Beautiful Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain is gorgeous with the Adirondacks to the west and the Green Mountains of Vermont to the east. We found some beautiful anchorages and enjoyed the trip through the Champlain Canal and Lake Champlain immensely. Additionally, we spent two days in Burlington where they have an extensive network of bike trails which we took advantage of, we found some wonderful little restaurants as well. On July 2 we entered Canada and began our trip up the Richelieu River and the Chambly Canal. The Chambly is one of the historic canals of Canada which opened for service in 1843. The canal was reconstructed between 1880 -1898, the present day canals are still operated by hand. Each lock is 21 feet wide and 100 feet long. The canal around the rapids is quite picturesque and very narrow. It runs for 10 miles and has 9 locks which lower the boat a total of 80 feet (when traveling north). The most impressive are locks 1-3, the last three if heading north, which are “step locks”. This means that a boat will enter the first of the locks and when the gate is opened, the boat will pass directly into the next lock in series. These three locks lowered the boat 35 feet total. It is very impressive and we had quite an audience as we transited this series of locks. To date we have transited 24 locks with many more to come.