Gananoque to Montréal

“Never leave port on a Friday!” (Sailor’s superstition or not…?)

Ever since we started sailing in 2016, we have been considering going on a year long sailing adventure. We usually spend all summer on the boat and we’ve done some longer sails up to the North Channel, around Lake Ontario and the thousand islands, so why not take it a little further. It made sense to see what lies East and South of us. So a couple of years ago we made the decision to get our boat ready and take it south to maybe the Bahamas, but to do it the long way, going out the St. Lawrence to Atlantic Canada and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Not only does it take a lot of planning, fixing, researching and of course purchasing to put all the little pieces into place to make it happen, but it’s also not so easy to leave all the family and friends behind. There is always a sacrifice but we were determined to go to see what lies just around the next river bend…

In order not to temp fate, we left Gananoque on Thursday, June 7 around 7:30pm. We would have left earlier but we had to wait for 2 more deliveries which were late and needed for the long trip. So the first night was just a blissful anchor in one of our favourite anchorages East of Huckleberry Island (really just 10min. from our home slip). It was a beautiful clear night, calm and with haunting loon calls – just what we needed after the hectic weeks of getting ready to go. No more thinking: “Did we turn off the water? What clothes will we really need for an entire year? Are we truly ready for this?…” Yes! All we need is on our floating home. There’s a beautiful feeling of relief when you finally toss off the lines and leave the harbour.

As I write this, we have been out for our first week and made it to Longueuil/QC on the south shore of Montreal. We have gotten through the 7 locks on the St. Lawrence and are now entering the part of the river where tides will start to affect us more and more as we make our way towards Quebec City and then out of the river into Atlantic Canada.

After our first night at anchor we headed to Brockville to one of our favourite anchorages right behind Skelton Island. Since it was still early June, it wasn’t too busy yet, but the Sea Fox tour boat putters by every so often and many locals use the channel between the islands and the main land. There’s easy access to the shore, if you ask nicely at the BYC just down the river. They have a dinghy dock up a little channel and let you tie up for short visits to the Metro nearby or the park. For us it was the perfect spot to have a day with our oldest son, his wife and the 2 grandkids, who are almost 7 and 3. Although the water was about 13C we spent the day hanging out on the boat, going for Dinghy rides – which Clayton loves, and going to the park. After a fun dinner it got quiet on the boat again. This was truly it.

The next day we motored to Iroquois and anchored behind Toussaint Island. We had one more delivery to receive. Our new headsail was being delivered as our sailmaker was moving heaven and earth to get it to us in time. One of his employees was driving past Iroquois on his way out East and sharing our locations we dinghied into Iroquois marina where he dropped the new sail right into our waiting dinghy. Happy days! A crisp new sail and it looks fabulous!

Our anchorage – although the chain ground over rocks during the night as the wind shifted to E, was convenient for getting to the waiting dock on the south west side of the Iroquois lock. We had reserved lockage online and were moored by 8am and hour before expected passage.

Iroquois Lock was one of the easiest as they usually let you float right through the lock without any lines. They do have a large waiting dock on the south west side for down bound pleasure craft.

Originally, we had intended to do only this lock and anchor somewhere in the Long Sault islands, a chain of 11 Islands just west of Cornwall which were created by flooding the Long Sault rapids during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. They are connected by the Long Sault parkway and have campgrounds and numerous anchorages. But after chatting with Europa’s crew we decided to follow them through the Eisenhower and Snell Locks as well. These were the only American Locks in the chain and worked a little differently. They had floating bollards in the lock that you would have to tie to. You don’t need to reserve at the two US locks, and you just pay cash in the lock, $60 US or CND for both locks. As we approached the lock is was already open for us and the green light started to show. We pulled into the lock and were told to tie up to bollard 6 which is right at the east end. After a second try we got our midship line around it and tied it back to the cleat. Once that was done they came to collect the money – which we paid in CN, of course, and then we went down. It was a realtively calm day and there was no issue keeping the boat from touching the wall. This was so much nicer and relaxing than anything in the Welland Canal. The Snell lock was much the same. Nonetheless it felt good to have the 2 big locks under our belt and head off to anchor just east of Pillon Island (north of Coquhoun Island) together with our new friends from Europa who came over for sundowners.

The next morning was cool and cloudy. We had anchored in a little bay and waited out the rain. When we stuck our heads out Europa was already 8 miles down the river. No matter, we knew we would find them at the public dock in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. All day, the wind was just teasing us and we only got to try out our new headsail once. Had we left a little earlier – there would have been more wind but it died as the day progressed. The St. Lawrence is wide here and looks almost like a lake with a buoyed channel to follow. It really surprised me how shallow the St. Lawrence is in so many areas and how many islands there are. At times it looked just like the Lake St. Claire north of the Detroit river. We were going by large areas that were only 1 or 2 Feet deep. Not at all what I expected, but that’s why I’m here, to see the unexpected.

We tried to follow our friends to the public day dock at the end of Baie Saint-Francois but our depth sounder wasn’t too happy with it, maybe it was weeds but we decided to just anchor a little bit further away from the dock and fountain area. We could easily dinghy over to the dock and have access to a metro close by as well as walk the quaint old canal with restaurants and shops. If your draft permits (ours is 5’7″) or you are braver than us (Vitae has a large wing-keel, so we hate to get it stuck), you can use the day dock all day to tie your boat too, but you will have to anchor to stay the night.

That night we made reservations for passage through the Beauharnois locks (they get locked as a pair) for the morning lockage. Our friends from Europa were doing the same but also wanted to get the last 2 locks, Côte Sainte-Catherine and Sainte Lambert done in the afternoon. This is totally possible, but means a long day. It seems the last 2 locks downstream are a bit slower. Both days we watched it, there the actually lockage time differed by as much as 2 hours from the scheduled time, mostly caused by freighters taking priority. I think Europa was on the water for almost 12 hours that day.

Taking the Beauharnois lock down-bound means paying on-line again and you can look up the expected lockage time for pleasure craft: https://seaway-greatlakes.com/lockage-schedule/schedule. AIS was a great advantage here as we could see freighters on the up-bound side approaching the locks on our chart plotter.

There are 2 lift bridges before you get to the lock the expected schedule for the bridges is online as well We had the morning lockage so were in front of the first bridge (Valleyfield Bridge) just before 9 am, for it’s first opening of the day. It opened right on time and then it takes roughly 45min. to get to the second bridge (St. Louis Bridge) which opened with a little 7 min. delay. At this point we were 3 boats travelling together. Hailing bridges we had no responses – maybe because we don’t really speak French? However with a bit of patience they always opened.

When we got to the Beauharnois lock we had just tied up when we were told to enter the lock. One power boat “Harmony” whom we recognized from a few days ago, had been very polite when passing us and giving us very little wake which is always appreciated. Each boat received their own sets of lines and down we went. The second lock was much the same.

Now we had to pass along the buoyed channel along the south shore of Lake St. Louis which then leads you directly into the South Canal. We said “See you Later” to our buddy boat and pulled into the Kahnawake marina, hoping to find some water to fill our tanks and some Diesel or possibly even a dock for the night. This was a bit of bust though. The docks were all fairly small and mostly for pontoon and fishing boats. Also they do not have any potable water at the marina. They did have Diesel and Gas, but we only really needed water so we just continued on. After Kahnawake there is a double CPR rail bridge. Since now we were only one boat we had to wait and hover in front of it for about 15 minutes before it finally opened for us. Now we were directly inline with the second last lock, Côte Sainte-Catherine, in fact, we could see Europa docked at the waiting dock. We hadn’t reserved and paid for lockage and didn’t really want to go that far. Instead we had one more option to anchor in a little basin on the south side just before the lock. It seemed strange to be anchored right there in the canal but checking our charts and Navionics it was definitely marked as an anchor spot – and there was even another sailboat deep in the bay. Making sure not to hook the power line on the bottom we spent a lovely night here and it was easy to get to the lock the next morning.

We knew our lockage time was not until 11:30 am so we moved our boat to the waiting dock by 9:00 and finally got to flaking our huge Genoa properly. We had tried to do it in the Iroquois anchorage on the boat, but it ended up being a dismal job that made the sail remain a large unruly bulk, too hard to store in our already over filled garage or quarter berth.
Time passed and other boater joined us at the waiting dock. We finally got to properly introduce ourselves to Stacey and Jim from “Harmony”, who had done the Great Loop. They let 2 other smaller motor boats raft to them at the waiting dock as it didn’t look like anything was happening at 11:30. We could see on our AIS that we would have to wait for an unbound freighter to go through. At 12:30 we were able to get into the lock and done by 1pm. The 2 smaller power boats rafted and both larger boats received their own lines. In fact, I think they are not quite as stingy with lines in these lock as in the Welland Canal. I saw more than 3 sets lying at the ready.

St. Lambert was the last lock of the day and the St. Lawrence. As we were approaching the sky was darkening and a thunderstorm was rolling in. The lock signals showed red and through the binoculars I could see the same three power boats docked at the waiting dock. Jim and Stacey were putting out fenders and graciously let us raft to them as the dock was full. We got to briefly visit them on their beautiful power yacht. The Lambert lock has a lift bridge on either end, so we were watching for the lights and trying to understand the French announcements on the garbled PA system and even the French speaking boaters from Montreal were looking stumped. Finally, the lights were flashing amber and the French yelling increased. We took that as a sign to get moving and the bridge went up. One up-bound pleasure craft emerged and then we finally got locked through.

Once through we decided to spend a night at a marina in Longueuil. We were a bit shocked to have to pay $4 a foot, but we wanted to fill up on Diesel and water finally, clean the boat a bit and provision in the old town of Longueuil. We did not find many sailboats here but the marina has a nice restaurant with a terrace and bar. There are trails and parks for walking/running/cycling and a footbridge over the busy highway that lead right into the old town with its quaint shops, restaurants and patios.

Below is the summary of Travel for this week. Click here if you want to see the track.

Date	Description	Distance	Time
June 8/23	Gananoque Marina to Huckleberry Island	2NM	1hour
June 9+10/23	Huckleberry Island to Brockville, East of Skelton Island	27.18NM	4:45h
June 11/23	Brockville to Iroquois, East of Toussaint Island	20.85NM	3:30h
June 12/23	Iroquois to East of Cornwall, anchorage north of Coquhoun Island (Iroquois Lock, Eisenhower and Snell Locks)	33.7NM	9hours
June 13/23	Cornwall to Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, anchorage Baie Saint-Francois east end	25.69NM	4:16h
June 14/23	Salaberry-de-Valleyfield to Côte Sainte-Catherine, anchorage in the basin west of the lock (Beauharnois canal, with 2 locks and 3 lift bridges)	38.83NM	7:44h
June 15/23	Côte Sainte-Catherine to Longueuil Marina (Côte Sainte-Catherine Lock, Victoria lift bridges, Sainte Lambert lock)	10.9NM	6:36h
8 days	Total	167.45NM	35:51h