THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2012
Goodbye, Ottawa. Beside the canal there were large wooden benches with decorative maple leaves on them.
We decided to get up and move to the blue line early. You know we don’t like to get anywhere
late. We went under the bridge and
pulled up behind an American boat called LUCK OF THE IRISH. HARBOR NITES (the boat in front of us by the wall) and a French boat with no
name pulled in after us. In this
case the blue line is in a tunnel so that means cool, cool shade. It was just the place to wait for the
lock opening.
Next to the tunnel is a covered walkway
with an opening in the roof. There
are several decorative grates in the floor to allow the rain to drain off of
the sidewalks. As we were waiting,
I heard bagpipe music. I went to
discover where it was coming from.
That’s when I found Dylan.
He was serenading the visitors near the locks.
We found out that since there were
four boats to go down that we would be first in the locks. If we had had to wait we would’ve been
there for at least two hours waiting for the boats to lock up.
We were glad to be going early in the
morning so there wouldn’t be very many people watching us lock down. At certain times of the day, there are
crowds that linger to watch the boats lock up and down. We were ready to go after they filled
the locks. Once you start you have
to go all the way down with no stops.
The lockmaster came around and talked to each boat captain to decide the
order we were going to enter the locks.
We were third because we were the third largest boat. The locks were going to be packed. We entered Lock 8, which is the first
of the eight Staircase Locks. From
Lock 8 down to Lock 1 is a drop of 79 feet. We took about 1 hour and 29 minutes to go through all 8
locks from the top to the bottom.
We cruised out into the Ottawa River
following HARBOR NITES until he pulled away from us.
By the river we saw trees with campers’
tents in front,
a postal truck,
houses,
and farms as usual. I’ve never seen a barn that shade of greenish blue before.
There was heavy ferry traffic today. We had to make sure we were careful not
to get in their way. We wouldn’t want to get hit by a ferry. Some of them were very big.
We passed by Le Chateau Montebello. It is a log hotel that was built in
1930 and enlarged over the years.
It is advertised as the largest log structure in the world.
Anchoring in the river proved to be
very difficult so we went to an anchorage near a small town called
Hawkesbury. Gary got the anchor to
bite the first time. It proved to
be a quiet, calm anchorage for the night.
We traveled 60 miles in almost 9
hours. The mileage total is now
1918 miles.
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