St. Lampert & St. Catherine Locks - Canal de la River Sud

Montreal marks the downriver end of the St. Lawrence Seaway, completed in 1959.  Large ocean going ships pass through here on their way between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.  There are two locks and a narrow 14 mile canal around Montreal that pleasure boats must share with the ships.  There are more large ship locks further up the St. Lawrence, but we won't have to pass through them, at least on this cruise.

We left the Montreal yacht Club and headed downstream at a rapid clip.  (Upstream we went 10 knots through the water against a huge current that put us at 5 knots speed over ground.)  Downstream at 1600rpm (5 knots over water) we were going 14 knots speed over ground.  After a mile we turned to starboard and headed back upstream toward the lock where we joined 10 other boats.  At this lock, you have to dock your boat, get off and climb some stairs and call the lockmaster on a pay phone and pay $30 by credit card for the lock through.  However the boats that were waiting refused to leave the dock until the lock opened.  That left us little time to pay, but we made it.  Later we found it easier to pay by cash while in the lock.  In the Seaway Locks, the boats were rafted to one another 3 across.  Since our boat was larger, they put us on the wall and rafted only Daybreak to Adagio. 

Kenny and Jan rafted in the lock

 

others rafted in lock

Once out of the lock, the fast boats took off like rockets for the next lock several miles away.  When we arrived later, they were still waiting for the lock to open.   And finally a sailboat showed up, he was last out of the St. Lampert lock.  We all waited almost another hour—the lock was open with no traffic, but they wouldn’t let us in.  We think the lock staff was on lunch break.

After leaving the second lock, we traversed a large lake in a zigzag fashion to avoid shallow water.  It was very windy and we dodged sailboats and sail kites. 

 We pulled into St. Anne-de-Bellevue and looked for a spot on the lock wall, which was packed with weekend boaters.  We found a spot on the “town” side and Daybreak went to the opposite wall.  When some of the day boaters left, Jeanne and Kenny joined us on the “town” side.