July 15, Saturday, St. Anne de Bellevue

We set out under cloudy weather from our anchorage after drying off the fly bridge seats from yesterday’s storm. As we approached Montreal we saw that it is significant seaport with contain ships and cargo containers piled high on the banks. We also passed a few of those ships.

We approach Montreal still under clouds, and that is the closest we got to it the city since we had plans to meet up with Dirk’s cousin Herb and wife Linda in St.Anne d Bellevue at the end of the day’s travels. As I we passed an area south of Montreal we thought of our son Wesley – it looks like a huge amusement park with a number of large roller coasters – just up his alley.

Cruising around Montreal requires traveling in large canal to bypass the rapids part of the St. Lawrence with those container ships which included going through the first  two very large and high locks on the Seaway; St. Lambert and St. Catherine, which raised up the boat 15 feet and then 30 feet! Each of the Seaway locks are 750’+ long and 80′ wide and still the cargo ships barely fit in them. They ask pleasure crafts to raft up together in the locks, and to wait until a break in commercial traffic. We waited about 1 1/2 hours for the first lock, but only 20 minutes for the second. And then it takes about 20-30 minutes to get tied up, for the water to rise and to exit these big locks.  One photo shows approaching the second lock with our waiting area on the left and the lock doors to the right.

The sun came out during the early afternoon and the canal and later the lake were beautiful.

We zigged and zagged across the lake due to shallow areas that cause the invisible channel to be well marked with buoys, and finally arrived only to find that the docks we had planned to tie up to were already full. Oh yea – a sunny Saturday in what turned out to be a tourist town. Dirk found a spot to anchor across the small bay and we took the dinghy and tied up to a wall on the town’s boardwalk. We were concerned that Herb and Linda would be looking for us, but since they had a challenge finding parking, we were all an hour late and it worked out.  We had a lovely evening catching up while we dined the outside deck, and were the last customers in the restaurant.