And We are off!

This is a long “ Cathchup” post. It is basically our journey getting us to Quinte West where we will start through the Trent. The Trent Severn is what stopped us last year….

May 28th, We left Rouses Point in the morning and made it to Chambly. We spent one night there. The winds were insane .. But, we walked around town and had a quiet evening .

May 29th- A quick stopover in St Ours . It’s a beautiful park system on a lock that has some mosquitoes that are some pretty good competition for Colchester on our worst day. But it was lovely.

May 30th- We traversed to Montreal where we spent two nights. We had two great dinners in old Montreal at Sea Salt ( which was new for us) and then La Catrina, where ate last year.

And those headsets—-After a great deal of research, I found that plantronics Headsets work rather well in inclement weather so off to Best Buy and purchase a couple. They are working good enough- as long as we have cell service.

June 1-n We left Montreal and headed down the St Lawrence Seaway. The St Lawrence has 7 locks from Montreal to the 1000 islands. The Seaway traverses between American and Canadian waters as you go down it so 5 of them are operated by Canada and 2 are operated by the US. 4 of the Canadian locks are in the Montreal area and are a challenge to get through at best.

Each lock has one AM time and on PM time for locking pleasure craft. You sign up the night before indicating whether you want am or pm and at 7:30 am on the day of lockage, your schedule is posted.

A couple of issues with This. The biggest one being that if you sign up for an am lockage- your time can be anywhere from 9:00 am - 1:30. But you have to be at the locks an hour early. Sooooo you have no choice but to prepare for the 9:00 am lockage as you only have 30 minutes from 7:30- 8:00 to get from your marina to the lock….

The other is that they just aren’t timely anyways.

The two locks directly in Montreal operate together. So, the two locks- St Lambert and Catherine time things together and you will lock through both of them. We did this Last year and were famIliar with the process.

Next, we moved to Southern Montreal and the Beauharnois Locks. We did not do these last year as we broke off into the Ottawa River. There are two locks that are timed together, but they are remote controlled from Lambert and very unreliable.

We had the afternoon lockage which we were very grateful when we made it- except after preparing the locks - they never let us in and just “closed”. We weren't happy to say the least. The locals tell us that is is common.

Speaking of locals, we ended out spending the night at a very local marina in

Melocheville, where we were told, it was a common occurrence for those locks. The manager used to live, work and ski in the Laurentian's. In the Mount Tromblandt area. It was fun talking to him. Like Mike, he hung up his skis for boating….

June 2- We left first thing on to try the locks again. 4 hours later, we locked through.

From there we went to Craig Quey and spent 3 nights there due to high winds. There was absolutely nothing around except a lot of geese and goose poop. We did meet some very nice people from Montreal and shared some Docktails With a menagerie of people and animals.

June 5th-, we left Craig Quay and went through 2 more locks that were actually ran by the Americans as we were in American water for those two. Everything worked as would expected.

We went to Chrysler Park for one night and again, lots of geese and poop.

We did see a river cruise boat and meet some people that were on a 9 day trip cruising the rivers. They were having a blast.

June 6th-we got moving early to hit the last lock on the St Lawrence. Another Canadian lock where you sign up the night before and hurry up and wait. Our lock time ended out being at noon….Friendly lock tenders though and the locked dropped an entire foot. We didnt’ even tie up … Easy peasy.

Except the smoke- it finally found us. We woke up to an orange haze and I couldnt breathe without coughing. Masked up the best we could and trudged along in a haze for the day.

We stopped in Gananoque for the night which is right outside of Kingston. Docks were long and windy.. almost 1/2 mile to get from our boat to the marina. But a nice enough marina.

The next morning, I took the dogs for a walk and saw a momma swan with her babies. It was sooo cute and peaceful- until the make swan started relentlessly attacking her. I couldn't watch And headed back to the boat where I researched that swans can be quite aggressive… who knew 😳

June 7th- we headed to Trenton, - in the smoke- another hazy, smoky day. The dogs and I hung out downstairs and the captain masked up for his upstairs Drive.

Trenton is really the start of the journey for us. Last year we did the Chambly, the Ottawa, the Rideau, kingston and Belleville- last stop before Trenton. Then, the lock on the Trent Severn failed and we headed back to VT via the Oswego and Erie Erie.

Thus far, we have done most of this trip already. We were hoping to spend more time in the thousand islands, which we hadn’t seen. But with the smoke, kept on going.

June 7th-8th- we stayed in Quinte West (Trenton) at a lovely marina. We met several people on the same journey- only they came from the Erie and Oswego and stuck at the broken bridge on the Oswego.

It was a great time to provision and just get ready for where our trip really begins. The Trent Severn Waterway.