Quebec and the St. Lawrence

We left Lake Champlain on Sunday after stopping in Plattsburgh to get cash and a Canadian Courtesy flag.  Plattsburgh was a happening place  on a Sunday afternoon. They were just closing shop on a downtown jam session and there were lots of people around.  Amtrak  takes people from Plattsburgh north to Montreal or south to New York City.  The station is circa 1886 and Amtrak now only has a small office, the rest is commercial offices.  It was a neat building in good condition the only advice I could give is..."WASH YOUR WINDOWS"!  I can't figure out why that is a business' lowest priority.  Drives me nuts.

We anchored that night about a mile north of the city and left the next morning for Canada.  Unfortunately I left until the last minute to figure out our phone situation.  So as usual I was frantically trying to make a decision after contacting Verizon.  Actually we had to go VERY slow to the Canadian Customs office while I got the job done, hoping they weren't trying to figure out what type of contraband we were hiding while loitering. The decision ended up being .98 cents a minute for in coming and out going calls and no Internet.  The calls part was ok.  The Internet not so much.

You see, I hadn't factored in that we were heading into Quebec where French is the language. The radio stations are in French and the weather on the VHF French, so we didn't know the weather other than what the sky told us for the entire 3 days we were travelling there. There were even a few of the lock tenders that didn't speak English which surprised me.  I didn't realize how much I really do depend on the Internet for information.  Remember this 'doing the Loop' was a last minute decision and we did not have the information most people have for doing it aka...charts and guide books.  Our Chartplotter doesn't cover Canadian waters so we were doing it like the explorers did...isn't that cool!

I guess it was in a way, we had a Lake Ontario Chartbook from John Mackie, but the rest of the charts were hard to find.  I called all the Marina's and nobody in Lake Champlain had charts for the Richelieu and St. Lawrence...but we were pretty sure that someone had to have them in Quebec, so the first marina we came to a couple of miles over the border we stopped and sure enough they had just what we needed for this leg...so onward.

The Richelieu and St. Oar were very lively.  The French Canadians LOVE the outdoors.  In all of our trip we have never seen that many people walking, biking, running, paddle boarding, kayaking, just enjoying the outdoors in general.  From young to quite old (funny how your perception of age changes over the years).  The waterway was in some places very narrow and the bike paths were right next to the canal.  Unfortunately I couldn't make the sun shine that day.

The locks here are unique in that they are all manually operated.  They open the lock on one end with a crank, let the boats in, crank 'er shut again and then go to the other end and crank again to let the water in or out and then yup' they crank open the doors to let you out.  Most of the locks now have students tending the locks Canada is following the US in getting rid of older more costly labor and replacing it with younger cheaper labor.  The older tenders were mostly ok with it as they were getting 'bought out' and were ready to move on, and I must say the younger workers (half of them female) were very friendly and animated.  They seemed to be enjoying the work while getting fit while pumping that 'iron'!!!

This guy was a riot.  He gave me half of a cucumber wrapped in a napkin to pass to the girl at the next lock.  A relay they had going.  She just laughed.

Here they are at the other end lowering the water

She is passing info to the next lock.  They don't answer or communicate on VHF Radio only by phone, which seems odd to us but that's how it's done.

Then she had to go to the other end of the lock to open the doors.  

It was a pretty tight fit in these locks My Therapy is 34 and we are 42 feet so we did well together.

The scenery on the canal was very rural.  Lots of farms growing lots of corn.  We didn't go by any more "towns" the water was houses and maybe a few small business. No big roads either just a bike path all the way from St. Jean at the beginning of the canal to Chambly at the end. Then it was a short trip through the more residential St. Oar section of the waterway which ended by spilling us into the mighty St. Lawrence.

I was a little intimidated by the St. Lawrence from stories I'd heard and read which just proves, don't read or listen to stories, it was a piece of cake!  We did it during the week so there was no boat traffic except for the couple of freighters we saw during the day and the five that rocked us out of sleep at between 2 and 5 in the morning the first night when we anchored just off of the shipping channel.  We were in an area where they were "putting the pedal to the metal" so had only ourselves to blame.  

Day 2 on the St. Lawrence took us through the first two of the six BIG locks, the St. Lambert and the St. Catherine. We had to wait for an hour at the first lock as a freighter was down bound.  It was really neat watching it come out of the lock.  The locks ended up being easy and not as tiring as the canal locks which are very close together. The only downside to the big locks was, they were not included in our Canal Lock Pass so we had to pay, at $30 a lock!   The last lock was almost a drive through, I think they made us tie up only so they could collect their thirty bucks!  Waterway Robbery!!!!
Oh well, you play, you pay.

It was quite an interesting experience with nowhere near the amount of boats travelling as we had expected.  The most we were ever in a lock with was five boats.  No wonder they have to charge, right?

Locks Slideshow

Remember: click the  i at the bottom of the slideshow for the captions and if you click the speaker button you can even get my newly added soundtrack (I am loving this)   :-)

So, here we are three weeks after arriving in Michigan and ready to head out.  We've had a nice stay with Gary's dad, Bub, who at 97 is still going strong!
Let's see what have we accomplished while here, you probably have come to realize that we don't sit idle anywhere, no time to relax when you live in a money pit on the water (big smile here)!

Gary rebuilt one of our turbos to see if that will help with the smoking and it went well until he snapped the V-Clamp on the exhaust hose.  Trying to find parts for old boats is not an easy task. Today he drove to Gaylord, an hour from here, hoping to find the part we need at a diesel truck repair place. We haven't gotten our props back from repair yet but our friend Denny will deliver them to us somewhere downstate.  Plus lots of little chores and another major provisioning.

We should have left on Saturday as the weather over the weekend was perfect, but then we would have missed the Music Festival, a top event here, and because we stayed we met up with Chuck on 'Luv n' Life' who pulled in right next to Wendy & Carl's boat at Petoskey Marina on Saturday afternoon.  It was great to see him again.  The last time we saw him was on the Champlain Canal on July 4th.  AND THE BEST PART of waiting is that gas prices are going down!!!!  We are overjoyed!!

             Rosie, Ron, Wendy, Gary, Jann, Meredith, Chuck, Carl at Festival On The Bay

Now you are all caught up, and ready for the next part of our adventure.  We plan to head out Wednesday morning.
Stay tuned.....