Today started off with a little bit of overcast skies and some lightning in the distance. Marilyn arrived at the boat around 8am and drove me over to the local grocery store for some quick provisions. Ray has decided his journey is over as far as the boat goes, he still needs to make it home. Rick and I will indeed miss the meals and wish him a safe trip home. Thanks #1.
We arrived at our first lock Cote-Sainte-Catherine around noon and what a memorable experience as I have become an uncle again to a baby girl. No name yet. Lac St-Louis is a mess of channels and buoy markers everywhere. Does not look like a pleasurable boating area at all. Lots of water, no depth.
Exited the lock at 2:15. Our short delay waiting to enter gave Rick and I time to prepare a lunch, run the generator and play a little crib (he’s worried now that #1 isn’t around to help him beat me)
3:30pm we have arrived at our last lock St. Lambert and it with a little luck we will only have an hour wait. I just found out the name of my new niece is Phenyx Ryan Bedford.
5:00pm we have cleared our last lock, we are now heading past the montreal ship yards and the size of ships that we can now encounter is way bigger than I thought…
I thought the ones running up and down the locks were big and we just saw one of the ocean going ships tied next to the others and it was easily twice, maybe three times the size. Planning to push as far as we can this evening, we have many marinas to choose from around the 16mile range from the locks. That will put us at 7 or 8 by the time we call it quites. We may be able to anchor but the marinas give the added security knowing they are there. An easy day tomorrow with some fishing is the plan.
All and all the locks where not that bad. The american two i would have to say sucked. No better way to describe it, we knew that we were at the bottom of the list and a pain in the ass for the lock attendants but the canadians tried to make it easy, the americans didn’t hide it at all. Ray made the right decision to get off when he did, the winds and weather have been perfect for rick and I and with our push today it would have been a long day for nothing if he helped. Rick and I will eat bread crust and water in his honor tonight.
We decided to take it easy for dinner with perogies and sausage. We are docked at Marina Brosseau, lots of nice boats and seems to be a high class function going on. Rick has informed me that I should take a stroll up to shore to see the high performance race boats (maybe some pictures to make chad jealous). We are in the suburbs of montreal. Just after clearing the last lock we took the north channel and got ourselves out of the shipping lane. If it was the weekend it would be hard to say if this pleasure craft route would be any better than being with the tankers. There is marina after marina and no where to go except up and down the shore. We tried to take anchor in a small river opposite the marina however once in there we realized it was a marked channel and seems to be well used. Tomorrow, if the weather is in our favour we will stay along the shore route and do some trolling and if the weather is bad we will take our river and catch the currents in the main channel again.
Tonight we are thankful for the wine and beer that Ray provided us with today. Although he has left us his spirit is still aboard, we will enjoy sambuca and the end of the apple pie in his honour.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Last night Rick and I went up to the marina bar and it turned out they were having a big staff party. We stayed till close and had a great time. Rick was up dancing and they had live music. I took pictures of the performance boats but I’m not sure if the full effect will be there as I could barely get the boat with a truck next to it for reference in the same frame and still be close enough to show the paint schemes on these things. However a mechanic was on the docks last night to check the other boats making sure they were secure for the potential storm that was on the way (just rain, no wind). Guaetan gave me a few specs on these boats that I will share to help once I put pictures up. These boats cost 1.3million to buy, $100000 to rebuild the motors which need to be done every 100hrs, they have dual props which cost $8000 each, and they go 148 miles/hr, they cost $1700 to fill the tanks and that will last you 4.5 hrs and one third of that fuel blows out the muffler and is wasted. Between these boats and the two custom choppers ($250000 each, owners bike), and the float plane that took off next to us this morning there is no shortage of toys or money and it showed in the bar last night.
Saturday, july 18, 2009
We found a very good anchorage last night. Being on the docks are comfortable and add a little bit of security but the peacefulness and price of being at anchor are much better. We tried to do a bit of fishing but all we saw were jumpers, in fact I was up at 5:30 this morning talking on the phone with my dad when one jumped next to the boat, if I was holding the net I probably could have caught it. Today is going to be a long day, not many spots to anchor and it doesn’t look like there will be many marinas and it will probably rain all day.
Noon and we are just finishing lunch and passing by St. Catherines.