July 17, Day 34 Montreal to St. Anne de Bellevue

We left Montreal at 8:00 a.m. and proceeded to the Saint Lambert Lock. We headed out into the 8 knot current (pushing us this time) and the boat was doing 14 ½ knots. This was faster than we were going while surfing the waves into the Little Egg Inlet in Jersey. The boat was a bit of a handful, but we managed.

There are 2 locks on the Canal de la Rive Sud which bypass the Lachine Rapids on the Saint Lawrence. These 2 locks are not necessarily “cruiser friendly” and we were warned that we might have to wait several hours for large ships to lock through as they have priority over pleasure craft. Sure enough, when we arrived a little before 9:00 we were told the wait would be approximately 8 hours, but to stay alert and listen for announcements as this could change. While waiting we decided we might as well scrub down the boat.

Gerry squirted the waterline with some “special formula” that was a concoction of ingredients recommended by a salty old sailor at one of our marina stops. However, because of the shoulder injury (remember an earlier post), Linda was the one that got to scrub it down. However, now the mustache is gone. About the time we started to scrub down the decks, whistles, bells and the loud speaker went off telling us we could lock through. Yippee …. Only 45 minute wait. We locked through with 4 other boats.

We proceeded 10 miles to the next lock, Saint Catherine, where we had about ½ hour wait before locking through. We then proceeded through Lac St. Louis in a very zig zag course to get to St. Anne de Bellevue. We also had to go through what was left of an old lock that was about a ¼ mile long and very narrow. Jet skis had just gone through at 35 knots and left large wakes bouncing against the sides of the lock and back again. Made for an interesting section of water.
We tied to the island side of the canal entrance – across from the city side that must have 20 waterfront restaurants. We had a spectacular docking experience. There was an invisible current pulling us toward the lock and it basically turned us around as we headed in for a port side tie up and we ended up neatly turning into a starboard side landing. It helped that there were 3 guys that took our lines , but it made Gerry look pretty good.

Our friends, Ralph and Anne had sort of reserved a place for us on the city side right behind them, but after the landing we just described, we thought we would hold tight.

We walked down to the lock and crossed over to visit with them. We walked about 50 feet to a outside table and had a few beers while we decided what to do with the rest of the day. We went for a walk around town for a couple of hours and then back to their boat to sample their box wine and try some of the bread and cheese they had picked up in town and Ralph’s famous garlic humus. Mighty tasty stuff.

We picked up a pizza for dinner and headed back to the boat and crashed. The restaurants were just getting full of customers and the canal was full of boats rafted up two deep when we got back. Things were pretty rowdy, but when we laid down, neither of us remember hearing a thing all night. Long days on the water and multiple adult beverages tend to make you a little tired.