Oh Canada – Finally!

Oh Canada – Finally!

Although the fine folks at Gaines Marina were kind to us and very accommodating in helping Steve repair our stabilizer leak, we were eager to cross the border – which we could see from our various perches at Gaines. 

The border control officers were gracious in spite of our early morning arrival at their dock – just a few minutes after their official opening at 8 AM.  A brief 20 minutes later found us headed north to run the locks and bridges of the Chambly Canal where we lingered a week or so last fall.  With only one 15 minute wait we blew through the 9 locks and swing bridges to land below the three step locks in the lovely hamlet of Chambly. We spent the night on the canal wall and used our time in town to visit the handy Maxi grocery store and stock up on a few Canadian dollars at an ATM. 

The next morning we left early to complete our trip on the Richelieu River through the St Ours lock and on into the St Lawrence.  Our anchorage was in the Corbeaux (Raven) Channel among the Sorel Islands dotted with cute little summer homes. It seemed that most of these homes are only accessible by boat hence the constant stream of buzzing little commuter boats until darkness settled in – they also fortunately did not resume with the sun (which comes up here about 4:30AM) so we managed a lazy start after this peaceful night.  

From Sorel we moved on to Trois-Rivieres – and a wild anchorage off a very popular beach on the St. Mauricie River.  This river joins the St Lawrence at Trois-Rivieres and at the juncture separates into three channels hence the name of the town. The notes in our guide told us a short dinghy ride up the river to the second bridge would lead to a shopping area.  We dutifully tied our dink to a tree on the bank and scampered up the boulders on the bank under the overpass and indeed found a Wal Mart, a Maxi and a full enclosed mall. From the river and our spot by the beach this hotbed of commercialism was invisible, but rarely is such mega shopping so easily accessed by cruisers. (…..that is if you discount the climb up the hill, wet feet, and the swamped dinghy. Our dinghy was about half full of river water and mud when we returned thanks to the wild wakes kicked up by the buzzing boats enjoying the sunny afternoon on the river.  Such a visit on a week day would probably be able to avoid this small inconvenience.)