Aug 5, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield

We moved about 30 miles southwest on the St Lawrence Seaway through two more big locks today (#3 the Lower Beauharnois Lock which raises us 42 feet and #4 the Upper Beauharnois Lock which raises us another 42 feet) and had to wait for the large boats to go through ahead of us.

As we arrive to enter the Lower Beauharnois Lock we see the stern of a large boat entering the lock. That means we wait over an hour for it to lock up and then for whatever is up there to lock down. The wait turned out to be much longer than one hour.

Big empty lock. We will be raised 42 feet.
We are asked to enter first so other boats can raft up to us for the lock through.

We move all the way forward as instructed. Three smaller boats are rafted to us. There are nine power boats going through together.

We ended up waiting over 3 hours for the Lower Beauharnois Lock with 8 other boats and then all went right into the Upper Beauharnois Lock without any further wait. Following the locks there were two large automobile bridges over the St Lawrence seaway that only had 14 feet of clearance in the lowered position. So all the boats had to wait again for the slowest boat among us (a sailboat going 6 knots) to reach the bridge so we would all go through together. Seemed like a long day on the water.

Approaching Marina Valleyfield at
Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec.
Good power; no internet.

We finished the day at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and walked into town for dinner. We remembered being here in 2008 on our way down the St Lawrence Seaway toward Montreal.

Beautiful Church in town.

Salaberry-de-Valleyfield is a very French-Canadian town where all the signs are only in French. The people are friendly and tried to speak to us in English but we could tell that they did not do this very often. The town seems prosperous and very clean. Summer is the time when everyone is walking around in the evening enjoying the good weather. Our french restaurant food was delicious.