Leg #9 — 7/5/14 to 7/20/14 Chambly, Quebec, Ca to Belleville, Ontario, Ca

Up at 4:00, flight at 5:55, Dayton/Chicago/Montreal at 11:15am. A lengthy Cus­toms check thru and then a taxi to Marina de Cham­bly.  I was dropped at the gro­cery to pick up a few items and walked back to the marina.  Ken worked on get­ting the boat ready to leave.  We took off from Cham­bly at 2:02pm head­ing toward the St. Ours Lock which has its last lock-through at 5:30.

View up the St. Riche­lieu River

We made it there by 5:00 and was through and tied up to the lock wall by 5:30.  Whew!  Good thing because the wind picked up and it started rain­ing.  St. Ours is a beau­ti­ful area, very rural and quiet.  We ate lunch and din­ner on board.  We walked around the grounds but didn’t find any pos­si­ble way to find trouble.
Early the next morn­ing we took off up the Riche­lieu River head­ing to the St. Lawrence and Mon­treal.  We stopped for fuel at Marina Bel­lerive at 8:00am.  We came out of the river at 10:15am.  The 58 mile trip should get us into Mon­treal around 3:00pm.  We ran against the cur­rent up the river (seems like down) which keeps us around 10 mph. We know the winds from Hur­ri­cane Arthur are head­ing this way and we want to get tied down before it picks up later.
The trip up the St. Lawrence, for the most part, was res­i­den­tial and very beau­ti­ful.  What I noticed on this stretch was all of the church steeples.  Each time you saw a steeple down the way, it was a new lit­tle town.  Tow­er­ing over the sur­round­ing area, each one made a state­ment.

Clock tower in Montreal

We arrived into Marina d’Escale, Old Port, in Old Mon­treal.  We are right in the heart of the his­toric area with the Bastille, Hotel de’Ville and many shops and restau­rants.  After tying up and an alert from the office staff we took off to Place d’Arts to catch the last day of the Jazz Fes­ti­val.  We were able to catch a cou­ple of the groups and get some din­ner.  We ate our first pou­tine, French fries with cheese curds and gravy.  Our order had lob­ster added.  Both of us kept a song from Wagon, an Aus­tralian group, called “Willie Nel­son” in our heads for the next few days.  I need to see if I can find it any­where to down­load.  Back to the boat where we had new boat neigh­bors from Ver­mont.  The cap­tain deliv­ers boats part-time and they had just picked up their own new boat in Alexan­dria Bay and were tak­ing it home….back the way we came. We ended up shar­ing a lot of information—them about the area, us about the Loop.
The next day was rainy but we still needed to explore.  I took my early walk and found Vic­to­ria Park and the tran­sit sta­tions.  I also met up with the throngs of peo­ple com­ing to work.  Lots by sub­way and many by bicy­cles.  I also do recon for any break­fast.  Later, Ken and I walked back and had break­fast.  I tried Rat­ta­toulle, a sort of veg­etable chut­ney, to eat with my eggs.  We walked a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of Old Mon­treal and then back to the boat.  Around noon, we walked over to find the Hop On, Hop Off bus.  We got on that and round for a cou­ple hours around the city to areas too far to walk.  This time we didn’t have a map so I really couldn’t get my bear­ings very well.  There are a lot of dif­fer­ent sec­tions with much inter­est­ing his­tory.  We got off at the Notre-Dame Basil­lica and had lunch at Dunn’s which was rec­om­mended for their smoked meat.  It looks like corned beef but less fatty and not as strong.

Notre Dame Basil­ica Montreal

Mon­treal City Hall

Notre Dame Basil­ica Montreal

Old Montreal

We took off very early the next morn­ing head­ing for the St. Lam­bert Lock.  One of the two large com­mer­cial locks on the St. Lawrence Seaway. 

The crew of Treacy O’leary

We were aided in tying up by Bren­don and Car­olyn, the first Irish Cana­di­ans that we’ve met, on Treacy O’Leary. They ran ahead of us for the rest of the day and helped where ever they could.  We had 7 boats going through at a time, 2 sets of 3 side by side and one in the rear.The  two locks turned out to be eas­ier than we were expect­ing and the lock mas­ters were pleas­ant and help­ful.  They are much larger and dif­fer­ent than the locks we’ve done so far.  Larger boats go in first and the oth­ers raft off of them.  The staff throws down two lines, one bow and one stern for the boat on the wall (us) to hold your boat close to the wall as they let the either in or out to take you up or down.

At the inter­sec­tion of the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence, we turned, well zigzag’d north.  Our first stop was St. Anne de Belle­vue.  We went went through the lock to be on the other side so that we could leave early in the morn­ing.  We walked back under the bridge and rounded up Bren­don and Car­olyn to go have a “pint” or two.  They came back to check out Sev­enth Sun.  They would some­day like to get a big­ger boat and travel fur­ther.  After a rest, we headed out to din­ner in one of the many restau­rants lin­ing the canal.  We hap­pened to pick the restau­rant the fur­thest from the boat so that when it started rain­ing and howl­ing we would have the fur­thest to walk.  Amaz­ingly, right when we decided we would go ahead and head back in the mon­soon, it stopped rain­ing. The wind con­tin­ued all night which gives the boat a lot of creeky sounds dur­ing the night.

The Car­il­lon Lock

Off the next morn­ing for the Car­o­line Lock.  It used to be the largest drop/increase, about 65 ft., in the world until a larger lock went in the Tenn-Topp Water­way and another one in China.  Great lock mas­ter with local information.

Hotel Fair­mont Montebello

We headed out to the Fair­mont Hotel Chateau Mon­te­bello Marina.  A beau­ti­ful and large old log hotel with the most beau­ti­ful grounds and view of the river.  Later in the evening, we walked into town to explore and have dinner.

The Rdeau River Falls into the Ottawa River

We took off early for the run to Ottawa.  We knew today would be a longer day because of the flight of 8 locks right before you get into down­town Ottawa.  After see­ing some beau­ti­ful sights on the river’s edge, like the US Ambassador’s Res­i­dence, we tied up on the blue line and waited to lock through.

Wait­ing on the blue line to go up the Ottawa Flight Locks

The lock staff came down and went through the instruc­tions for this set of locks.  We trav­eled through with two cruis­ers. This process took about 1.5 hours with only one mess-up by me.  Don’t know how it hap­pened but I let the stern swing out too far.  It was on the last lock and by then we had a large crowd to watch the event.

Ken with way too much time on his hands dur­ing the lock throughs

Mini Potato Latkes with bacon and cheese
and Mini Shep­ards Pie…Ken had Corned Beef
and Cabbage…then add local beers !

Out of the locks, we tied up to the canal wall right in the heart of Ottawa.  We headed out to explore, ate some lunch and picked up the tourist info.  We did as much tour­ing in the time allowed, plus eat­ing & drink­ing in as many places as we could man­age.  We also were able to watch the Chang­ing of the Guard at the beaut­ful Par­lia­ment Build­ing.  The light spec­ta­cle at the Par­lia­ment build­ing was a spe­cial event to watch.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0W7Kntp_00

We did the hop on/off bus and saw the var­i­ous embassies and ambas­sadors’ res­i­dences.  We walked by the US Embassy and many of the out­door sculp­tures through­out the city.  Ottawa, again, is such a mix of old and new archi­tec­ture.  They have work going on at a lot of the gov­ern­ment build­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the 150^th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion in 2017.  The huge Byward Mar­ket Dis­trict with all of the ven­dors, small shops and amaz­ing amount of food attracted us for sev­eral meals.  We hit the 24 Hr. Metro on the way back to the boat the last night there with all the locals for a few provisions.

Leav­ing Ottawa via Rideau Canal

We headed off the next morn­ing UP the Rideau Canal.  Three boats who were also tied near us were head­ing out at 8:30am.  The info says that the bridge opens “on demand” after 9:00am so we weren’t leav­ing until 8:45.  We should have fol­lowed the group because when we got to the bridge they weren’t there and we waited while the bridge needed to be quickly repaired.  We hit the first lock before 10:00am and then pro­ceeded to go through 9 locks before we tied up at Bur­ritts Rapids Lock around 5:30pm.  Only 48 miles out of 125 and we’ve done only 16 out of the 49 locks.

The the last 25 miles from Longs Island Locks to the Bur­ritts Locks was the most con­gested area that we have seen.  All forms of water toys were on the river today.  Every house seemed to have a boat and dock plus canoes and kayaks.
Bur­ritts Rapids Lock is beau­ti­ful.  We have sev­eral boats tied near us…all French Cana­di­ans.  The men seem more flu­ent in Eng­lish and are all more talk­a­tive. We walked across the street for a bite to eat.  It seems like we are in the mid­dle of nowhere but we’re only 50 miles from down­town Ottawa. Noth­ing else is around except the lit­tle restau­rant at Lock 17.
We headed out as soon as the locks opened at 9:00am and were the first boat in.  Some new boats appeared early and there were two of us in the lock.  It was going to be a rainy day with some heavy storms pass­ing over.  We went through seven locks in the rain before stop­ping at Mer­rickville to stroll the town, eat lunch and check out the storm.  After a nice lunch and visit to a local gallery, it really started to pour.  It looked like it would pass soon so we decided to head out again and try to make it to Smith Falls for the night.  Another 6 locks and we were in the basin at Smith Falls.

One of was get­ting wet !

One of us had a roof over them

Herb and Mary from Gid­dyUp came in shortly after us and tied up behind us.  We vis­ited and snacked with them for an update on their trav­els and later walked around town.  Find­ing noth­ing open on a Sun­day night at 8:30pm, we headed back to the boat for left­overs.   We took another walk to find ice cream for Ken after dark.
We headed out to catch the early open­ing of a bridge and lock and were the 3^rd boat into the lock for the tran­sit.  We pro­ceeded to sev­eral, like seven, locks before being told that there was a prob­lem in the Jones Lock so we decided to stay on the down­side of the Davis Lock.  Oh, we started DOWN in the Locks.  Begin­ning in Ottawa, we had been going UP.  I need to check on how many feet we went up total.
We sat out­side and talked to the neigh­bor boaters spend­ing the night and going in the oppo­site direc­tion tomor­row.  I cooked din­ner on board tonight ! This was a very relax­ing and quiet evening in a very quiet and remote location……
Up very early but our house bat­ter­ies are not hold­ing enough charge to run the cof­fee pot with­out hydro hookup.  So instead of run­ning the gen­er­a­tor and wak­ing up the neigh­bors, we decided to take off to Jones Locks and go really, really slow to get their early to try to be in the first lock through. Off at 7 at 5 miles an hour with 5 miles to go gets us there around 8:00am.  Nowhere on the blue line to tie up so luck­ily PC had another dock.  It is now really rain­ing and thun­der­ing but we are next to the SCOW2 barge that picked up the rock out of the mid­dle of the lock and caused the backup of all the traf­fic.   We call them and there’s a weather delay.  Then they call us back when it’s time to get in the Lock and three of the boats that had been lock­ing through with us yes­ter­day get there just in time to go through with us and a house­boat.  This is another series of locks.
Then off to Brew­ers Locks where we tied up and waited.  We had a nice chat with other boaters at all of the locks.  Every­one is going a dif­fer­ent direc­tion on a dif­fer­ent time­line. We have been lock­ing through off and on with the same boats for a while now.

Infin­ity Pool Lock going down

After Brew­ers Locks, we are off to Kingston but we know we have to get a bridge lift at 6:00pm right before the Kingston Marina.  So again, we go really, really slow for about an hour to get there around the right time.  We drew up to the fixed bridge to see if the stated 17’ height was accu­rate but we were off at least 6” so we came back around to wait on the lift.
After the bridge, we tied up in Kingston despite some strong winds.  It always feels great to be tied up after a long day.  Off to walk around, pay for the slip and find some dinner.
Kingston is one of the old­est cities in Ontario and has many old build­ings made of lime­stone.  Lime­stone is local and was a required by ordi­nance when build­ing to pre­vent fires from destroy­ing the build­ings.  We took the hop on/off bus the next day and saw the major attrac­tions in the area….fort, prison, col­lege, hos­pi­tal, city courts….every one made from beau­ti­ful local lime­stone.  More walk­ing, gallery look­ing, eat­ing and drink­ing with a lit­tle music lis­ten­ing thrown in before back to the boat for the night.

We decided to head out tomor­row to check out the 1000 Islands and tour Boldt Cas­tle.  Since this involves step­ping foot on USA soil, we will check in with cus­toms on Heart Island and then have to check back in to Cana­dian Cus­toms later.
Our first goal was to see a lime­stone sculp­ture of Saint Lawrence which was on a cliff in the “pal­isades over look­ing the St. Lawrence River approx­i­mately 1 km east of the Inter­na­tional Bridge.  Right on target !
The sec­ond item was to see the small­est inter­na­tional bridge….voila !

Then the stop and tour of Boldt Cas­tle which was a works-in-progress but absolutely beau­ti­ful build­ing and grounds. The story is sad but with a very inter­est­ing history.
We left Heart Island after noon and headed to Cape Vin­cent to refuel and tie up for the night.  We stayed at Anchor Marine so that we could be ready for fuel at their 8:00am open­ing.  We headed off to find one of the reported local restau­rants and had a nice “fried” din­ner.  We walked around the small town before head­ing back to the boat.
The next morn­ing, I took my early walk, bought a few pas­tries and also checked with the US Cus­toms to see if we could check into Cana­dian Cus­toms across the water at Wolfe Island where the ferry was trav­el­ing back and forth from….and yes, we could !  That made life a lot easier.
Another beau­ti­ful day with calm water and we were off to Belleville, Ontario which is another good 60+ miles across and west and up into the Bay of Quinte.

Arrived then docked with a lit­tle help from the dock­hands.  Crates Marina in Belleville is brand new and almost fin­ished. The neigh­bor boaters are friendly and help­ful.  We walked to town later to check it out and were some­what dis­ap­pointed as the brochure had made it seem more vibrant. Come to find out Belleville has allowed a Metho­d­one Clinic to be placed here.  Tren­ton, a close neigh­bor town, refused and is fair­ing the econ­omy much bet­ter.  The peo­ple in down­town looked rough and weath­ered, not just boat­ing rough and weathered…so now I know the rea­son why.
We walked down toward the pier and ate din­ner at the Boat House and upon hear­ing that there was music down at the Pier, we headed fur­ther down.  Long walk, nice bar and music, long walk back to the marina.
The next morn­ing we were luck­ily reminded by neigh­bors that the farm­ers mar­ket was going on.  We are leav­ing tomor­row so won’t buy pro­duce but we are always in the “check it out” mode.  We tasted belly ash­ers, per­o­gies, but­ter tarts, and spring rolls.
Ken went to pick up the rental car for the drive home tomor­row.  We decided to drive over to Pic­ton for din­ner and also drove through the lit­tle town of Bloom­field with lots of shops and a notice­able line string­ing out from an ice cream shop.  We had din­ner at a nice restaurant,Portobella Bistro, and made the ice cream stop on the way back.
We left the next morn­ing for home via rental car.

Leg #8 — 6/5/14 to 6/15/14 — Albany, NY to Chambly, Quebec, Canada

We flew into Albany on June 4, rented a car and headed for the Albany Yacht Club Marina in Rens­se­laer across the river from Albany.
While Ken worked on some boat issues—the air con­di­tioner is flip­ping the breaker, I went to the gro­cery and hard­ware store.  We both always seem to miss look­ing at that list of things to buy and bring from home.  Ken wants rub­ber gloves that are fit­ted around the wrist.  I don’t find those at the gro­cery so instead I buy two pairs of house­hold rub­ber work gloves.  Then I go to the clos­est hard­ware store….of course, right across the street, where­upon I find great gloves for han­dling the lines through the locks.  I also buy two more pair, one for me and one for Ken when he loses the expen­sive pair.  I paint mine with pink nail pol­ish on the fin­gers so that I know which pair is mine.
We have not spent any time check­ing out Albany so we head down­town to see some of New York State Capi­tol sites.  “The Egg” is a huge arts and cul­ture space.  The state capi­tol build­ing is beau­ti­ful.  There are a lot of great build­ings down­town though the city looks like it is strug­gling.  We drove down Lark St. since I had read that it had a lot going on…..well, we didn’t see that part though you can see where they are try­ing.  We didn’t get out and walk and didn’t find a restau­rant that we wanted to go to.  We did find a lit­tle pub on State Street and stopped to have a late lunch/early din­ner.  Then back to the boat.  We went up to the club for Happy Hour and talked to a cou­ple of mem­bers.  We went down to talk to Bill and Amy on Mar­cat, a Looper out of Hert­ford, NC, who I had seen on the AGLCA Loca­tor App.  They are doing a sec­tion of the Loop over on the Erie Canals.  Back to the boat for me to relax and Ken to take the car back to the airport.

Uncle Sam — Sam Wilson

In the morn­ing, we head out around 7:30 and stop in Troy, NY around 8:30am.  Ok, this was a sur­prise to me.  Ken had known that he wanted to stop but it never came across my wave­length.  We stopped for break­fast !  It was good to get a glimpse of the city and we did find a nice break­fast spot.  Troy, NY is the home of Uncle Sam—Sam Wil­son.  Troy has a large statue of Sam and has also done the smaller depic­tion of Sam by var­i­ous artists located along the streets.  Back to the boat (after buy­ing large trash bags to cover the round fend­ers to keep the slime off as we tra­verse the locks).

On to the Troy Fed­eral  Lock.  Our first lock since the Oka­chobee Water­way in Florida!  This is the only lock run by the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment instead of the NY Canal Sys­tem.  All went very smooooothly.
When we hit Water­ford, NY, the deci­sion for every Looper is now.  We are head­ing North on the Canal while a great many Loop­ers turn west on the Erie Canal.  It’s a deci­sion based on time, boat height and which area you want to explore. 
On to Locks 1 through 6.  All went well, most quite quickly except Lock 6 where we had to wait a good hour for a barge to go in (and take up the whole lock), pick up some­thing and come back our way.
A storm was in the sky and we did not beat it in to Fort Edwards.  As usual, I am the one who ties up the boat in the very heavy rain.  This one should have been in a video because the wall was quite high so there are lad­ders to climb up the wall…but instead I just crawled up.  Great visual.  I accom­plished the nec­es­sary very quickly and back in the boat.  We are safe, sound and sit­ting still.  Hur­rah !  A long day and 7 locks.  Tomor­row we will have Locks 7 thru 12.  Din­ner was in a his­toric restau­rant a short walk away—not noteworthy.

That is the bot­tom of the bridge at the top of the page–the the top of the boat pictured.

After a morn­ing walk and, of course, break­fast at 2Momma’s, we headed out of Port Edward to Lock 7 at 8:00am.We had to wait on another barge to lock through before us and we came out of the Lock at 9:00am.  Now Locks 8 through 12 (there is no Lock 10) are “down” locks.  By 1:00pm, we are in White­hall for a brief visit.  We walked around Whitehall—not much to com­ment about.  We did take a pic­ture of the 1812 Ticon­deroga pieces of the old wooden boat. White­hall, NY is the birth­place of the U.S. Navy and the gate­way to the New York Canal Sys­tem.  Back on the boat and in to Lock 12.  Most of the locks have been sim­ple and fast.  When you have to wait for another Lock through, it prob­a­bly takes a half of an hour.  The bridge height on this canal is 17.5′ mean water depth–which to me means on aver­age.  Our boat is right at 16′ so the squeeze under a few of them brought us both to attention.The scenery between Locks 8 and 12 was beau­ti­ful.  After Lock 12, you really were see­ing the Adiron­dack Moun­tains but with spec­tac­u­lar marshes in the val­ley.  You might think you were in Geor­gia except for the moun­tains.  The chan­nel was very sim­i­lar to the Dis­mal Swamp in width and was serene.  We have only seen a cou­ple of plea­sure boats since we left Albany.  Three of them were head­ing south and one locked through with us in C12.
Yeah !  We ate on the boat after leav­ing C12.  The food now can’t all go to waste.  The scenery north is beau­ti­ful to spec­tac­u­lar.  When we reached the lower part of Lake Cham­plain the area opened up with moun­tains on each side.

Crown Point Lighthouse

This feels like the North­west cruis­ing we did on Sev­enth Sun II.  We ended the day at Van Slooten Marina which despite its’ glow­ing web­page, does not have all the ameni­ties known to man.  What it did have was a beau­ti­ful view to the Ver­mont side of the lake.  We had a bit of dif­fi­culty tying up to the short fin­gers in the wind and chop but finally man­aged with the help from the marina owner.
We trudged into town to look around and get a bite to eat, then ice cream, and back to the boat.  All of these lit­tle towns have Amtrack access and it appears that it would be a beau­ti­ful ride right next to the water.  We met a cou­ple of Cana­di­ans who had just bought their sail­boat and were return­ing to Que­bec  that evening.  They will come back and head to the Erie Canal, Oswego, TS and Geor­gian Bay when they come back in a cou­ple of weeks.
The next morn­ing, we left for West­port Marina, only 10 miles away around 7:30am.  We went slowly along the coast and into a few of the bays look­ing for eagle nests.  We spot­ted one who gave us some beau­ti­ful shots.
We need a new part for the air con­di­tioner and Ken arranged for them to order the part and put it in.  We arrived and refu­eled before Larry came aboard to look at sev­eral other small repair items.  We decided that since were going to come back here when the part arrived in a cou­ple of days that we would head to Ver­gennes, VT.
It was a long (8 miles at 5-6mph) and lazy wind­ing trip south­east on Otter Creek to the very charm­ing town of Ver­gennes, VT—Vermont’s old­est city.  The town dock is very small and the south end of it had room for us.  A group of peo­ple were work­ing on a wooden canal boat on the west end and their leader helped us dock.  The cur­rent runs a con­stant 1.5mph and the dock has large metal poles jut­ting out.  I later found out they don’t put the float­ing docks in until the first week of June and I should have called ahead.  I didn’t, so we dealt with what was there.  I was very grate­ful for the help as I could see those poles scrap­ing the side of the boat if things didn’t go well.  We tied up with­out inci­dent.  Ken spent some time on the bat­tery sit­u­a­tion.  On the way here, we had no 12V out­lets work­ing.  That means no recharg­ing phones or com­put­ers which con­sti­tutes a great deal of our being able to know where we are.  It’s not just a case of talk­ing to peo­ple or read­ing emails, we use the com­put­ers for nav­i­ga­tion besides our GPS Nav installed on the boat.  Both com­put­ers shut down because they were out of bat­tery.  The out­lets must have been off for sev­eral hours with­out our knowl­edge.  This is a big issue if we can’t get it fixed soon.
Ken spent some time read­ing and look­ing for the elec­tri­cal prob­lem and finally asked the boat behind us if they minded if we ran our gen­er­a­tor for a lit­tle while.  What­ever he did, the lights on the board for the out­lets lit up and we had juice to the out­lets.  I plugged every­thing in quickly to get all the bat­ter­ies charged.  Now we are good !
We have a beau­ti­ful view from the boat of the falls.  We walked around the park and up the hill to town at lunch at 3Squares.  I looked in a few shops and Ken went to the bak­ery for sweets and we met back at the boat for a very relaxed after­noon.  We took another walk through the park and up the stairs along the water­falls to inves­ti­gate the old his­toric pump house.  We had a very nice din­ner at the Black Sheep Bistro and then went to Anti­dote for a drink and a lit­tle music.  Since we’ve been get­ting up around 5:00am, only because the sun is up, it’s get­ting hard to stay lively very late.  We walked back to the boat and I headed to bed to read before crashing.
We left early the next morn­ing and headed to Burling­ton.  We got a slip at the Burling­ton Boat House Marina right at the bot­tom of Col­lege Street.

Front Row Seat at the Boathouse Marina in Burlington

Lit­tle bal­leri­nas enter­tained us on the dock

A mural of the par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory and suc­cess of Burlington.

Staff was avail­able and helped us dock—I’m almost get­ting used to this ser­vice.  We didn’t have this amenity while boat­ing in the NW and often times it causes a prob­lem in my rou­tine.  Since we started in Florida, it seems a very com­mon require­ment of most of the East coast boaters.  One of the big rea­sons that we bought this type of boat was the ease of get­ting on and off for con­stantly dock­ing in dif­fer­ent situations.
Burling­ton is a very nice city.  There are a lot of his­toric build­ings and it’s clean and vibrant.  Ethan Allen lived in this area so you see many ref­er­ences to him.  These two char­ac­ter­is­tics have been miss­ing in the towns we have been hit­ting since we left the lower sec­tion of the Hud­son.  We walked up to a diner for break­fast and walked Church St. where they have made a pedes­trian walk­way for four blocks. We took a free bus north up to the hos­pi­tal and stopped at Church street again on our way back to lis­ten to some music.  There was a music fes­ti­val going on so there were var­i­ous per­form­ers along the street.  I bought a CD of Sweet Remains and took it back to the boat to relax and lis­ten.  We walked to the Ice House for din­ner.  It was in the mid 80”s today, and remem­ber, we are wait­ing on a part for the air con­di­tioner.  It was time to think through how to get air into the boat with­out the bugs, which are very small gnats that can get through the screens, com­ing in.  We used the screens and read in the dark.  Luck­ily, we have screens that light up.   Hop­ing to switch our sleep­ing pat­tern, we stayed up a lit­tle later and didn’t get up until 6ish.  It gets light at 5:00am so it has been our wake-up time.  Between the lock slime and the bugs, the boat is filthy…mostly insect bod­ies.  Ken washed down the out­side that he can reach today while I sit and record our movements.
We’ve had a great stay in Burling­ton and would highly rec­om­mend this stop.  We changed our deci­sion to return to West­port  to have the AC part put in.  Instead, we are head­ing north and will either ship the part or drive down by car and pick it up.  The weather and our sched­ule have played a part in this direc­tion.  It does make it eas­ier since the lock sit­u­a­tion at Saint Jean sur Riche­lieu is restric­tive on the times that we can go through and time consuming.
We headed out on Lake Cham­plain around 6am head­ing to the Cana­dian Cus­toms stop just over the bor­der from Rouse’s Point.  Ken’s direc­tions  to me to try to get a 6 month cruis­ing per­mit didn’t sit well with the offi­cers.  They wanted a def­i­nite time that the boat would be out of Canada and my eva­sive hand move­ments didn’t make them com­fort­able.  I finally was able to explain that we would like to cruise as long as the weather per­mit­ted so they gave us until Nov. 1, 2014.
We fol­lowed a trawler north on the Riche­lieu River into St. Jean and tied up on the east wall.  The trawler, Phase II with tied in front of us.  They were Cana­di­ans bring­ing a boat that they bought in Florida back to their home near Ottawa.  They wanted to get through the locks that day so they sched­uled to go through at the 12:30 open­ing.  We went and watched the pro­ce­dure of 1 lift bridge, 1 swing bridge and then the very small lock.  There is a suc­ces­sion of 9 locks and they have a pro­ce­dure for each boat to go through.
St. Jeans is a nice town with plenty of restau­rants and his­tor­i­cal build­ings.  I took a nice walk in the morn­ing and was able to take in a lot more of the area.  Like a lot of towns these days, there are too many empty build­ings, but the town felt fairly clean and safe.  We met another Looper on Le Hooker from Florida.  They will be lock­ing through in the 12:30pm two­some.  Six boats were wait­ing to go through the Locks.  Four will go today and two will have to wait until 9:30am tomor­row morning.

In the morn­ing, we are told to lis­ten to the radio for instruc­tions at 8:30am from the lock and bridge ten­ders.  The radio didn’t buzz until after 9:00 and we didn’t get out of Lock 9 until 9:40.  We were the first boat in and we will go through all 9 locks to arrive at Cham­bly around 1:00.  These locks have room for us and a 40 ft. sail­boat.  In each lock we fol­low the same pro­ce­dure and the sail­boat fol­lows us closely the entire 12 miles.  The lock ten­ders were very nice and help­ful with their instructions.

Other boats lock­ing through the Cham­bly step locks.

We arrived at Lake Cham­bly with the Cham­bly Marina just a few yards away.  We were tied up within min­utes.  Of course, we took a walk and found a big, late lunch before Ken called a cab to go pick up a car.

We spent the evening qui­etly hang­ing around the boat.  It was rainy and chilly so it was nice to cud­dle down in the boat.  We have inter­net !!!  It is so dis­gust­ing how addicted we are to hav­ing access to communication.

Aus­able Chasm

We took the car down to pick up the AC pump in West­port.  The drive south was very inter­est­ing and pic­turesque. We stopped to take photo’s of Aus­able Chasm an absolutely beau­ti­ful set of falls.  We looped around Crown Point and crossed over to Ver­mont to head back north.  The whole area is very rural and lush with green­ery.  We went through Ver­gennes on the way back and stopped for cof­fee and choco­late.  It was too hot to buy any the last time we were there—it would have melted on the walk back to the boat !  Another AGLCA boat was tied at the docks but it didn’t appear that any­one was on board so we ate and drank and headed back out to drive back to Chambly.

We are right next to Fort Cham­bly which sits where the RIche­lieu River con­nects to the Cham­bly Lake.  We have seen, and vis­ited, our share of inter­est­ing forts all along this entire jour­ney.  We passed Fort Ticon­deroga in New York and Fort Ile Aux Noix in Canada. Cham­bly is a very nice small town about 20 min­utes from Mon­treal.  The small towns are not as bi-lingual as the larger cities so our lack of French has made it more difficult.

We drove into Mon­treal on our last free day to check out the two mari­nas down­town.  It was a dreary, rainy day but we accom­plished our tasks.  We suf­fered some map dis­func­tions on our way home and it took us much longer than the 20 min­utes to get back.   A lot of plan­ning these legs is get­ting back and forth, fig­ur­ing out the repro­vi­sion­ing (with or with­out a car), and when we can head out.  In this case, we have a lock with lim­ited open­ings on up the Riche­lieu River to con­sider on our way to Montreal.