The fishermen of the Magdalen Islands have been on the alert since 2 a.m. Saturday morning, worried about the safety of their vessels which are being mistreated by post-tropical cyclone Fiona.
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“It passed terrible gusts, commented the captain of Cap Adèle, Marcel Cormier, whose boat is moored at the quay of Cap-aux-Meules.
With the waves hitting the dock, it’s scary! But fortunately the tide, which reached its highest level at 8:30 a.m., has dropped a little. And the wind’s veered a little farther north, so it’s blowing the boats off the wharf; they knock less on the platform. It’s a big improvement.”
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) has confirmed to us, for its part, that the wharf of the port of Cap-aux-Meules is flooded.
“The commander of the Cap-aux-Meules search and rescue station observes about 2 feet of water above the level of the wharf, spokesperson Émilie Proteau-Beaulieu wrote to us by email. At this time, our facilities are still safe. The crew is working to ensure the safety of our boat, the “CCGS Baie de Plaisance”.
For his part, the captain of the “Cobra de la Pointe-Basse”, Achille Chiasson, had to rush to the wharf around 11 a.m., when one of his colleagues called him to tell him that his boat was breaking away. . He had turned back, when he had gone to the scene to check his moorings an hour earlier, because the windshield of his truck shattered.
“It’s a stone that flew from the cape!” he said.
“The moorings are broken, the wharf is in tatters, pointed out for his part the captain of the Bay Catcher and president of the Gathering of fishermen and fisherwomen of the coasts of the Islands, Charles Poirier. It is a disaster! It will have to calm down to assess the damage. It’s definitely worth a million dollars.”
Overturned trailers, broken trees, flooded marinas, the damage accumulates while there is still a good 10 hours to the violent storm. “It’s a big mess,” said Marcel Cormier. There is damage everywhere.”