WARNING: This may not be a blog post for parents, children or non sailors!!

While after a quiet uneventful few days, all our 7 p's didn't help us one bit! We left Quebec city with a good forecast, checked the tides and read all the guide books but it we were certainly not prepared for the trip from Quebe to Cap-a-l'aigle! The tide charts told us what time we should leave Quebec City to arrive at our destination at about 18:30. The weatherman said that the winds would be from the Northwest 10 to 15 kts. Cooler temperatures and just a chance of rain. We had a great sail past Quebec City and continued on our voyage. The winds started to pick up about 3 hours into the trip and became stronger and stronger and they were always from the North East, never the North West. The wind was suppose to become light and variable in the evening however that too never happened. We rode against the current for the first 3 hours and then hoped to pick up quite a bit of speed as the tide changed to our favor. This never really happened as the winds became more like 25 to 35 kts from our nose which fought against the current on our tale and created huge waves which slowed us down considerably. Now most times when you get caught in something like this, you pull into the first suitable harbour and stay put however this was not an option as Cap-a Aigle and Pointe-ou-Pic are the only harbours that can be visited at any time of the tidal cycle. In low tide all along the river until this 2 places we would be sitting on mud so we had to continue our trip. This being the only option we were taking huge waves over the bow and pounding up and down for about the last 8 hours of the trip!! Not good. Poor Arlene was hanging on for dear life and I thought if we ever got to shore, she would probably pack up and go home! Non of us were sick, just very uncomfortable. Now this supposedly 9 hours trip became a 13 hour trip and we were forced to come into a strange harbour after dark! We called the marina on the radio and the telephone and got no answer so we were on our own. We got our got out every available flashlight and with the help of all 3 of us on deck tried to navigate our way into the marina. As we got closer to shore the waves died down and we were able to put out the fenders and lines and get ready for docking. Bruce was not about to go in too far unless he could see a suitable dock right away and if we didn't we would have no other choice but to continue further down to another bay with an anchorage. This would have meant another 12 miles and none of us were looking forward to that as you can imagine! As soon as we rounded the corner we could see a nice long dock and the club was sheltered from the wind and waves. You would never know how bad it was outside the break wall. We were never so happy to see a dock in our lives. By this time it was 22:30 and we had had nothing to eat or drink since lunch! We tied up, made dinner, cleaned up all the water we could and went to bed. The next day Bruce was talking to a man here who told him that many people had sailed oceans for years and did this trip once and gave up sailing afterwards. The boat was amazing and didn't let us down. This was the worst we have seen and hopefully will see again!

Today we are taking a much needed break. This town is beautiful and we took a walk down just one road for about 2 K and there must have been 10 B & B's along the way. This afternoon we are going into the Casino in Mal Baie and to of all things a Canadian Tire Store to get some more spare parts that we don't have! Don had to go back up the mast to fix the anemometer again. Hope it works better now .