Our last two locks before Montreal were created for sea going ships up to 800′. We arrived 30 minutes before the posted time for us to pass through the first lock and as advertised on the website found no one to checkin with or confirm timing….. Meanwhile, the electronic sign was telling us the next passage would be at 5:30pm. 7 hours later…. We settled in knowing we were at their mercy and secured at the floating dock with major wind and current directly on our bow. Around noon the loudspeaker told us to get ready…. it was a bit like Big Brother speaking to us. But dutifully we started all systems and when the light turned green we proceeded into this huge lock all by ourselves. Midway through we were greeted by two lock operators who handed us 70 ft lines for the trip down the 60 ft lock.
The same scenario developed for the next lock, St. Lamberts, which is the time lapse above. This lock was a piece of cake at only 16 ft. To our surprise the same two lock operators handed us the lines though we were now 1 hour away from the first lock (by boat not sure how long by car and they did mention they had time for lunch….).
It’s a bit hard to see in this video, but once we got out into the current of the St. Lawrence and turned upbound (river speak for up river), we knew we would encounter a stiff current. Among a few other locations, this was the reason we decided to get a twin engine boat with plenty of horsepower. The current has been known to be 10 knots and was recently reported as 6 knots. Typically we go 8 knot which means you are only making 2 knots of progress. We recorded 5.2 knot current. Given that and a 25 mph gusting wind in our face (seems that is always the case….), we were pleased with our choice and Aisling was more than up to the challenge. The odd thing is as soon as you get close to the yacht club, the current drops to zero requiring the boat to go from flat out to idle speed in a heartbeat.
Aisling goes Looping 