The Entertainer's WakeJourney from Ontario to Nova Scotia 2009

After a load of poutine and les tres belles femmes, we’re about to head out of Quebec on an easy journey to Charlavois about 50 miles up the St. lawrence.

Blair, Dave and I arrived Sunday at 6pm and took a tour around downtown Quebec with Rick and Dennis and found ourselves in the middle of a giant festival. It turned out to be the last night of the Festivale d’ete. So there was concert after concert and buskers and people everywhere. Just an amazing place. We had dinner and drinks and toured around practicing our French, following Rick’s lead.

We ended up at a nice French watering hole and enjoyed about seven songs before Rick decided he had enough and wanted to head out for a poutine run.
Monday morning came and went with us preparing for the next leg and saying goodbye to Dennis.  Sounded like he had a great time aboard the Entertainer for the past two weeks.

Another tour of the beautiful city in the afternoon and back to the boat for an amazing Trout dinner provided by Rick. 10pm and the light show comes on the kilometer long grain elevator building. We were blown away by the hour long video presentation that was projected along the building. Nothing like it in the world. Back deck of the Entertainer with beers and friends, good times.

Tuesday morning and we’ve enjoyed maple buttered bagels, and are setting off. Beautiful weather, summer has finally arrived.

-Jay

Saturday, July 18, 2009

We weren’t passing St. Catherines when I was last able to get internet, we were passing trois-riviere. Rick has just gotten up from a nap and taken the wheel as I was trying to lay down and read. We have now hit 10.5kts a new record and if we keep this up we could be downtown Quebec by 8pm. This could be my last day on the water, probably going to need a few hours tomorrow and than we will have time to refill the propane and gas for the generator and give the boat a good clean for its next leg. Dave, Jay and Blair plan to leave at 7am and meet us in quebec city, it will more than likely end in a good night out before I head home.

‘WE HAVE REACHED’

We are at marina Portneuf. Our neighbours are a young couple Gilles and Nancy, this is their home marina and they gave us lots of advice. We have prebooked our slip for the night in quebec at basin d’louise and apparently we have a large projection show that is put on every night downtown and we will be able to see it from our boat. They also helped us with the tides, we are now into 10 – 12ft tides. We ordered and had pizza delivered to the boat that was an excellent suggestion from them. Gilles has built his own boat, all steel with a volkswagon engine and their plan is to train it to vancouver and do the coast there. We also had a funny experience with the boat between our boat and theirs. The old guy has had his 27.7ft bayliner for two years, he only used it twice last year and he hit 13 boats (we thought this was exageration, until we witnessed him in action). His daughter had told rick to not touch the bow line, so he left it, and the father reversed with it tied panicked jammed it in forward and ran the boat right up onto the dock and swung the stern in Gilles boat almost running right over Rick. Knowing this would happen Gilles and Nancy were on their boat and managed to prevent any damage. Later on a crowd of people gathered on the dock in fromt of the entertainer and we realized they were there to help him dock. Including rick and i there were 9 people on the docks to help including the marina manager and 4 people gathered on a near by catamaran to watch the event. They had 4 people on the bow with two lines attached, he came in way to fast almost put two people in the water and with all that help still hit the dock, almost hit us and luckily Nancy and one other person were on their boat and if you can believe they didn’t have a stern line ready, the old lady handed me a coiled rope not attached to anything as I was stretched across the water trying to pull them in, thankfully Nancy was kicking their stern towards me. Later on Gilles informed us this guy had to be informed that he had to use his holding tank and couldn’t pump straight into the marina, aparantly he thought because he had an older boat the rules didn’t apply to him, two years of owning the boat and he still doesn’t even know if he even has a tank. Rick and I laughed about the event for hours as I took a 5-0 win in our final crib match.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Rick has now been aboard for a month and it has been two weeks for me, we will reach my goal of making to quebec city before I have to return home. It has been a short, but great adventure, a true trip of a lifetime. I enjoyed my time getting to know Ray (who graciously handed over the title of #1 to me) and I enjoyed or nightly ritual of sipping sambuca and eating pie. Rick has been an excellent captain, never making me feel uncomfortable, monitoring his weather and he has prepared the boat to perfection for this trip. We have spent time learning all the ins and outs of the gps and radar systems and have become quit comfortable with their operations just in case.

We have reached the downtown quebec marina. We had one last lock to go through to end my trip, the marina is well protected and is the only thing on the other side. It is with out doubt the biggest marina I have ever been in. The boats are huge.

Rick and I have cleaned the boat, done a oil change and cleaned the racors, she is now ready for the next leg.

Dave, Jay and Blair arrived at 5:45pm, we will reprovision in the morning before I leave.

This trip has given me the full mix of feelings, the excitment of being on the water and the challenge of doing it day after day, missing my family (Julie and Dylan I love you both, see you soon and thanks), the joy of the birth of my niece, and sadly I don’t think this trip will end without the passing of my grandma.

I look forward to returning home where I will post my final blog of this trip and update all the photos. From here on out the posting will be from Dave or RIck. I hope you have enjoyed our trip to this point and thank you all for following along.

Dennis Bedford

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.

12:30pm coming to the start of the Beauharnois Canal.

1:30pm we are through the valleyfield bridge and the st-louis bridge. They are lift bridges and we are getting a good laugh as the large powerboats are racing past us and hours later when we arrive at the locks or the bridges they are still waiting. We are the only ones using the call in points listed on the charts and the bridge and lift operators are waiting for us. Seems we have priority today since there doesn’t seem to be many cargo ships.

-weather today is much nicer. sun is up, slight cool breeze and the water is calm.-

2:15pm we have arrived at the first of the beauharnois locks. Much nicer experience than the american locks of yesturday. They have a really nice floating dock with lots of room for boats. We are tied up here with a family from montreal, there is an automatic ticket dispenser and we only need to buy once for both locks. There is a message board and it says that the locks are delayed and we will be ready at 2:30.

3:45pm we are tied up in the lock with a 40min wait – minimum. The two performance boats that we locked through with yesurday have caught up to us. The family from montreal are ruturning from a weekend down in valleyfield. The drinks started to flow as soon as we found out the wait time – including the deck hands who asked for a couple drinks. A new experience is waiting for us when we finally drop, there is a large ship waiting just outside the doors between us and the next lock.

5:45pm cleared the last lock of the day. We will be in Kirkland shortly and Ray’s brothers place. The family next to us where Benoit, Isabelle, and their son Jeremy Charron. Their boat was Jeremy’s 2.

We have turned off the beaten path and are headed towards a marina in beaconsfield. Hopefully they take boats our size or we could be heading on later into the night.

Captain has announced “WE HAVE REACHED” (quoted from his good friend Peter)

We are docked at the point claire yaght club.  Very shallow water getting here once we left the main shipping channel but it was nice to be out of the traffic.  Ray has started dinner and it looks like we could be in for a fun night.  The weekly race night is tonight and I would say the bar looks prepared.  We have been greeted constantly since tieing up and welcomed aboard several boats already, and most are still out racing.

We got going around nine this morning. Rick has promised me to a fresh fish lunch with the bass I caught last night. I am on his good side again now that I have let him skunk me and take a two game lead at crib.

10:00am we had our first cargo ship sneak up behind us. Radar is now on and being watch a little closer. We will be at our first lock at Iroquois shortly and may even have to share the lock with the same cargo ship.

In case some of you are wondering, here are a few facts about what we are getting into.

They are the tallest water staircase and they raise ships from the St. Lawrence River starting in Montreal to Lake Erie, a total of 552ft. Built in 1959.

All locks are 766ft long, 80ft wide, and 30ft deep. Largest ship allowed to use them is 740ft by 78ft (tight fit)

The locks work on gravity and hold 91 million lts of water and still only take approx. 10 minutes to fill or empty.

We have no idea what we are in for. The turbulance from the empty and filling and being in these chambers with massive ships has everyone aboard resting and preparing. Not much is being said aboard the entertainer this morning.

Must have been the cargo ship catching us off guard, the atmosphere has come back around. First beers have started, boat is being cleaned (rick is tackling the spiders and I am almost finishing cleaning the ceiling in the back deck. We just passed our first barge and tug.

I told you about us reaching 8.6 kts yesturday but I didn’t mention that I was at the wheel. It turns out #1 likes a little competition (not just at trying to pick our miles and anchorages) and he was able to get us skippin along at 9 kts today.

12:10pm arriving at our first locks.

12:53pm cleared the Iroquois locks. What a disappointment, we never even had to tie up. We paid $25 to enter into a large concrete sturcture, a guy reached out with collection bin on a stick to take our ticket and the gates open in front of us and we leave. We didn’t even stop moving and as far as we can tell there was no drop.

3:40pm arriving at the Eisenhower Lock.

4:15pm still bobbing around waiting to get in. A tug just passed us and loaded in, not sure if we will be allowed to travel with it or not. A couple that went through at Iroquois with us must have been sitting here for hours waiting, and there is a sailboat as well, plus to speed boats that are travelling together.

-weather is not very nice today, overcast, few raindrops, and cool-

6:20pm exitted the Eisenhower Lock. On our way to Snell

7:50pm cleared all the locks we are doing today. We are anchored on the american side in grassey river. We can still see the Snell Lock. Tomorrow we will probably head into cornwall for fuel. Maybe head further down the river since there is a strong current all around cornwall island.

We left Kingston after checking over the entertainer and setting the steadying sail. 9:40am we took the passage between milton and spectacule islands. Our plan was to take the northeast route behind howe is. Once we reache the point were we had to make a decision the waters in the deeper waters did not look inviting and the trip behind howe island turned out to be a very good choice.

12:12pm we entered the main shipping lane of the St. Lawrence.

The homes in the thousand islands range from monstorous castle like buildings to tiny little cottages that look like they have been built entirely on a man made islands. Every island here has something built on it.

Lots of mahogany run-abouts tied to the docks in this area (my personal favourite).

The currents in these islands got us moving almost 8 and a half knots. Engine was loving it.

We found an island called Stovin Is. The St.Lawrence parks have docks on all the islands and it is a first come first serve idea where you pay by the honor system. Rick and I went fishing in the tender for a bit, more of a site seeing and beer driking trip. However I did catch my first bass.

In case any of you haven’t notice there is a pattern developing aboard the ‘Entertainer’, it is tie up, grab a glass of wine and begin to cook.  Since today is #1’s day off the wine has really started to flow, I (#2) will type as it is dictated to me so you will all be able to understand what is being said.

I thought this trip would be so relaxing, which was true for the first couple of day, but now I am exhausted and yet I really don’t do very much.

I suspect it’s the weather, the fresh air, however the captain thinks it is our inordinate consumption of our misterio malbec.  I thought a little over a case would last us to montreal but we seem to be on our second case half way through.  I can’t believe how much the captain can drink!  The trent canal was indeed fun because of the narrowwater and continously changing scenery.  I found todays journey devoid of scenery as we were in a large body of water bouncing up and down in what I thought were large waves.  The captain however said “this is nothing you sissy”  at which point I went for a nap.  Now refreshed I find this wine is growing on me, since this is my day off from cooking.  All and all this is quit the adventure and I am looking forward to the next leg of our journey.

P.S high hon

P.S.S although the captain diplores making projections I think we will be in Montreal by thursday (friday if we fish)

P.S.S.S Marjorie, I is Dennis who is typing.

That is all from #1,  The captain speculates that when he refers to the next leg of our journey he is talking about the strippers tonight

Well hello again…I are the captain. Since the last time I spoke to you I have spent all of my time going to grocery stores for Ray as he is the fussiest cook I have ever known….for example last night we had chicken wrapped in bacon bathed in dill and garlic with a peach sauce topped with a cheese and then half a peach. When he served the meal he was soooo proud he said ” the colour is magnificent but the criss cross pieces of cheeze are not STRAIGHT…can you believe it?  With that we had roast potatoes and asparagus. We have had some trying weather….one person is still missing, we were lucky and did not get hit although the lightning was around us all night. We walked 20 blokes to get charts today so we are headed for Cape Vincent tomorrow. My crew is second to none and I am so pleased, I found some conditioner that makes my hair soft and since I sleep with Dennis he is pleased. Talk to you soon I hope.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40319160@N02

This should work, hopefully Jay can post a link to make it easier in the future but for now this is all we have.

Hope you enjoy them.