With regards to my title—we have seen various locking methods on this trip, we’ve used cables in the TSW and now the Rideau, we have hovered and not tied up at all in the Iroquois, we used bollards in the American -Eisenhower and Snell locks, we’ve had long dirty nylon ropes thrown at us for the 2 Beauharnois locks in Quebec, and then we had the 2 locks in the Quebec Waterways, that had docks to tie to within the locks. Lots of variation- they all work- some better than others! The most grueling of the locking to date were the 8 step locks we did in a 3 hour period in order to reach the Rideau Canal and downtown Ottawa.
Didn’t leave Crysler Park, as planned, still very windy and rain showers every couple of hours. We walked over to the Upper Canada village-told it was about a mile away—sure seemed a lot more than that. Upper Canada village is a world renowned village of heritage structures of the 1860’s. We toured a saw mill which was still able to cut logs into planks, as well as a blacksmith, shoemaker, bakery, wool factory with working looms. There was also a church, masonic lodge and various other buildings. We did not visit them all as we were tired from our walk over. We did stop for lunch, and bought some bread that was made in the village bakery- very thick and dense, as they did not use yeast. On our walk back to the marina, we encountered a shower, and hid under a tree until it passed, farther up the road the harbour master in a truck saw us and gave us a ride back, which was great as we encountered another long shower once we were back at our boat.
On Saturday, with the winds subsiding, we left the marina at 7:30, headed east on the St. Lawrence to the American locks. These locks cover about 9 miles with the Dwight Eisenhower lock on the western end and the Bertrand H Snell lock at the East end. This pair of locks were built to bypass the Long Sault dam. The locks on the Seaway can accommodate ships of 740 feet and beams of 78 feet. We arrived at the Eisenhower lock and tied up to the lock structure, as there was no dock to tie to. Andy called the lock, and an employee came out to collect our fee ($60 Cdn for the 2 locks). We were told that they could take us into the lock shortly, but we would be held for a short time, so that we met a Tug in the 9 mile Wiley-Dondero channel between the locks. Once in the lock, we tied up to a floating bollard, and waited until about 10:00 when our locking down began. We dropped over 40 feet in a matter of minutes, and were out of the lock by 10:08. We then proceeded down the channel for our meet. When we arrived at the Snell lock there was a huge boat approaching, and since pleasure craft are low priority, we bobbled out in the channel. There was a mooring ball that we could have tied to, but once we checked it out, we decided not to. We continued to wait, shortly after 11, the lock called, and said they would take us in, once the ship had left the lock, around 11:20, the ship departed and we made our way in and secured ourselves to a bollard, for another 40 foot drop. We were out of the lock by 11:35, and departed U.S. waters. We continued on to Cornwall which was about 8 miles away, on this part of the St. Lawrence the current was about 7.5 mph, so we were being pushed by river. We had to go around Cornwall island, and then back to the west to get to the marina. We were tied up shortly after 12:45.
We were quite a distance from the marina office, and asked it we could move closer, and were given another slip assignment. In the afternoon, we called a cab and went to Walmart and the LCBO to reprovision. For dinner we ordered Pizza, we had heard on CBC earlier this week about Cornwall-styled Pizza, and wanted to try it out. We were told that with this style of pizza, all the toppings except bacon are under the cheese. The pizza was very good and filling, although the crust was thicker than we prefer—we both ate 2 pieces, so will have leftovers for a few days. On Sunday we walked to the nearby mall, most of the stores were empty- very depressing.
On Monday morning, we fueled up the boat before leaving, as diesel was 2.05/L, which was the cheapest we had encountered. We followed the St. Lawrence and made our way to Valleyfield Quebec for the night. Huge marina, but there was no one around on a Monday afternoon. On Tuesday morning we left Valleyfield at 7:40, as we had to go through the Larocque Bridge at it’s 9:00 opening, we were there about 20 minutes early, and were able to pass thru at 8:50 as it was opened for a ship travelling in the opposite direction. We then proceeded to the St. Louis Bridge for it’s 9:45 opening, once again the bridge opened a little early and we were thru at 9:35, then it was off to the 2 Beauharnois locks for our 11:00 and 12:00 reservations. We tied up at the upper lock by 10:40 and waited, finally at 11:20 we got in touch with the lock and they said there would be a slight delay. By 11:30 we were in the lock- here they threw us long nylon ropes to secure us to the lock wall. The second lock was similar and we were thru it by 12:40. We continued our crossing of Lac St. Louis, skirting around Montreal and the entrances to the St. Catherines, and Lachine channels.
We continue on to Ste. Anne de Bellevue, which is found on the western tip of Montreal island. Here we tied up for the night. It was June 23rd, the eve of St. Jean Baptiste day also known as Quebec’s National Holiday.There was entertainment at the town centre, which was only 100 meters from our boat. We walked around the town on several occasions, and sampled Ice cream, gelato, pasties and amazing bread from the Darling Boulangerie. We stayed a second night, and once again there was music nearby.
We met Robert and Claudette, Gold loopers who are the harbour hosts for Montreal. On Thursday afternoon we went through the lock, which actually had a dock inside, that we tied up to. This was a first. Ste. Anne’s claims to be the busiest lock in Canada, and typically rafts a number of boats together when they fill the lock. In the middle of the afternoon, we locked alone and headed across the Lake of the 2 Mountains towards the Carillon lock, we passed by the huge church in Oka. The Carillon lock is impressive with a 200 ton guillotine gate and a lift of 65 feet, it too had a dock within the lock, so made the lift relatively easy. We locked up with a cruiser and a sailboat, on Friday morning. This lock was beside a huge park setting, and the old lockmaster’s house was on site, turned into a museum, but wasn’t open while we were there.
Once we were out of the lock we continued down the Ottawa river to Hawkesbury and tied up at the municipal dock, we then walked into town to buy a few groceries. We spent the night and left around 9:30, we were still 60 miles from Ottawa, and wanted to get a little closer and anchor out for a night. We found a lovely sheltered spot behind Dube Island, near the Quebec shore of the River. Andy took the dinghy for a little ride, and dipped my body into the Ottawa river, as it was very hot.
On Sunday we left the anchorage around 2:30 and continued the remaining 30 miles to Ottawa—we couldn’t tie up at the blue line on the lock until after 6 pm—we arrived there at 6:45, and spent the night. Until it was dark, there was lots of boat and people traffic around. On Monday morning at 9:15, we were joined by 4 other boats, to begin the 8 step locks. There was a 45 foot Meridian, that took the Port side, and we took the Starboard position in front, a couple cruisers were behind us, and a metal boat was rafted in between them. Instead of 8 locks, they combined a couple so we only actually locked through 7. We arrived at the top at 12:20 and tied up along the canal at a spot near the McKenzie King bridge with power. We noticed that the number of Boats tied up in Ottawa for Canada Day was very sparse, I counted only about 10 boats, Ten years ago when were last here, the place was crowded with boats on both sides of the canal.
I made a trip in the afternoon to the Rideau centre to look around. On Tuesday, Andy and I went back there for lunch and to do some reprovisioning at Farm Boy. We had to return in the late afternoon to the Bell Mobility store, as both of our cell phones stopped working. We were told that someone had put two new I-Phones onto our account earlier in the day. We talked to the fraud department, and had our Sim cards swapped out, so that our phones would work again. In the early afternoon, I had received an email asking to activated my ESIM, I had taken this to be spam, but it is likely when the fraud had started.
On Wednesday, Canada’s 159th Birthday, it was hot and muggy, we took a taxi to the National War Museum and spent over 4 hours touring it.
When we were ready to leave it was pouring outside, and all the people at the Canada Day festivities nearby, had moved inside of the museum. When the rain let up, we walked to the O-train station and returned to Rideau Centre—this too was a zoo, as all the people who had come to parliament hill for activities had moved indoors here, to get out of the rain. After having lunch at the food court, we walked back to the boat, when there was a break in the weather.
The weather caused a cancellation of all Canada Day activities and the evening fireworks. On Thursday, just after 9:30 we started up the boat, and headed down the Rideau canal—we needed to wait for the Pretoria lift bridge, we passed by Dow Lake- there were hardly any boats tied up there, we went through the locks at Hartwell, Hog’s Back and Black Rapids. We had originally hoped to tie up at Black rapids, but because of the rain storm the previous day, many of the docks were underwater, so we continued on to Long Island and went through the 3 locks there, and tied up by 2:00. In total 8 locks for the day, we will stay here 2 nights and then continue on to Hurst Marina, where we will be for a night, so that I can catch my flight Sunday to Halifax for the Grand Session of Nova Scotia and P.E.I. I will return to Ottawa on Thursday evening, July 9th.
On Thursday afternoon, we had a huge thunderstorm around 4:00, with wind and heavy rain- I heard a bang, and didn’t realize until the following morning that one of our solar panels had been lifted off the sundeck cover and landed on top of the one beside it. Andy did some minor repairs with tie wraps to hold it in place for the short term.
Once I return from Halifax, we will continue down the Rideau and then return to the Trent Severn waterway– this is all familiar territory, as this will be our 3rd time down the Rideau, so we may try to go at a relatively fast pace– we need to be in Kingston on a Sunday, as that is the only day the Bascule bridge is open.
Cruising ON BUSINESS 