Side trip to Ottawa and Kingston

We left the history of Montreal yesterday, Thursday June 26 to head up the Ottawa River to Ottawa. To get from downtown Montreal to the entrance of the Ottawa River we needed to take the South Shore Canal which bypasses the Lachine Rapids. This canal has two large commercial locks and commertial traffic has first use. As luck would have it, it took us 6 hours to get through those two locks. As we exited St. Catherine Lock we had to make the decision to anchor short of our intended stop for the night or run in the dark. We made pretty good progress to the only alternate anchorage, and the threat of thunderstorms had expired so we elected to run in the dark to our intended anchorage. Things went very well, the bouys were right where our GPS chartplotter said they were and our radar superimposed on the chartplotter confirmed they were there. Made the run without turning on the spotlight.

Today we ran 59 miles, traversing two locks, the second with a 65' lift, to Montebello.

Tomorrow we will have breakfast at the largest log cabin in the world, Le Chateau Montebello.

And what a fine breakfast it was. We left the marina shortly after noon, ran all afternoon in the rain, and arrived at the lower wall of the Ottawa 8 lock ladder at 5:00 PM. A lock load of boats had left 15 minutes before we arrived and the lock master informed us that there would not be time to complete the lock up of the boats already going up, turn the locks around, and lock us up before 7:30 PM, when the locks close for the day. So, we were 

in the first lock load Sunday morning.

In preperation for Canada Day on Tuesday, July 1, there were already at least 40 boats tied to the upper canal walls. Shortly after we got tied up, OUR VILLA arrived, "Loopers" from Wisconsin. The crew from MYSTIC BOND, Canadian "Loopers" who are living near Ottawa, 

joined us and hosted us for the rest of the day showing us around Ottawa. We spent Monday doing more sight seeing of the parliment building and watching the changing of the guard. Then some shopping to stock up on some fresh fruits and vegtables at the farmers market. Today, Tuesday July 1, Canada Day, we left Ottawa ahead of the hords of boats that would be leaving Wednesday morning and went 40 miles down the historic Rideau Canal to lock 17 at Burnitts Rapids.

It is now Wednesday, and we have moved another 20 miles south today, going through 12 locks, and are tied up to the canal wall in Smiths Falls. This is essentially the mid point of the Rideau Canal distance wise. The locks are small, all hand operated, many with a one lane bridge crossing them that is swung open by hand to let us through. We still have 7 more locks and 27 more miles to get to the high point at 407.5' above sea level before we start back down to Kingston and the St. Lawrence River. As we started down, the senery got more interesting. As we entered and left many of the locks we were running in narrow channels with about 7' of water depth. OUR VILLE was still traveling with us and followed us out of a lock on one of the narrow channels.

We frequently spent our nights tied up to a dock or wall at one of the locks. Here we are tied up to a dock at the Davis Lock.

We arrived in Kingston on Sunday afternoon, July 6. My original schedule developed back in March had us in Kingston on July 6, wala!