Our Adventure Continues

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Our departure from Montreal was by way of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Seaway is the section of the St. Lawrence River that connects Montreal to Lake Ontario and provides a commercial link between them. Our route required that we transit two locks on the Seaway before turning west toward Ottawa. These locks have a reputation of being unfriendly to pleasure craft as they have heavy commercial use. We arrived at the first, the St. Lambert Lock at 9:30 to find they were replacing one of the two ton lock doors, this process would take several hours and, though the lock tenders were quite pleasant and apologetic, we would be unable to lock through until mid afternoon. This is done once every ten years! We tied up in the waiting area and pulled out our computers. At 3:00 we were able to enter the locks, by this time there were six other boats waiting. The seven of us entered as instructed, were raised about 20 feet, the downriver doors were opened and we continued on our way. We proceeded as a group to the next lock, the St. Catherine Lock where we were raised an additional 40 feet. We had planned this to be a short day; we arrived at our destination, the St. Anne-de-Bellevue Lock at 8pm.