Road Fotos 44

The 11% grade, per road signs, leads to a strawberry vendor if you make the left and a ferry dock if you follow all the way down to the Saint Lawrence.  See the two ferries in the distance?  Click here for a view from roughly the same location in March two years ago.

Ferry Joseph Savard approaches for the ride to L’isle aux Coudres, 60 miles closer to the Atlantic than Quebec City, nominally island of hazelnuts, crowding this side of the stream, where the deep water channel for all traffic .  The flats around the island show the result of a 13′ tidal range. The page on this ferry has not been translated, but it was built in 1985, has two Bombardier engines, possibly this one,  propelling a single screw and generating 3894 hp. Capacities are 367 passengers and 55 vehicles.  And it’s free.

 

One, of many, appeal of this ferry is that on the island side it lands immediately next to Ocean Group shipyard.

Vessels outside and on the hard included Fjord Saguenay, a Rio Tinto boat!  Rio Tinto has a large aluminum plant at the head of Saguenay fjord, my destination.

Also in the yard are Ocean Arctique and Ocean Sept-Isles.  The latter is a Collingwood product;  click here and scroll to see what has become of the Collingwood shipyard.

And just north of the blue hulls, it’s Ocean Brochu.  Note the Voith-Schneider drive and skeg under the hull.

Two vessels I’ve published in ProfessionalMariner about were built here, Ocean Traverse Nord and Ocean Taiga. The latter vessel has recently moved to the Arctic on Baffin Island duty.

We’ll return to L’isle aux Coudres, but for now, let’s cross back over to the mainland to catch this traffic and more. It’s the other ferry Radisson, named for the fur trader and explorer.  Savard is named for an early, maybe first, French settler of the island.

Here you see a container ship in the channel located on the narrow strait between the mainland and the island.  Just ahead of the ship, you see the 11% grade hill from the beginning of this post.  And the village atop the hill is a hamlet in Les Eboulements.

 

Here’s a side view of the church prominent in the village;  notice the river above the car to the left?

And let’s end with another snapshot of the church, presbytere des Eboulements.   Here’s the best “eboulements” translation . . . .

Let’s leave it here.  Tomorrow we return to the island.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.