Invasive but fragile vegetation : the rocky ground is covered by moss, lichen and cloudberry.

Friday morning. We've been on the water for seven days already. The wind is from the North-West again. We'll be paddling against the wind for almost the whole day today. Our route takes advantage of every island and sheltered water. The waves are not a problem as this is an off-shore breeze, but the constant pressure of the wind slows our progress and wears us down. We pass Cedar Island and Fecteau Island and enter into Querry Bay.

After Fecteau island, we're in a maze of smaller rocks. As on many occasion on this trip, navigating this maze is like solving a series of puzzles and charades. Like a detective, you have to keep looking for clues. There are very few buoys or markers, except near harbours. So you look for landscape features : the shape of a bay or a point, the silhouette of a hill, the height of an island, and the occasional man made features on the coast (a storage tank or an antenna, for example). When wind or current slow down or accelerate your progress, or when fog drops a grey blanket over the sea, it seems like your chart scale suddenly changes... All these clues suddenly seem out of sync, not to be found when expected, that's when you start feeling very small on that great big sea. What a relief when, unexpectedly, you find that clue and your position on the chart!

At around 10 am, we catch a glimpse of the Nordik Express sailing to the South East of us into the Grand Rigolet, on its way to St.Augustine. We see it again after 2 pm as it traces back its route and then turns North on the last downstream leg of its weekly trip to Blanc Sablon.  The wind gets stronger and the low hills along the shore seem to give it strength rather than give us shelter. I'm starting to feel tired. Between each paddle stroke, I force my fingers to loosen their grip on the shaft and wiggle them to restore some blood circulation. The blisters that I had hardened after the first couple of days are reappearing and my right wrist is starting to feel strained. Obviously my grip has changed and is not as efficient as it was. After a while, I see Marie slowly pulling away from me... I notice that my paddle stroke has shortened and has lost its efficiency. Wind or no wind, Marie paddles like a machine, with a slow deliberate rythm that she can maintain, hour after hour, from morning till night! I force myself to straighten up in my seat. I focus my motion on the shoulders and trunk rather than the arms. I reach farther forward into the water with my paddle. I try to raise my elbow a bit higher so that I don't have to bend my wrist as much and I follow through each stroke with an upper body rotation. My speed improves and I slowly start to make up the growing distance between Marie and myself. At the same time, my head clears up and my eyes start rediscovering the landscape around me...

As we reach the bottom of Querry Bay, after a particularly hard stretch against the wind which has been getting stronger, we find a small island. We are treated to another beautiful sunset. We also discover a less charming aspect of the area : in a little hollow, a few feet from the water, garbage is piling up : rusty cans, a fortune in empty beer bottles, old boots... A half mile away, at the back of the bay, "cottages", as fishing camps are known here, line the shore line. This is where many villagers come to spend a week-end or a few weeks of holidays in the Summer. I guess it's easier to drop the garbage off on a nearby unused island than to carry it back to the village. We shall see other such "Garbage Islands" along the trip. Even on the most isolated shores, these traces of humen activities are never very far: torn fishing nets, broken lobster traps, empty plastic bottles (they're used as buoys over nets and traps)... And this doesn't count the ever present pieces of broken wood and boat parts, even whole speeders left upside down on the shore after a serious mishap to be used as "survival wood".

The sun salutes Saturday morning over a perfectly still sea. Taking advantage of the calm air, the black flies are back. They follow us on the water for a couple of thousand feet as we leave the island. We had noticed over the last couple of days that the water was colder and much saltier. All our gear is covered with salt stains. The water is also incredibly transparent. On this still morning, under the bright sun, we can clearly see the bottom, 30 ft down: bright red starfish sitting on dark rocks, black sea-urchins, the occasional fish. Just a glimpse of the fascinating world beneath us... A large group of loons attract our attention with a burst of sharp calls. There are at least a dozen of them. A family reunion or a bunch of teenagers at the shopping mall, maybe? A few minutes later, they all disappear under water as we start moving again.

Although it is completely invisible even from a short distance, we easily fing the entrance to Germain Pass, a spectacular break in the reddish cliffs leading into Kecarpoui Bay. The wind slowly sets from the South West, pushing us along. The tide is starting to rise as we enter the Petit Rigolet around 10:45 am after crossing the bay. The map shows a narrower passage a little bit ahead of us : the Lessard rapids. We are a little bit anxious about these rapids but do not see anything in front of us. A few minutes later, we see a family fishing from their boat near the shore and stop to enquire. "Rapids? No rapids here... Oh the Lessard Rapids? Yes, yes, they're right here, but there's no rapids!". Oookay...

As we progress along the narrow corridor of the Rigolet, we start feeling the current moving us along and the wind lines up rows of waves going in the same direction. We are in what was once a glacial fjord, between long islands and the actual shore (although looking at the map, there is almost as much water in land as between the islands. Experienced paddlers had warned us about the seemingly unpredictable currents in the Rigolet and had told us about spending 2 days to cover the 13 miles from Kecarpoui Bay to St.Augustine. Without counting our midday stop, we cover this distance in 2 hours with wind and waves helping us along! Towards the end, we're surfing along at over 6 miles per hour. What a sweet revenge over yesterday's long fight with a contrary wind...

As we exit the North-East extremity of the Rigolet, we turn left and stop at the St.Augustine federal wharf. It's Saturday afternoon and there's not a soul in sight. An old man, on his way berry picking, brings his boat alongside us and confirms that there won't be anybody here until Monday morning. We cross the water to Grosse Ile, on the opposite shore, and set our tent on a flat rocky surface. The wind drops and the black flies find us quickly. Marie goes berry picking into the smooth rocky hills. The cloudberry grows among the moss and lichens almost everywhere here. The berries range from bright red to a bright orange as they mature. Protected from the harsher Gulf climate, they are much riper here than the ones we saw along the exposed shoreline. It's noticeably warmer and the light evening wind carries a warm earthy smell as I sit down to jot down today's events.