River Life | The Ottawa River Bear

All summer, The Press takes you on a journey through Quebec, telling you about the life of rivers. Human, scientific or historical stories that all have a river as their link. This week: the Ottawa River.

The captain maneuvers to place the nose of the enormous ship in the intended spot, to the nearest meter, his eyes fixed on a GPS. In the same second, he gives his signal, his second lets out a blast on the foghorn and a crew member pulls with all his might on a cable.

Suddenly, the red buoy – 800 pounds – detaches from the ship’s crane and falls into the waters of the Ottawa River. Overlooking it, under a scorching sun: the federal Parliament Hill on one side, Gatineau on the other.

Welcome aboard the Sipu Muinthe Coast Guard hovercraft tasked in recent weeks with marking the main navigable rivers in Quebec. Its work helps boaters and some commercial vessels stay away from the dangers hidden by treacherous waters.

“It’s a good ship to do that. It’s quite versatile, we can take a dozen buoys at a time,” explains the captain, Vincent Lessard-Giroux, 32, with three gold bars on each shoulder. “Here, on the Ottawa River, we do 31 buoys in three trips.”

For now, the “river bear” (Sipu Muin in Micmac) is stranded on the beach of Petrie Island, in the suburbs of Ottawa. The crew is busy, its second, Jean-Philippe Foisy, is carrying out his final checks, covering his ears with a radio headset.

Then, when everything is ready, the beast begins to growl. A small motorboat located nearby gives way. A storm of sand and water forces the curious on the beach to squint: the propellers are running.

“We can go anywhere”

Because this ship is not a ship like the others: it is a hovercraft, equipped with immense propellers to propel it, to make it literally float above the water and to contribute to its direction.

“There’s nothing that touches the water,” describes Captain Lessard-Giroux. “We can go anywhere, no matter the depth. In rivers, there aren’t necessarily many units that can safely place buoys, while we are able to go to places with a lot of current, with rocks on each side.”

In addition, the Sipu Muin can reach speeds of 50 knots, which is two to three times faster than “conventional” Coast Guard vessels. This power comes at a price, however: the vessel consumes about 500 liters of fuel per hour.

The federal organization has four of these levitating behemoths: two are based in Trois-Rivières and two in Richmond, British Columbia. In winter, they are used to de-ice rivers, ports and shallow bodies of water such as Lake Saint-Pierre. The Sipu Muin dates from 1998 and underwent a major renovation in 2016.

Piloting a hovercraft is “certainly quite unique,” ​​explains Vincent Lessard-Giroux. “I have more training than any other captain,” says the man who attended the Coast Guard Officers College on Cape Breton Island. “It’s a year or a year and a half of training in addition to the captain’s certificate.”

First Officer Jean-Philippe Foisy has just completed this training. “I worked on merchant ships in the Great Lakes,” he said. The Coast Guard, which he joined in the fall of 2022, “that [le] approaching [sa] family “.

Search and Rescue

On its way from Petrie Island to downtown Ottawa, the Sipu Muin sows red and green buoys to mark out a navigation channel. “Afterwards, there are other buoys that will indicate a danger: a shoal, a rock, an obstacle to navigation,” explains the captain. Boaters can navigate before the arrival of buoys at the beginning of summer, “there is no ban as such, the boats are advised that the marking has not yet been done.”

In addition to the Ottawa River, navigation buoys are also installed for the summer on the Saguenay River, the Richelieu River and on a portion of the Rivière des Prairies.

Each time, the same maneuver is repeated, carried out on the deck of the ship by the boatswain Patrick Fillion.

However, these operations can be aborted with just a few minutes’ notice if a distress call comes in: on the water, rescues take priority over any other mission. Sailors must also reside less than an hour from the Trois-Rivières hovercraft base during their weeks on guard.

“There can be cases at any time,” says the boatswain, recounting recent rescues near the Port of Montreal and in the Lac des Deux Montagnes. The hovercraft can’t slip in and out like a Zodiac, but its deck offers more room to work, and any survivors can be quickly whisked away to a warm place.

It is better to follow the buoys of the Sipu Muin to avoid needing emergency assistance from the Sipu Muin.