 miles. Matt no doubt was curled up in his featherbed in Saratoga at this very moment and I missed the easy banter, relaxed confidence, and motivational cadence of his company. 2010’s Row, Canada! adventure came to mind as well: eighteen days, 502 miles, all in Brian’s company. Pushing off on my own this morning evoked an afternoon in 1974 when Ron, my flight instructor, told me to come to a full stop on the runway after the third touch-and-go, climbed out of the plane, and shouted over his shoulder, “You’re ready. Go fly.”

Could “Go row” be any more challenging? Let’s see.

It was still dark but the combined lights from Sorel and Tracy, the well-marked channel buoys, an easily discernable shoreline, and the inevitability of morning light within the hour fed my urgency to get going right now. The boat was a bit lighter for the stuff I’d sent home with Matt and Courtney and, combined with the current, a steady 18 rpm yielded an easy 6 mph over a black mirror. My small wake described parallel silver slivers across the glass as the city lights receded behind me. It felt good to be underway again, and Trois-Rivieres seemed right around the corner: calm water, a following current, plenty of time, a lighter boat, and strong resolve seemed an unbeatable hand.

Obviously, I don’t play cards.

Two hours later, in rain but good light, I reached the large open lake that pretty much defines the passage between Sorel and Trois-Rivieres. Shallow outside of the shipping channel, eight or ten miles across at its widest point, and with no high ground on either side, this is the kind of water that can hammer a small boat when the wind comes up. In 2005, the Delaware River had taught me how wind-driven waves over the shallows can create the kind of frequency and sharp crests that quickly overwhelm a low-freeboarded boat like mine, so prudence suggested a shoreline course rather than staying in the channel and putting four or five miles of water on each side of the boat.

Sadly, I picked the wrong shore. Nature’s single card soon trumped my full hand.

Within an hour of my course along the southerly(westerly) side, a strong northeast wind kicked up (but of course!), quickly building nasty sharp-crested two-footers that compelled me to bail more than row . I was soon driven into the shallows and tall grass of shore. By 9:30 I’d covered twenty miles, already halfway to TR, but I was pinned in the tall grass by waves that would quickly overwhelm me if I ventured out again into the open water.

This was a low moment. It was raining hard. I was cold and essentially immobilized. No docks, no people, no progress, no alternatives appeared within my reach.

I called Peg. Sitting in the swamp in the rain, shivering, looking at the whitecaps hitting the grass offshore, I might even have whined a bit. She asked me how much further to TR, hun, and I said, “Maybe twenty miles.” I asked her what time it was. She said, “9:30.” Her voice helped. The moment stuck, a moment emblematic of how past experience can sometimes buoy one’s confidence and steel one’s resolve. It was 9:30 in the morning, and I was 20 miles from my destination.

Gentle Reader, I’m not a math guy but sitting in the rain in the swamp, even I could run these numbers: If I rowed until dark, roughly eleven hours from that very moment, I could make my destination (or hit spittin’ distance to TR) by sustaining an average of 1.8 mph. 1.8. 1.8. One-point-eight. Eleven hours. Eleven hours to dryness. Out of the swamp. Off of this Canadian version of the loathed Delaware River.

Considering the New Math (20/11= 1.8), I then took stock of what I knew to be true:

1.      I have rowed nonstop for eleven hours before, and I felt prepared to do it again if I had to.

2.      If I was to change my current state, I would have to.

3.      1.8 mph, about the pace of a child ambling across the family room to grab his/her favorite toy (or to get out of a cold rain), was also within my ability.

4.      I could not traverse the open water in these conditions, but I could slog through the high grass of the bordering marsh. The grass, a buffer of surface turbulence, beats down the waves even though it poses great friction and resistance to the hull and oars.

5.      Weather changes. I had eleven hours until dark. It could change for the worse, but I had the grass. If it changed for the better, I’d be in clover. Or gravy. Whatever.

6.      Sitting in the boat grousing was getting old. It was time to go.

Eric Burden and the Animals sang the classic “We’ve Got To Get Out of This Place” in the 60’s, and it became my adopted anthem on Lac St Pierre. It wasn’t pretty or easy and it hardly looked like rowing, but for the next four hours I kept 1.8 as the baseline on the GPS as I slogged through tall grasses and weeds, occasionally having to stand up in the boat to get a sightline on a course. I could hear the cresting waves of the open water over the whistling of the wind in the grass. It would be a long day unless…..unless…..

…unless the wind began to shift from north to westerly which, by mid-afternoon, became apparent as I continued my occasional prairie-dog sightings from the swamp. Could it be? That blasted crosswind was now veering around to become a blessed tailwind and, to make a long story short, by 3:00 I stuck my nose into the open water and caught a quartering tailwind and manageable waves towards Trois-Rivieres.  Clover and gravy. And I was out of that place and into the Trois-Rivieres marina by five thirty.

The marina would be happy to accept $20 for dockage for the rest of the day but would not let me camp out, but I didn’t really care. I was that tired. I told them that I was writing a blog and that their hospitality would be broadcast to the world and wouldn’t that be nice? They said no, no, don’t do that; doing so will only encourage more vagrants like yourself to visit our facility.

So, back in the boat, I hit the beach at a public campsite that I’d passed a bit upstream, ate tuna out of a drypack, and slept like a stone.

Oh, it was the 4^th of July, wasn’t it?

Clover and gravy, everyone. Clover and gravy.

     

 

Day 7, July 3: Cause for a Pause

Today, Day 7, is for rejuvenating , re-provisioning, and re-orienting. Courtney is on her way north from Saratoga to retrieve Matt; she’ll arrive in his truck looking as fresh as if she’d just bopped down to the corner store for the paper instead of having traveled 250 miles and through Customs before breakfast.

In the meantime, Matt and I have work to do.

Up off the dock after a night on the boards, Matt cleans his boat and packages his stuff for the trip home while I decide what to send back from my own too-heavy stores. I’ve been freighting around clothes I will not use, gear I will not get to, and gadgets I don’t even know how to deploy, and it’s time to shed a few pounds from the boat. After an hour of intense decision-making, two sea bags and the detritus of a week on the water are culled from my boat for the trip south in the truck; my boat is now lighter and marginally faster; less is more!

Clean up that room!

This morning I also covet the newer mechanicals in Matt’s boat; after all, the building St Lawrence is no place for equipment failure, right? Our boats are identical, but Matt's borrowed boat is very-low mileage while mine is showing some worrisome wear and tear. We wonder whether Bob Ashton will object to some temporary swapping-out of parts from his boat and while we debate his response, we swap out the parts: new floorboards, the rails for the sliding seat, and the sliding seat itself are purloined and installed in Old Paint while Bob’s boat takes on the old gear.   

Later that day I call Bob to ask permission. Whew. Knew he would. This is the stuff of friendship.

Courtney arrives right on schedule at 0930 and Telemachus morphs back into McGuyver, master rigger, as Matt secures Bob’s boat to the truck. Straps, ratchets, and lines knit it all together and within ten minutes they are good to go. (I make this point now only because later on it will take me, the alleged tree for this acorn, the better part of two hours to tie my boat (badly) onto my Mini. I have no such intuition about straps, ratchets, lines, and such.)

Courtney cheerfully jumps into the passenger seat for the rest of her 500 mile-day (Unsung Heroine Award #2!), Matt gives me the big bear-hug and as they pull away from the marina, I find myself welling up for a minute. Great kids, a wonderful week, the blessing of sharing….Al is a lucky man for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with rowing.

Time to get back to work; this may be a day off the water, but there are things to do.

We have rowed off the charts and I head off to find a map of the St Lawrence. Sure, I could have procured charts at any freaking time during the four freaking months that have passed since I hatched this freaking plan, but why would I do that when I could struggle at the very last minute? After walking around for a bit I find a map that covers the next leg to Quebec City but nothing for the waters beyond to the Saguenay. Quebec City is a big place, I reason. Surely I will find my next necessary charts there, right? Sounds reasonable, yes? This is the way I operate, Gentle Reader: superficially reasonable logic meeting uncooperative reality.

Anyway, when I return to the marina from my MapQuest, I spot Phil and his 42’ Beneteau at a public dock about half a mile away, a massive crane on the pier holding his 50’mast high in the air while he crouches on the deck trying to guide it all into place. His wife, sitting on a bench back at the marina, calmly suggests that I might consider joining this tableau. I note her furrowed brow.

Never having raised a mast so consequently not feeling very much like the cavalry coming to the rescue, I nevertheless quickly clamber down the steel rungs of the pier in time to “help” Phil with the placement of the foot of the mast into an impossibly tight fitting on deck. Even a child could see that there is no tolerance for error in this procedure. “I’ve never done this before, Phil,” I confess, “but I’ll do what you need me to do.” Phil advises me that this is a first for him as well…quite an admission as fifty feet of aluminum seeking a home bobs over our heads with each passing wave and wake. “But I’ve seen it done before.” Last night over cocktails on this very boat I learned of Phil’s engineering and design background, and it is the recent memory of this conversation that sustains my hope.

High above us, out of earshot but responding to our hastily contrived hand signals, the crane operator moves the mast in small increments as we try to guide this huge spear to the target. Since the boat is in the water and the deck is moving, the target is in perpetual motion. Holding this mast in place by hand is impossible; its mass is too great. All we can do is use the motion of the boat to “guide” it to a metal fitting on the cabin roof, and it takes many tries to finally get a hit. But it’s the spaghetti mix of stainless steel shrouds and stays that actually holds a mast in a vertical position, so while the crane guy holds the new line on the mast, we quickly scramble to affix the hardware. Excitement builds for me when, for some reason or other, I look over my shoulder and notice a huge freighter heading our way. It’s generating a very large cresting wake that will reach us in probably five minutes or so and if the mast is not standing independently and secure by then, who knows? The crane operator sees this unfolding drama as well and, after a surprising eye roll, smiles and shrugs. (I say “surprising” only because an eye roll is not what I‘d expect from a crane operator at a poignant moment such as this.) Phil, to his credit, misses this silent exchange and has his head down, doing the necessary work, totally focused, taking it step-by step, calmly giving me my next task which can best complement his task.

Gotta love an unflappable, sequentially-thinking engineer. I bet he has all of his charts, too.

And...hey, where is McGuyver? This is his bread and butter!

Depiction of the relative mechanical skills of McGuyver and his father 

Anyway, hours later, as we toast the apparently successful completion of this task back at the marina in the cockpit of the Beneteau, the mast towering straight and true above us, I secretly both wish and lament the fact that I’ll not be on this boat when the sail is next raised and real tension and torque is applied to this assembly.

The proof will be in the pudding, as they say….but I’ll be sitting at a different table. I hope it all works out.

Sunset in Sorel

 

Tomorrow will come early. Spaghetti in Sorel, then early to bed.     

  

        

Day 6, July 2: A Fast Ride to the Big Waters

Last night’s big storms never materialized and we awakened at our lovely campsite to a quiet river and the prospect of reaching the St Lawrence by the end of the day. I knew that this would be my last day of rowing with Matt, as he would have to depart tomorrow from wherever we landed because of work. I was especially mindful of how much I would miss his company during the rest of this journey. Some people just make traveling like this seem easier, more joyful, more naturally liberating and refreshing, and they accept the occasional hardships as necessary and welcomed seasonings to the main course. When you travel in the company of people like this, you are lucky. I am lucky beyond description to call one of this company my son. We haven’t climbed onto the boats for our last day yet, Matt, but let me tell you now that I love ya, man.

A quick round of Starbuck’s Vias and Nature Valley Oat Bars and we are off and flying; a south wind builds along with the beneficent current, and we are soon clocking up to 7 mph over the ground this morning. A few hours later we reluctantly slam on the brakes to visit Handfield’s, an oasis of refinement (and the purveyors of a truly proper breakfast) and sure enough, as we climb back in the boats an hour or so later, the wind shifts from the west and then blows from the northwest, becoming an impediment for the first time in six days. We’ve been lucky.

But the current is still with us and it is easy to seek the shelter of shoreline trees on a river. The end of the Richelieu is in sight.

We traverse the final lock with about fifteen miles to go and as we bob through, we meet Phil and Helen from Vermont. They have departed Lake Champlain on their beautiful Beneteau sailboat, mast on the deck to get under the low spaces, and they are also headed to the Saguenay fjord. We exchange pleasantries and good wishes as they motor off ahead of us. If I wasn’t so enjoying rowing with Matt, I would be envious of their diesel….and their on-board coffee maker.

Two hours later, Matt and I sense the urbanization of the Richelieu as we approach the city of Sorel on the St Lawrence. The white noise of the internal combustion engine rises in the distance and suddenly, in turning a corner, we are there.

 

After four days of rowing in confined waters, emerging onto the St Lawrence presents the spectacle of oceangoing ships moored along the shore or moving up and down the river at impressive speeds. We immediately realize that situational awareness is the new top priority. The residential and rural intimacy of Champlain and the Richelieu has been supplanted by industrial activity; we row past a freighter along the shore that is taking on some sort of granular cargo, and we are immediately coated with some sort of fine dust...almost a powder. Is it grain? A mineral? Do we want to know? Lick it, Matt, and tell me what you think. Keep rowing, dad…just keep rowing.

Since the confluence of the Richelieu and the St Lawrence rivers promised to present confused waters, Matt and I had already decided that we would hug the west (south) shore of the St Lawrence and pull into the first protected jetty we found to take stock of conditions and determine our next steps. We soon come across a bulwark of stone- an artificial harbor, of sorts- and pull in before we are swept past in the current. I am met by a distant call of, “Hey! New York! Over here!” and see Phil and Helen at a berth not far away. They are amazed that we have made such good time from the lock and offer us a bit of wine. We, by now knowing the importance of hospitality, graciously accept.



Vermont's Finest

Maybe it’s the wine but as we take stock of our surroundings, I realize that this might be a good spot at which to take a day off. First, Courtney will be driving up from Saratoga to collect Matt and his boat tomorrow morning; this marina will be easy to find and offers a nice ramp for lugging stuff up from the water. I’d like to stay until he leaves and even though Courtney is an early bird, theirs could be a later departure than a time at which I’d like to head out for my first day on the St Laurence.

Second, Phil will be stepping the mast on his sailboat tomorrow and has contracted with a local crane operator to help him with the task. A second set of hands might be useful and helping out might be a way of returning their hospitality. Also, truth be told, I have always wondered how one goes about putting up a mast on a large sailboat, so this could be a part of my own Continuing Ed.

Finally, with the Big Waters ahead, I could stand a bit of R&R. I’ll be on my own from here on out, and a day to get my head in the game (and to find necessary charts) would be a day well spent.

Matt and I found dinner at a cheesy Chicken Shack in Sorel and later joined Phil and Helen for more wine as well as to share the excitement of the arrival of Sorel’s Quick Response Team on an adjoining dock. We later learned that a crewman on a freighter had fallen into its cargo hold and had been killed, so the Response Team included medical, police, and maritime authorities…quite a show on the dock right next door. I couldn’t help but hope that the perils of the coming days….the mast-raising, the river, and unfamiliar cuisine…would not require their return.

 

Matt tidied up his boat one last time before bed and chose to sleep on the dock under the stars while I, in the spirit of the Flomax Moment®, set up my tent ashore. It rained a bit that night and Matt slept through it all like a seal on a rock….final seasoning for the main course.    

July 5 - Trois Rivieres, Quebec to Portneuf, Quebec

July 4 - Sorel, Quebec to Trois Rivieres, Quebec

July 4, 2014 - Mid-day update - between Sorel and Trois Rivieres

Lac Saint Pierre
 

Al is currently slowly working his way through the weeds of a 'dismal swamp,' otherwise known as the Lac Saint Pierre, hoping to make Trois Rivieres by the end of the day.  A strong north wind was sending waves directly into the boat earlier, threatening to swamp it. 

Al originally hoped to row 76 miles today in honor of July 4; at this point he'll be happy with a 30 mile day.

More info on this part of the Saint Lawrence:
http://www.tourismeregionsoreltracy.com/quebec-vacations/discovery/lac-saint-pierre-biosphere-reserve.aspx

July 2, 2014 - Sorel and the St. Lawrence

Entering the Saint Lawrence

Our rowers reached Sorel yesterday afternoon and spent a wet night in a campground there. The highlight of the evening was cocktails on a 42' Beneteau, whose owners raved about Parc Saguenay.

Sadly, Al is losing his rowing companion Thursday morning, as Matt's wife Courtney will rendezvous to pick up him and the boat.  Al plans on spending the day laying in provisions and finally finding charts for the rest of the journey. 

Day 5 Map - St. Jean-sur-Richelieu to Sorel