Aug 6-12

It's now Monday of the Long Weekend, and Veronica and Shawn have decide to leave quite early to beat any traffic woes trying to get out of Montreal as it is not a long weekend for Quebec so weekday traffic could be bad. We departed just after them to start our voyage up the Seaway, but not before a little drama with someone demanding to get on our boat, but that's a story for one on one, not here. St. Lambert was our first lock and unfortunately the docks were full of other boats waiting and we ended up watching two ships go through and waited for 4 1/2 hours for our turn. It seemed that this would be the day for things to go bad. Since we waited on anchor, when it was time to pull up and go our swivel was jammed on the shank and we could not pull the anchor all the way up. Tried to un-jam it but only succeeded in breaking the mooring pole. We travelled with about 20 other boats so it was a slow process. St. Catherine's was the next lock and since it was quite close and we were still following the two ships we had to wait again about 45 minutes. At least I was able to free the swivel and set anchor again, but somehow Joy was cleaning the boarding mat and dropped it overboard and was lost to the deep. With a crowded lock again, and with us against the wall I tried to push off with another mooring pole and broke it as well. Once out of the lock we had the long trip across Lake St. Louis to Beauharnois locks. Since it was getting late in the day we figured we would take an anchorage outside the locks for the night and head out the next day. However as we were approaching they were just opening the locks for two other small boats so we made the decision to go in, they assured us that we had time to get through both locks and the two lift bridges before Valleyfield. Should have gone with our first plan. As we were exiting the second lock, the weather had become quite threatening with warnings of severe thundershowers. We had no choice now but to head to Valleyfield. Just like when we were down bound  the bridges gave us nothing but grief. We arrived at the first bridge just as they were closing it, and had to wait  30 minutes for them to open it again. When we got to the second bridge they were not ready for us and there was a car on the bridge so they could not open. By the way these bridges are not manned, so everything is done through video cameras and loud speakers from their command station in Lachine. It took another 15 minutes to get the guy off the bridge and for them to open. By this time the weather is looking quite ominous and we bolted for Valleyfield where we anchored for the night. We were anchored for only 15 minutes before  the wind and heavy rain started, but only lasted for 1/2 hour before it blew through.

The next day was the log trip across Lake St. Francis, past Cornwall to the Snell and Eisenhower Locks. Not an overly long or hard day and no troubles with the locks as only 4 boats travelled through with us. We decided to quit a little early today and take an anchorage between Mille Roches and Moulinette Islands.

The next day we had only the one lock to travel through and it was the Iroquois Locks with only an 8 inch lift, hardly seemed worth closing the doors for. It was just after 1:00 pm when we were through so instead of stopping we decided to carry on and make the 1000 islands for the balance of the vacation.  The strong current makes it a slow ride, but we finally made Central Grenadier and parked ourselves for the rest of the vacation and returned to the Marina on Saturday night. Sunday we left the marina around noon to catch up on the mail, lawn and chores around home before back to work on Monday.