Buoyage of the damned

Day 19: Longueuil, QC

Somewhere in the St. Lawrence Seaway, a hairy lad keeps watch

It's been a busy time since the placid events of Kingston. We left for Brockville (anchored behind an island) and Cornwall (marina) in the St. Lawrence and anchored out for the first time on this journey. We got used to avoiding huge ships. They were numerous, but actually courteous compared to the wake-producing legions of powerboaters and jet skiers. Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec are stuffed with them.

When a ship goes by the anchorage at 0500h and you have the old camera set to "manual".

We entered the lock system at Iroquois, but just prior to that, we stopped at Iroquois Marina, a very isolated place down one of the previous iterations of canal, as is common on the Seaway, where ghostly pieces of former infrastructure abound. Making the turn into Iroquois Marina, we ran lightly aground. Alas, it was a taste of things to come.

Becky says there is a heron of some sort in this photo. I could hear a banjo.

We were pulled off by the staff easily enough, and one of those fine fellows, Matt, mentioned he had gone down to Nova Scotia to retrieve some sort of boat yard equipment. Turns out it was from Hubbards and the East River Ship Yard, o/o Bradison Boutellier. The fact that I should drop in to a marina that resembled something from "Deliverance" only  to meet a guy who knows a guy I know is one of the mysteries of sailing. Or, as is the case in a confined channel, mostly motoring.

Having reprovisioned in Iroquois, which, like so many small Ontario towns, seems to be devoid of people under 50, we transited our first lock. It was, as a lock, a doddle...there's only one foot difference at either end and I guess they only bothered to erase some minor rapids there naturally. However, the tone to come was set in which "hurry up and wait" became the standard. The process is straightforward: download an app to one's phone, call a number at 8 AM and book the next lock or two you think you can arrive at either in the morning or the evening. Then pay the $25.00/lock fee. You are then emailed a receipt for your reservation. You must make said reservation, and slots go quickly in this time of COVID. Boats cannot raft up and only 11 are allowed through either upstream (southwest to the Great Lakes) or downstrean (northeast to the sea). We watched the website like hawks, even as we soon discovered that the "A.M." and "P.M." pleasure craft lock-throughs were a touch fanciful, in that they were entirely subject to commercial traffic, of which there was a great deal, and could in fact happen at, say, 1630h and 1830h, meaning one could arrive at 1000h and basically piss up a rope either tied to a dock one was not permitted to leave, or circle endlessly in the approaches with 10 other vessels waiting for the lights to change.

Said traffic. While we were wary of ships, they were very steady and predictable and we had no issues with them.

Good thing I got the solar panels hooked up.

Another one on Lake Francis. Even at 12 knots, they didn't throw the wake a powerboat did.

Past the first lock, we stayed in a "canal marina" and managed to clip a sunken crib (a stone remnant of the previous canal). We did no damage to the rudder (it was a pretty minor tap), but we mnst have turned or otherwise unseated the nut securing the pin to the plate and the hydraulic ram arm. This became obvious later.

We went down an American canal to the two American locks. The weather was fine, but very gusty, at about 25-30 knots from aft. The "pleasure craft waiting area, as seen below, advertised six feet of depth.

And to think I used to like Eisenhower.

We draw five foot 10 inches on our full keel.  Becky spotted the vcry small, very literal buoyed area a little late, and I made a sharp turn...right onto shallow ground. This was problematic.

This is Edward's boat. It didn't end well for him, either.

This is Edward's blurry powerboat. He attempted to haul us off, for which I salute him, but he couldn't get much accomplished, and managed to foul his own props with our tow line. He also drifted into even shallower shallows. What a day it was turning out to be.

After several hours of blackening the oil in an attempt to reverse off with no result save some spinning, and a few more hours of bumping as the howling wind lifted us slightly and then dropped us three inches, I had to admit defeat. I called a U.S. Sea Tow outlet. Their first question was "do you have tow insurance?"

No, we did not.

It's hard to express how depressing this was. I stared more at this evil little nav aid for hours.

They put a towboat (a Stanley with a 150 HP outboard on it) from 70 miles away and drove to where we were. By this point, it was dark. After Herculean efforts, including a fresh regrounding, we were able to dock for the night. We also had Edward taken off. His props were unwrapped and it was discovered that only one of two was slightly damaged. Huzzah! Cost: $3,240 U.S. The U.S. dollar Visa card howled.

Note the evil buoy. I would say we are inside its six-foot demarcation. It begged to differ. That ship was requested by the lock staff to veer slightly port in order to give us enough "wash" to bump us free.

The next morning, full of hope and relief, we turned tightly off the dock and ran aground. Again. We nearly lost our tiny minds. More phone calls, more waiting. More pumping out the water tanks to lighten our load and (futilely, as it turned out) attempt to self-refloat. And while the integrity of the hull appeared to be intact, a nasty squeaking from the rudder's nether regions confirmed the pin was loose in its socket, meaning I had to break out the tiller and hand-steer.

Alas, the wash was a wash-out, although we did do a dramatic lurch of promise

Eventually, two different Sea Tow guys showed up and hauled us off stern first. Our bowsprit smacked the rubber fenders at the end of the pier, looking like the boat had had lost, not won, a fight. Cost: Another $3,240 U.S.

For a place with Homeland Security, they didn't even want to see our passports

The passage through the U.S. locks was as leisurely as any other, but made complex by the need to lasso floating bollard things, which proved difficult for Becky and Lucas and myself, trying to maneuver under tiller and not prang the wall. But we got through.

The slot in which the bollard thingie rises and falle.

The St. Lawrence widened into some pretty lake-like stretches after this, but, hand-steering as I was in some pretty impressive currents (8.8 knots with the diesel at just 1500 RPM), I did not stray far. The weather on the way to Cornwall deteriorated a bit and I was, frankly, a little paranoid. We stayed in the marina for a couple of days while I sought to find the right nuts to repair the job. A very nice contractor named Ben, who wishes not to be identified further, loaned me a massive 3/4" socket wrench and gave me a beefy 7/8" coarse threaded nut as are found, evidently, on hydro towers. This did the trick...but wait, there's more.

More ships!

More scenery!

More locks!

More random maintenance!

The Canadian locks were simpler to handle: two 1/2" poly lines were dropped from the top and simply eased around a bollard as we descended sedately. But the waits to get our slots were even longer: I estimate 24-28 hours of waiting over the five Canadian locks, mainly because of "more ships".

Looking a little rough there, Prime Mininster

Off, I believe, to Hamilon.

AIS has been, in actual practise, a positive boon in running down the river. We get constant updates as to speeds, closing times, distances of closest approach and other nerve-settling data. Because even the steel Alchemy is but a pop can next to these beasts, some of which bear evidence of mild collisions we didn't even want to dwell upon.

We were invariably the first to the "pleasure craft dock" and therefore had the longest wait times.

Slowly, we made our way to Montreal, but King Neptune, who operates on a franchise basis in these waters, had one more trick to play on us.

The view inside one of the locks, possibly Ste. Catherine

We had booked a morning lock transit for Ste. Lambert lock, the last one in the otherwise well-charted and buoyed Canal du Sud, a sort of bypass for those disinterested in the charms of the five-lock Lachine "pleasure craft" canal on the north side of Montreal Island. There was a yacht club in which we intended to stay, and while the area called "the lagoon" in which it was located was mysteriously unsurveyed, ourmarina guide claimed "two to three metres throughout".

The evil buoyage at St. Lambert. Not even once.

You can guess the next sentence. Go on, try.

We ran aground on a mud shoal. We were hauled off by a Zodiac with a 150 HP outboard driven by auxiliaries from Quebec's Garde côtière canadienne, and very effective they were. Our keel, once stuck on, only wants to back off. It took more time to fill out the form than to get off the mud. Cost: $0. I love my country.

We anchored in a very nice spot with very deep silt. That's the new Champlain bridge lit up.

We reversed back under the bridge (Champlain, old and new) and anchored out of the channel in about seven metres. The Spade anchor sets almost too well: we had to deal with a phenomenal amount of clay and silt the next morning and I had to use the old "rolling hitch on the chain run to the rope side of the gypsy" to get it in, as the chain side was slipping and complaining. But get it in we did.

Lucas is a big help, but he'll never truly enjoy upping anchor in seven metres of muck.

Bye, bye, mes ecluses!

Two guys we met in the six-hour wait for St. Lambert lock, Denis and Marc, were going to Port de plaisance Real-Bouvier and offered to prompt us on the VHF over the depths at the entrance, which looked dodgy and featured a slewing two-knot current, as is typical in the river. We got in with only mild tachycardia, and have reprovisioned in the suburb of Longueuil...

Took much of one afternoon to rearrange the anchors and clean off the filthy foredeck

...to rerun the anchors for less friction...

Inclinometre Velcro'd in place. Bought at Valleyfield for $10!

...made some minor improvements...

Boring, I know.

...and started on the more important job: a more permanent fix to the "pin" connecting the hydraulic steering ram to the rudder. As recounted above, we lost the nut to this last week in a graze with an old stone crib, and have replaced the nuts in the water twice with some difficulty as the rudder plate the pin (think something 7/8" thick) is about two inches below the water, which is fine for hand tools, but not electric drills. Add to this the aspect that to actually examine the pin means removing the entire rudder...I've only seen this part once, when Matt Phillips and I installed the Variprop and a new shaft and other goodies circa 2014 (see www.alchemy2009.blogspot.com for details if you like that sort of thing).

Cotter pin dryfitting.

So I've drilled a 7/8" nut (obtained at the perfectly stocked Demers Quincallerie Industrielle....think Atlas combined with Pacific Fasteners in Toronto) where my French was sufficient to get the nuts, the washers, and the two obscure sockets needed (1 5/16" and 1 7/16"!) and a 3/4"-1/2" reducer so these massive sockets can go on my biggest rachet wrenches/rbreaker bars.

We've assembled one of the tenders, crank on one of the nuts and a flat washer, hang a Dremel from the aft cabin portlight and use my Dremel's 36 inch extension with a 1/8" drill bit to drill into the existing holes in the nut, through the pin and then to insert and secure a SS cotter pin, which won't bear much force, but *will* prvent the nut from backing off.

One of these already fell off into the drink...because it's not yet pinned.

Fingers crossed, this will preserve the non-tiller steering (and the autopilot, which is very welcome in weather like this) until Halifax, in which the shipyard to do list now includes a replacement of this pin at the very least, and perhaps a rethink of how the rudder and the hydraulic arm are connected overall. Oh, and the wisdom of having a workshop on board is ever more clear.

We managed yesterday to get a good start, but the Dremel's too fast, so I'm going to hang my 500 RPM Makita drill lashed to the boat and use a Miles Orbiter to drill, slowly, through the SS pin. With luck, it will get through to the other side, I can pin it securely and we can be on our way.

Sunset over the Cardassian Embassy.