In the morning, Captain Mark and Sidekick Sue cast off from the wall at Saint Annes. The wall had no cleats, so the prior day, they had just wrapped their lines around a railing and cleated them back to the boat. This made casting off extremely easy because Sidekick Sue never had to leave the boat. She just uncleated the line from the boat’s cleat and pulled it back around the railing. Leaving was a lot more graceful than the landing had been when they scraped a little bit against the wall. Ooops! This is why one learns on an old boat.
The morning ride was uneventful except for crossing the cables of a few cable ferries. The Explorers motored about 30 miles to the Carillon lock, much of it in the rain. They remembered the that captain that had rafted with them in the commercial docks (the owner of Boat #2 from the locking disaster) had said the door of this lock was incredibly tall, and reminiscent of the door used to contain King Kong in the movie. The Explorers started discussing other tidbits of advice and information Boat #2’s captain had shared and recalled that he said he had been stuck in Montreal for 5 days waiting to get through the second commercial lock. He had initially tried to pass through on Monday, but it was a Canadian Holiday and he was told to come back on Tuesday. When he came back on Tuesday, he was told the lock would not be opening because a commercial vessel had run aground and was blocking the lock. He waited in Old Montreal, checking the status of the lock until Friday, when he was told that it was finally resolved and he could pass through Saturday morning (where we met him). Two things suddenly dawned upon the Explorers. First, they were extremely lucky that they showed up on Saturday, and not earlier. Second, the Explorers original start date for the trip had been delayed three days in Massena when dropping off a vehicle. Had they left on time, they would have spent that extra three days sitting in Montreal as well, waiting for the lock to open, so their initial delay didn’t really cost them any time…. in fact, it saved them from a few days at anchor or the expense of a marina in Montreal.
As the Explorers approached the Carillon lock, they had to agree that the door was massive. Unlike most of the lock doors they had seen that swing open, this door opened like a guillotine. It was quite a feat of engineering. As they waited for the door to open (it was only scheduled to open 3 times a day), there was a dock that should have easily accommodated three vessels. Unfortunately, 2 rather large boats where already on the dock and had not done much to conserve space, leaving the Explorers with only about a half a boat space. Captain Mark hovered for a bit, and just as he was considering pulling up to a nearby cement wall, the owners of the two boats started manually walking their boats forward to make room, leaving enough space for the Explorers to dock carefully with their tail end sticking out a tiny bit. Because they had nowhere to cleat behind the boat, they managed to rig up a few spring lines to keep the boat from drifting into the boat in front of it. Finally, the huge door opened. The first boat moved into the lock and the second was casting off its lines. Sidekick Sue took this cue to untie her lines. Just as she threw her last line onto the Wayward Explorer and was ready to step aboard, she heard someone yelling for help. The woman in the boat ahead of them had gotten a line caught between the deck planks but she had already boarded the boat and couldn’t get back to the dock. Captain Mark told Sidekick Sue to go ahead and help her and that he would just maneuver up the dock to pick her up further up the dock. Sidekick Sue managed to free the line, toss it to the screaming woman, and climb back aboard the Wayward Explorer as Captain Mark promised. It was a happy ending, and they were heroes of what could have been an ugly situation. Phew!
Inside the lock, there was a floating dock lift (their favorite) and they just had to tie up and relax. There was a docktender available to help the boat in front of them, the owners were still a little flustered. Once through the lock, they docked on a wall on the other side and went ashore to do some walking. They walked into the closest town, which seemed to consist of a hot dog/poutine stand and a smattering of houses. Then they found a trail to help them satisfy Sidekick Sue’s Fitbit goal for the day. They returned to the boat and cast off for another 20 miles or so, the weather had gotten much nicer. They anchored for the night in a calm “finger” off the Ottawa River and had a good night’s sleep.
