We are in Port d'Escale Montreal, having braved all 7 locks of the St Lawrence Seaway. The Port is right in the heart of the Old City, just off the end of Place Jaques Cartier.
Yesterday we came through the last 4 locks: Beauharnois 1&2, St. Catherine, and St. Labert, arriving at around 9:00 PM. We had passed the freighter 'Richelieu' at anchor earlier and just hours after our passage through the St. Catherine lock they managed to run it aground at the lock entrance, I believe it is still shut down. As we approached the St. Labert lock, we were overtaken by a very large thunderstorm cell, accompanied by wind, lightening, and torrents of rain. I was able to watch this in real time on three media: satellite weather (which shows doppler radar and lightening strikes), radar (which shows rain) and of course real life. It was much more comfortable on the former two than the latter, which soaked us quite thoroughly!
We had managed to sail a bit from Kingston through the Thousand Islands, stopping at Endymion and Dumbfounder, the latter owned by Mark Ellis, designer of 'Anomaly'. There we were treated to dinner ashore and a hike around the island which has been in his family for something like 6 decades.
We spent the first night out of the Thousand Islands at Prescott, where we met Gilles and Lise on the trawler yacht 'Bora Bora' (a Grand Banks 42), who where accompanied by Yvan and Henriette and travelled with them into Montreal, sharing each lock. They were very helpful and full of great information, on their way home to Quebec City.
Tomorrow we are hoping for less rain to take a bicycle tour of some of the surrounding area.
The video of you taking the Anomaly through the lock was fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen that process before from inside a lock. I saw you were stopping to pay or something, then all of a sudden boats were all tying up together. I was quite enthralled. It all makes sense after seeing it, but was interesting to watch it unfold.
Beautiful pictures, it looks like you guys are having a fantastic trip! (You can't see any bug bites in the pictures) :)
The lock drops about 46 ft. It was the first time we had others rafted to us. You pay $25 for each lock, and the yacht at the wall has to collect from the others! They hand you a coil of line, you pay it out as the water goes down - I don't know what happens if it gets tangled, probably nothing good.
ReplyDeleteLoved your video.
ReplyDeleteYou still have to maintain your mooring lines to the risers though? The lines going up and down that are probably pretty slimy...otherwise a good idea to raft to someone else? I have also never gone through a lock on a boat. Watched from land but not on the water.
They hand you a coil of their line fixed at their end, you have to tend at your end. The line isn't too slimy, but the wall of the lock is. The exception was the American locks (Eisenhower and Snell) which had floating bollards that you tied your own lines to. They float down with the water, so no tending necessary. The lock staff direct you, and put the big boats on the wall, smaller boats rafted to the big ones. One of the staff said a few years back they had 100 pleasure craft in one lock - side to side and end to end. That must have been a zoo!
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