Day 314: Monday, July 15, 2013
Port to Port: Chambly, QC to Saint Ours Lock
Underway: 11:50 am Motor Off: 4:50 pm Miles Traveled: 28 Stayed At: Lock Wall
First Things First: First time travelling with another boat – Carina – for an extended period of time.
Mile to Mile: As I am writing this at 6:15 am on Tuesday, the sun is just starting to peek above the trees, the temps are in the low 70’s, we have a cool breeze in our hair and we are traveling 8.4 mph with the current. Wow. It’s worth getting going early when you can enjoy this kind of travel.
Did you know they speak French in Quebec? Well, they do and it makes life interesting. Most of the people we have met speak English too, but not everyone. I bought a “burner” phone at the grocery store to use while in Canada and the clerk did not speak any English. Talk about a challenge. By the way, be thankful with the crappy phone system we have is the US. It is much more difficult to get a decent phone plan in Canada than at home. They still have something called “long distance” here which they charge an arm and a leg for to call from one province to another. So what is my home province – Quebec or Ontario? International calls (i.e. US) cost another $0.25 per minute on top of the base charge. We won’t be doing much chatting on the phone.
Today was a relatively short day. We waited in Chambly for the bank to open at 10 am to exchange some cash for Canadian money and try to buy a cheap phone to keep in contact over the next month and a half. We were successful on both accounts. When we were done with our errands, we got the boat ready and headed down through three small locks – one right after the other. (I haven’t added them all up yet but we will go through close to 75 locks by the time we are done with our little detour). We headed across a small bay and down the channel at an average of 7.4 mph all the way to our last stop for the day.
It was hot again today. Unlike most boats, we don’t have a full cover over the cockpit/steering station. Many of the powerboats can steer from an inside station in air conditioned comfort. We just get to sweat. Our sunshade works ok when the sun is high in the sky but doesn’t protect us from the side. Easier to enjoy the scenery, though.
It was a little busy on the water with ski boats weaving in and out along the channel but nothing like the weekend boat traffic. Last week and this week are the most popular vacation weeks in Canada so once we are done with this week, it should quiet down and be relatively peaceful again – especially during the week.
As we approached our last lock of the day, we saw one of our friends from Kingston – Bill and Joyce on Carried Away – tied up on the high side of the lock. It is so weird to randomly see someone you know in the middle of nowhere in Canada. This doesn’t happen very often in our hometown. It seems to happen everyday here. Bob and Jon on Yinzer invited the Looper boats over for margaritas so, after a few boat projects, we wandered 2 boats down the dock and enjoyed another boat-tail session with friends. By the time we got back to the boat, we weren’t very hungry and were too tired to bother with dinner so we called it a night. Tomorrow we get to see how we fair going upstream on the St. Lawrence River – its going to be a slow few days ahead so we will have to reset our expectations and enjoy the ride.