Finally to Montreal!

 Saturday, July 29 -- Bainsville, Ontario to Montreal, Ontario -- 63 miles and four locks

We set the alarm for seven so we would get a good start to make the 9:00 am opening of the Valleyfield Lift Bridge -- the first of the two seemingly unpredictable lift bridges at the start of the Beauharnois Canal. We had on-line reservations for the Beauharnois Locks at 11:00, the Cote Ste. Catherine Lock at 3:30 and the St. Lambert Lock at 5:00. Given our recent experience going through the Beauharnois Locks and lift bridges, we were confident that once we got through the bridges the locks would fall into place. Our marina for the night, the Port de Plaisance La Ronde, was just a couple miles past the St. Lambert Lock, so we figured we should be there around six if all the other pieces worked on schedule.

We left at 7:30 under grey skies and an east wind, so that we again had a heavy chop in Lac St. Francois -- only this time we were heading the other way versus yesterday. But this inauspicious start did not carry through the day, as all the locks and bridges opened close to schedule and we pulled into our dock at the La Ronde marina right at six. The sky stayed grey until about the time that we reached Montreal, when the sun finally came out (a sign?!) and we had light on-and-off rain throughout the day. We ended feeling like we had truly mastered the Quebec portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

We saw six freighters today -- four upbound and two at docks. The Blair McKeil headed upbound in Lac St. Francois was clearly fully loaded, pushing a big bow wave against the two mph current. 

The John D. Leitch -- upbound between the two Beauharnois Locks -- was loaded as far as the Seaway drafts allow (if you zoom in on the bow you'll see the water line reading is 27', which is consistent with what we saw on the other passing freighters).

The tired-looking Zelada Desgagnes was docked at a terminal in Cote Ste. Catherine, but we couldn't tell what she was loading or unloading. 

The general cargo ship Narie owned by Polsteam out of Szczecin, Poland (but registered in The Bahamas) passed us between the Ste. Catherine and St. Lambert Locks. One of the vessel tracking sites on the web said she was on her way to Cleveland. (The three previous ships -- and the next one -- are all operated by Canadian shipping lines.)

The CSL Laurentin was exiting the St. Lambert when we passed her.

When we were in Lac St. Louis between the Canal de Beauharnois and Canal de la Rive Sud, we saw a Canadian Coast Guard Buoy Tender and had a nice view of the Montreal skyline roughly five miles away. Unfortunately, we had no view of the city as we worked our way closer on the Canal de la Rive Sud -- even though we ended up being just a mile across the river -- because of the trees lining the banks. The distant view shows why the city is named Mount Royal. There are no other hills (mountains?) like it anywhere else in sight. 

After getting settled in at the marina, we took an Uber over to the old section of Longueuil (pronounced "long--ee") to find a place for dinner. One of the dockhands recommended that we go to the pedestrian area on Rue St. Charles and that was good advice. It wasn't too crowded and we found a nice hip Italian place for dinner. 

We were originally planning on staying at a nice hotel in old Montreal and having a day and a half to do some tourist stuff in the city, but Canadian Customs intervened (due to our mistake, of course) and we had an evening in old Longueuil instead. But that was fine. The key was getting to Montreal on Saturday, because on Sunday we had a flight back to Naples to spend the coming week closing on our new house (on Monday) and starting the process of moving in (Tuesday thru Thursday). We'll fly back to Montreal on Friday and start cruising again on Saturday. So the blog is going to go silent for a few days. A bientot, nos amis!