WPSU

Friday, July 13, 2018

Adventures in Lowness

The iconic mountain that is Montreal as seen from the Ottawa River!

We left the St. Anne de Bellevue Lock on a bright morning. A few hours' travel on bouncy waves brought our first sight of Montreal.  

Closer to shore, we scanned for the buoys marking the entrance Lachine Canal

After a long, slow, puttering trip down a narrow channel that took us just feet from the boats docked in an enormous marina, we, finally arrived around noon outside Lock 5. 

We were pleased to welcome a couple of boat visitors soon after, Jacqui and Michael Reid-Walsh.  (Check the Visitors page of this blog for deets and to consider when YOU'd like to visit us!)

Bonjour, Lachine Canal!

We stayed not far from this historic house,
completed in 1671 and still standing

Like the other canals we've visited, the Lachine was built for commerce.  It cuts through a neighborhood where warehouses and factories crowd the banks. 

In planning this trip we were relieve to learn this canal was in fact open, not closed as some guides suggested.  

Were it not for the Lachine, we would have had to continue on the river, around the island of Montreal . . . and when we reached the juncture with the St.  Lawrence, the current would have been too strong for us to turn back and enter the city.

There was just one tiny problem.  The Lachine has several bridges that are a mere 8 feet above the water.  Dragonfly is 9 feet from the waterline to the top of her canopy.

We're Good with Low

Well!  We've played this game before! It so happens that if you unscrew the metal poles supporting our stern canopy and lower the canopy to the deck, we are a mere SEVEN feet tall.

So that's what we did!  (More photos on Facebook.) Lachine Canal, here we come!





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