Tuesday August 7th

We traversed the next 5 locks and various swing and lifting bridges, then had a long stretch of narrow canal before the last lock at Saint Jean.  The canal was reasonable deep in the middle, but because of our width, one of our hulls was pretty close to shore and we hit one of our rudders on rocks on the bottom – twice, once with Teresa at the helm and once with Ron.  Ron claims he had the better hit!  The rudders are able to be raised, and the raise/lower mechanism has a weak point which is designed to break before serious damage is done.  We broke it.  The rudders still work but we

cannot raise them any longer.  Oh well, our first grounding!   In addition to the rudder issue, the engines were lacking power, so we limped through the last lock and tied up outside to investigate hoping that we hadn’t damaged them as well.  One of the nice things about our engines is that they also lift out of the water when we’re sailing.  So we lifted them up and discovered a lot of weed wrapped tightly around the props.  The weed was removed and we were back in full working order.  We re-entered the Richelieu River and motored on to Gagnon marina, 45° 03.66N 73° 16.35W.  We were hoping to raise our mast here, but when push came to shove, we were told that our boat was too wide for the crane dock.  Not one of our most successful days, but no major problems either.

 

Ship’s log: 2102.4 Today's log: 22.8nm, Season total: 466.9 nm