Leaving Brockville, we enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the St Lawrence River and following the channel, periodically crossed between US and Canadian waters. We traversed the first of seven St Lawrence Seaway locks. The Iroquois is Canadian and on this day, less than a 12” drop and a non-event. Going into the Iroquois lock, Drift Away, a vessel we hadn’t seen since Waterford at the beginning of the Erie Canal, was leaving the lock going in the other direction. Jim, Drift Away’s Captain, suggested we stop for fuel on the US side of the Seaway at the Mohawk reservation because they are not subject to US taxation making diesel fuel very reasonable. We did stop there although we only needed 34 gallons of fuel to top off our tanks, we figured, “why not!” We spent the next two nights at the Crysler Park Marina in a sheltered cove and had an opportunity to golf for the first time since leaving home. Golf is a less expensive sport in Canada and made even more affordable by the favorable exchange rate – it is like having a 30% discount on everything you buy. Marinas are also very reasonable and include electric power; compared to the US where you almost always pay $5 - $15 additional per night. On the other hand, fuel is very expensive and a pump out of your holding (waste) tank can set you back $15-$25 Canadian as opposed to free or a nominal $5 at most US marinas.
On the next leg of our journey, we traversed the two American locks, Eisenhower and Snell that required $30 cash, each, payable only at the lock. You can pay either Canadian or US dollars, so we paid in Canadian dollars. By contrast, the Canadian locks give you a discount, $25 a lock (Canadian) if paid in advance on-line by PayPal or credit card. If you pay at the lock, there is a ticket machine that accepts credit cards. No cash at Canadian locks!
The Seaway channel next takes one through Lac St. Francis, an 18-mile long lake created during the dredging for the Seaway and flooding a valley to create the lake. We stayed three nights at Creg Quay marina on the lake and located behind a rocky embankment inside a natural harbor. The brochure promises tranquility and keeps that promise handsomely. The grounds are beautiful and well tended and there are picnic tables and gas grills at the top of each set of docks. The brochure also promises a pool (which was temporarily closed), a beach (now covered with floodwater) and a restaurant/pub (closed at least four years ago). Despite the false advertising, we wouldn’t have used any of those amenities anyway so we just enjoyed the ambiance.
Sixty-two miles in 16 Hours … A VERY LONG DAY!
Each Seaway lock is 766 feet long, 80 feet wide and 30 feet deep. A lock fills or empties with approximately 24 million gallons ofwater in just 7 to 10 minutes. Getting through a lock takes about 45 minutes. Pleasure craft cannot lock through with commercial vessels that always have priority. There are two times a day that pleasure vessels are locked through. At all other times, it is best effort by the lockmaster and delays waiting for an opening can be up to FOUR hours! The Seaway has a web site where you can check daily to see what commercial vessels are going through the locks and their estimated time of arrival. However, in spite of our best planning efforts, reading the guide books and other boater’s blogs, checking the Seaway website for ship traffic and latest updates for pleasure craft, we ran into many delays – all cascading from the wait at the Valleyfield Bridge.
We awakened just after 5:00 AM, and left the dock at 6:00 AM to transit the rest of Lac St Francis and the Beauharnois Canal with the objective of locking through the first two Seaway locks at their first opening for pleasure boaters at 9:00 AM. We knew a freighter was scheduled to lock through at 9:30 AM. We made great time to the bridge at the entrance of the Beauharnois Canal arriving at 7:15 AM. The guidebook states “when the bridge tender sees your vessel, the light will change from red to amber while the bridge is readied for opening, then will change to green when the bridge is fully open and ready for transit”. Neither the guidebook nor the Seaway website happened to mention the bridge does not open until 9:00 AM. We drifted and motored in circles until the 9:00 opening and proceeded through the canal to the first of the paired locks. Due to our delay at the bridge, the freighter was now scheduled to lock through!
The locking process is to tie to a wooden floating dock just before the canal entrance and to use a phone box there to call the lock tender for estimated wait time and further instructions. Karl was told that we would be locked through after the commercial vessel. He was also told by the lock master that “it will be awhile … maybe you should have lunch … maybe take a nap … we’ll wake you up on the speaker.” RutOh … take a nap? Updated information is supposed to be available on an electronic screen at the dock. The screen was not working properly and as the time wore on, we had no idea how long we would be waiting. There is no listed telephone number for the lock tender and they do not answer the marine radio. So we had some lunch and waited, and waited. We were finally through the first two (of four) locks at 2:00 PM! By then, three other powerboats travelling together and a large sailboat had joined us. The locking process itself was a piece of cake. On the Canadian portion of the Seaway, the lock masters hand you clean, dry lines and make sure you are ready for them to release the water for the forty-two foot drop.
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| Santorini waiting on commercial vessel locking through |
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| Now this is an odd duck! |
We continued the journey arriving at the final pair of locks, St Catherine and St Lambert, at 3:30 PM. These are the last two locks and lead a short distance further to Montreal. Again, we were told there was a delay for commercial traffic and the wait was approximately an hour. That hour stretched to THREE hours while they locked through another commercial vessel and then a very large private yacht. By this time we were concerned that we would not be able to get to the final St Lambert lock before the last locking through of pleasure boats at 7:00 PM. We reheated left over pizza for a quick “dinner”. When the lockmaster allowed us to enter the St Catherine lock, we voiced our concern about making it to St Lambert and were assured that they would not strand us between locks. As promised, we were able to lock through St Lambert at 8:30 PM and into the canal leading us to Montreal.
Sunset was at 8:48 PM and so here we were, in the dark in a strange city, trying to find the entrance to the marina in a 6 knot cross current. It was very difficult to pick out where the channel met the seawall or the silhouette of the massive freighters tied up there. We knew the marina was tucked in behind a narrow strip of land with a very distinctive clock tower and the seawall. Kapt Karl finally spotted the red and green lights indicating the marina entrance; however, at our angle, the lights appeared reversed causing us some angst in trying to sort out our heading and determination of exactly where we might find the narrow opening in the jetty. We were also concerned about finding our slip and docking without assistance in an unknown setting. Luckily, once we found the opening to the marina fairway, the rest was a piece of cake. The instructions we had received earlier by phone, quickly made sense and we located the slip without incident. A fellow boater took the stern line from Donna and helped us tie up. It was now 10:00 PM and sixteen hours after our departure from Creg Quay. We were pretty exhausted from the length of time on the water and ebb of that last hour of adrenaline rush. We were in bed by 10:30 PM and upon awakening the next morning and surveying our surroundings in daylight, noticed a very large freighter tied to the seawall just outside of the marina. We looked at each other in amazement and Kapt Karl asked, “Was that there last night???”
