Day 317: Thursday, July 18, 2013
Port to Port: St Catherine Lock to Sainte Anne de Bellevue
Underway: 6:22 am Motor Off: 11:22 pm Miles Traveled: 23 Stayed At: Lock Wall
First Things First: First time seeing a huge Coast Guard hovercraft – noisy and lots of spray.
Mile 23 to Mile 0/97: We are done with the St. Lawrence Seaway. It went way better than expected. I guess it would have been difficult had we wanted to go into Montreal but we didn’t so we missed the worse part of the current. We averaged over 5 mph this on the first part of the Ottawa River so maybe this is a sign of good things to come.
We left early again today to take advantage of great travel conditions. Todays forecast is identical to yesterday – hot and humid with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. We decided to stop after the first Ottawa River Lock in Ste Anne-de-Bellevue. The next lock is 20 miles away but has no services. We might have to camp out all day tomorrow too because the forecast is for gale force winds all day and some rain. Not a good travel day – especially on the wide part of the river coming up.
After locking through and tying up to the floating dock, we worked on our normal boat projects – get gas, fill the water bottles, clean the boat, get local info, find the bathrooms, locate the nearest ice cream shop (we found three in three blocks) and figure out where we can get internet. We solved all those problems quickly and joined Kent and Jane from Carina for lunch at a random restaurant down on the waterfront promenade. We have had enough sun and heat this morning so we chose to sit under the AC vent to cool off and relax without sweating.
After lunch, Cindy watched the laundry spin around while I wandered over to the library to upload blog posts and check email and weather. I think I got the better duty since the library was nicely air conditioned.
We have heard that our friends who chose to wait for the Erie to open have been making good progress. Depending on the weather and timing, we may meet up with some of them along the Trent Severn – wouldn’t that be fun.
