Home sweet home

Moring at Grendier Island Lac François

We got up about 7 am and there were thousands of sparrows and tons of tiny moth like bugs.

Boat was covered with green spots. We could not determine if it was bird poop or bug juice.

Double wishbone

Got up early about 6:30, but got out of bed by 7 ish.  I check the Internet.  The seaway website estimated a 10 am and 3 pm lock passage.Did not look like we could make it. Safron put stuff away as I pulled then anchor and sailed away. 

I tried to sail under full sails on a run but there was just not enough winds. Back to the iron sail.

Gunning for the bridges

We gunned it and as we arrived at the Valleyfield bridge, it opened as we approached it. There were several powerboats waiting. I figured they would wait for us at the locks since I figured we could make it for 11 am. The powerboats took off.




At the second bridge (Louis), there were the same power boats waiting.  The bridge opened well before we got there, we gunned it anyways and the bridge commandants waited for us to pass before the closed the bridge. A sailboat on the other side did not make it.

It seemed that they opened the bridge too early and kept it open for us. The current was over a knot and we were doing up to 8 knots GPS. They did wait for a tour boat to come across

Tour boat after it passes the St. Louis bridge

When we got to the lock, we slowed down to avoid docking at the pleasure craft dock and observed several power boats waiting so I figured that the lock master never opened at 10. We were there at 10:28. Not bad at all.

We did not wait much before the locks opened but it took a lot of time to tie up all the boats. There were about 9 power boats plus us.

Both locks cycled us relatively efficiently arriving in Lake St. Louis at 12:15.

Safron made a salad as I motored to the zig-zag chanel back to the club. We fueled and tidied up a bit before Safron departed to Benôit's concert.Tied up at home dock at 14:20.

I removed the cruising stuff and replaced it with the racing stuff, washed the deck and oiled the steering chain which was acting up during the trip.

An awesome vacation, learnt a lot and pretty much incident free. A splendid adventure.