Sailing Away on MARA BEEL: Quebec

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Chambly to Montreal

June 6- a long, 88 mile day to Montreal, a bit stressed out by the huge St. Lawrence Seaway and dealing with the French language!

We left Chambly around 0630 and continued north. The Richelieu River is scenic and bordered by tiny villages on both sides, with names like St.-Charles-sur-Richelieu, St-Marc-sur-Richelieu, St. Anoine-sur-Richelieu, St-Denis-sur-Richelieu---- you get the idea. I believe that sur-Richelieu means "on the lower Richelieu."

The churches in Quebec nearly all have silver steeples, like this one in St-Antoine.

I don't know the reason for the silver steeples.

We had one more lock for the day, at St-Ours. We arrived in time for the first lockage of the day at 0900. This lock was much larger than yesterday's and has a floating dock in it that we tied to. We were the only boat in the lock. It is still early in the season here, so boating is not fully underway, especially on cold, cloudy week days.

We entered the St. Lawrence at 10:15 and met half a dozen ocean going freighters.

The Algoseas passing us.

We chose to take the small craft channel to avoid the strong current and large ships. We entered at Lanoraie and exited at Langueuil, across the river from Montreal- about 27-30 miles. We added fuel at Port de plaisance Real-Bouvier since diesel may be scarce for a while. We paid $1.50 Canadian per liter. The Canadian dollar is worth .77 U.S. right now, so that worked out to $4.33 U.S. per gallon-- not too bad.

The current on the St. Lawrence here is 5-6 knots, and we are headed upstream. Yikes!

Current against the marker

Party boat

We are staying at the Yacht Club of Montreal- very plush and right in Old Town. They even provide fluffy towels in the showers- a welcome change from our thin but quick drying microfiber towels. We have a couple days here to explore the city. I read that Montreal has more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the world!

Mallets Bay, VT to Chambly, Quebec

On Tuesday June 5th we left Mallets Bay, VT at 0700, topped off our fuel at Gaines Marina near Rouses Point, NY, and easily cleared customs a short time later. The agents did not come aboard and only asked if we carried weapons or tobacco. Piece of cake!

We arrived at the entrance of the Chambly Canal at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in plenty of time for the 1:30 p.m. lockage. They are currently doing 2 lockages a day until summer officially arrives. These locks are tiny! The ladies running the operation carefully arranged 4 of us, a 40’ boat, a 35’ boat, our 27’ boat and a pontoon boat into the chamber. The fifth boat had to wait another day to get through. The locks are about 24’ wide and 100’ long. The operators crank the gates open and closed by hand after handing each boat 2 lines to hang on to.

Discussing the lockage procedure with the lady in charge

Locks 9 and 8 were about 10 miles apart, and the speed limit throughout the entire canal is 6.2 mph. The canal is very narrow, and we stayed in single file all the way. The pontoon left us after the first lock and the rest of us continued.

We were second in line, and these two followed us in and out of the locks.

The lock tenders drove the route, stopping to open several 3’ high bridges along the way. What a hoot!

These locks are small!

Locks 7, 6, 5 and 4 were close together, a few tenths of a mile between each. Another set of lock tenders took over, driving golf cart-like vehicles between the locks. All spoke excellent English and were very helpful.

The waterway is extremely narrow

Locks 3, 2 and 1 were really crazy! Each one opened directly into the next one, like stairs. Amazing 19th century technology, considering these locks are operating just as they were in the 1840’s.

Each lock has a little house like this one.

We finished the lockages around 5:15 and tied up to the wall just outside lock 1. There was no power, but we didn’t need any. We purchased both a lock pass and a mooring pass for the season before we started our trip, rather than paying for each event separately.