June 12, St-Anne-de-Bellevue

Jeff and Pat Weber left us and head north this morning toward Northport, the Canadian gateway to the far north. We leave Montreal and head toward Ottawa.

We are in the downstream current here just "ripping" along.

We went downstream in Montreal for the first two miles and found we had 6 knots of current pushing us along (our speed 13 knots instead of 7 knots at 950 rpm's). Today we had the river to ourselves and could look around, unlike the day of our arrival when we were against the current and there was a lot of boat traffic and the wind was howling.

Here we turn toward Ottawa and the river shows partly clear and partly dirty as two sources come together.

We went through two Canadian locks, the Saint Lambert (fifteen minute wait) and then the Saint Catherine where we arrived as there was a big freighter coming out, another big freighter waiting to go in and a third freighter was waiting on the up side of the lock to come down.

Large freighters; one leaving and one entering St Catherine Lock. A nautical traffic jam.

The lock personnel would not put us in with a large freighter, so we waited about 2 and 1/2 hours for our turn to go through. Nice day so we had lunch and read a book. There were two other Canadian pleasure boats waiting with us. Not unpleasant, just took a while.

Spent the evening on the lock wall in St-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, again and enjoyed our second evening here. There is a festival here this weekend (sidewalk sale and children's games) so there are more boats here on the wall and the restaurants are almost all full. Very pretty evening to be out and about.