Day 313: Sunday, July 14, 2013
Port to Port: Nichols Point to Chambly, Quebec
Underway: 6:14 am Motor Off: 5:00 pm Miles Traveled: 48/47 Stayed At: Lock Wall
First Things First: First new country; first manual locks; first time hearing the weather report on the VHF radio in metric units.
Mile 19 to Mile 0 and Mile 69 to 40: It is 9:07 pm and we just finished dinner. That is how good our day was. We got an early start again and cruised in relative peace and quiet for most of the morning. The weather was perfect and the water calm. We stopped for gas and ice at a marina just before the US/Canadian border and we arrived at Canadian Customs at 10:16 am. We were on our way again six minutes later. No fuss, no muss.
We ended up paying our dues today, though, as every Canadian that owns a boat decided to head south down the channel toward Lake Champlain making for a rocky and rolly passage. We stayed way over on the edge of the channel and slowly made our way north. The scenery was amazing again. More houses now but still lots of woods, hills and farmland. The best was yet to come.
We had planned to stay at the first lock of the Chambly Canal but it was only 2 pm so we decided to keep going to see how far we could get. What an amazing change from the hussle and bustle of the last 4 hours. We were basically the only boat in the lock system going north. Just a few power boats passed us going south. The water was calm and protected. Most of the canal is only about 50 feet wide – barely enough room for two boats to pass. The locks are the smallest ones that we have transited. They are completely hand operated. One person on each side cranks the gates open and closed and walks to the other end to open the gate valves letting the water out. A busy bike path followed us the whole afternoon just along the shoreline. This lock system is a National Historic Site. And we discovered that the season passes we already bought to get through the Trent Severn also allow us to transit all the locks we are going to go through over the next week and a half on our unplanned detour. We also have a pass that lets us stay at any lock or bridge for free. What a welcome surprise.
The Chambly Canal is beautiful. (I took over 100 pictures today just to remember it by). We didn’t want to stop (except for the ice cream stores we cruised by). The canal passes through some small towns, near small, neat homes with manicured lawns., through cornfields and past farms. Sometimes Plan B ends up way better than Plan A. We could have finished the system of locks but decided to stop before Lock 3 in the protected basic along the west wall with a park on both sides of us and, more importantly, shade.
Kent and Jane on Corina helped us get tied up and of course we started chatting about our experiences on the Loop. We soon discovered we had something very important in common. Not only do we both need to get some Canadian money and phones that work in Canada (much more complicated than it sounds), we actually did the crossing of the Gulf the same miserable day back in November. They were at Captain’s Quarters – the same marina we were at. What a small world. We faintly remember them – they were parked down at the end of the marina but we didn’t spend time with them before the crossing. They remembered us though because everyone was talking about the little 22’ sailboat doing the Loop. We had a wonderful reunion comparing notes and stories while cooling off in the shade. We finally broke up the party so everyone could get something constructive done – I dove in and cleaned the slime off the boat (and me) and scrapped the last of the barnicles off the bottom (I wonder if we will go faster now?). Cindy and I walked a couple blocks into town and found three ice cream shops in two block (see what you are missing Eddy and Linda), got groceries, found a gas station for in the morning and avoided eating out.
We returned to the boat and quickly heated our taco meat and had dinner ready in 10 minutes – lots cheaper and usually better than eating out. The sun was setting and the sky was multiple colors of pink, orange and blue. We are so lucky.
