Gaspe to L'Anse-a-Beaufils, Quebec - Jul 20, 2009

We leave Gaspe at a decent hour - LOL - 0600, for our last stop in Quebec. Doug is happy to be leaving the french speaking territory. He sez that they - Canada - needs to take a stance on language and stick to it - he is happy to be finished with that - LOL - John gives him a hard time for being so inflexible - LOL. Well, Gaspe turned out to be a must stop - a really neat place and we would like to have spent another day, but we needed to move when we could due to more bad weather coming our way. We made the trip of 5 hrs thru heavy fog. We saw absolutely nothing but our radar and GPS screens all day. We passed within a few yards of the Perce Rock and Ile Bonaventure, but never saw even a hint of it. Thank goodness for GPS and radar. Otherwise, we would have stayed in Gaspe another day. In fact, we should not have traveled regardless this day, but after a couple of hours, we were at the point of no return, so kept on going.

L'Anse-a-Beaufils is a tiny place of only a few hundred folks, but they have a decent wharf wall to tie to and a restaurant where we ate and stayed an extra day. HC had to raft to us since this wharf is where the commercial boats come to dock during bad weather, so they needed the wall space. They (commercial boats) were all rafted up too, filling the tiny harbor with boats! The second day, we left for crossing the Cheular Bay, but after about an hour, we turned around and went back due to the waters being too rough - John wimped out on this one - he hated the waters we had). a touring group of 3 came thru town and did some Celtic music for the locals. They were quite good. The Gaspe Peninsula is celebrating their 475 yr anniversary of Cartier's landing (he seems to have landed in many places for the first time - LOL), so there are many little celebrations going one. one couple played accordion and violin very well, and a young gal did a mime comedy routine. We take a long walk and generally chilled out waiting our the weather. BUT, lo and behold, who comes in but for the third time, My Bonus. They had gone on ahead of us several days ago and are now returning back to Ontario. So, we eat on HC boat and tell some more lies. It is interesting how many lies we can repeat and still laugh at them. This is part of the boating culture - quite a lifestyle. Earth people would not understand - LOL.