Into the St Lawrence

The five 50 footers taking part in the Sageunay-St-Pierre-Vendée transatlantic race

After heading out on Sunday at 1500 hours from the Baie des Ha! Ha!, the fleet took all night and the first hours of the daylight to extract themselves from the Fjord of Saguenay - that is 54 miles in 17 hours.

In the light conditions, the manoeuvres were incessant aboard the five 50 foot sailing boats whose objective today is to escape the St Laurence River and enter the Gulf of St Lawrence.

There are still 550 miles left to cover until Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, and the finish of this first leg. The course is still long, but it is Dominique Demachy, at the helm of his catamaran Gifi who is opening up a slight lead, greeted, like the other sailors, by a magnificent whale ballet when they entered the great Canadian river.

The first radio session left you with the feeling that the competitor's first night had been a beautiful one - a splendid sunset and sunrise and a moon that lit up the way for most of the night revealing the impressive peaks that act as a backdrop to the fjord of Saguenay.

"And it wasn’t even cold," admitts Dominique Demachy. "Everyone expected us to suffer in these light winds but we have superb sails and Gifi is a lot lighter than it would appear.". Thus, Gifi, last in the short coastal race yesterday, has gained ground on her adversaries one by one even his direct opponent the experienced transatlantic sailor and dentist from Brest Hervé Cléris on the trimaran Vaincre la Mucoviscidose who was last to make it into the St Laurence.

It was at 07h55 this morning when Gifi crossed the waters off Tadoussac, a little village situated at the mouth of the Fjord de Saguenay. 400 years earlier, in 1603, it was the point where Samuel de Champlain disembarked and after having established a dialogue with the three American Indians in the region - the Montagnais, the Algonquins and the Etchemins - began a profitable trade of animal skins, that were soon popular at trading posts throughout Hudson Bay area.

At 08h02, it was the turn of the first monohull, Top 50 Croisières Sportives of Luc Coquelin to slice through the pass, followed 7 minutes later by Jean-François Durand on Défi Vendéen, then, at 8h12, Renaud Le Youdec on Saint-Pierre & Miquelon, un coin de France and finally, at 8h18 Cléris' trimaran.

All of them were welcomed into the St Laurence by some whale ballet. In the end it was the current, running at three to five knots, rather than sailing under spinnaker in the weak westerly breeze, that enabled the five competitors to extricate themselves from the magnificent Fjord de Saguenay.

André Jantet, crew on Défi Vendéen, who was forced to remain quayside in St-Malo in the last Route du Rhum due to a lack of finance, spoke of a "sequence of battles of Trafalgar" [except presumably without the English, Ed]. The three monohulls didn’t let each other out of their sight.

From here the boats must make their way out of the St Laurence river on a north-easterly bearing and rounding Gaspésie, the most easterly region of the province of Quebec. The weather forecast is still dominated by a weak westerly wind blowing at 5-10 knots which is making the finish of this first leg in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, likely to happen on Wednesday evening at best.