July 30 – Monday
We got underway at 06:45 and just off the marina we swung the flux gate compass and reset the heading for the autohelm. It seemed to do the trick so we headed down the Ottawa for the Carillon lock. It is a monster of a lock that lowers you 65’. We had only a minor wait to enter and were through by 11:00. I had powered down the electronics and turned the engine off while in the lock and when I turned on the autohelm it had lost it’s compass deviation again, so we will do without for now.
St. Anne de Bellevue was the last remaining lock on the Ottawa River and would also be our stop for the day. Once again we lucked out and the lock was waiting for us. We cleared and were tied to the town wall by 2:30.
After settling the boat details we took a walk on the main street and found the post office for some stamps. The lock wall serves as a kind of board walk for tourists and evening visitors. There are numerous restaurants and bars that face the main street and have patios at the rear that overlook the canal and lock wall. It serves sort of the same roll as “ego alley” in Annapolis or the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, but on a much smaller scale. St. Anne’s is a suburb of Montreal.
We grilled burgers and had dinner aboard then took some pictures and watched a DVD until we both started feeling drowsy. It was a pretty comfortable night after the visitors left and the trains and traffic slowed down on the nearby bridges. We needed our rest, for tomorrow we will face the mighty St. Lawrence Seaway and it’s two mammoth ship locks.