Wednesday, July 10th

The wind was blowing strongly from the south when we woke up and was forecast to continue all day.  The good news is that this would help us travelling north.  Even though we don’t have the mast up and cannot use sails, a following wind will increase boat speed.  The bad news is that entering the last 3 locks with a strong following wind would not be the chosen method.  It wasn’t as bad as it could have been however, and we transited the last 3 locks without problem.  We crossed Lac Chambly, and started the final leg of the Richelieu.  At mile 32, - 45 33.86N 73 12.10W - there is a bridge that has a very narrow passage.  We still had our following wind, but here there was a 3 knot current as well.  Again - far from ideal.  Instinct says slow the boat down when going through, but that doesn’t work because the rudders need to be travelling through the water in order to steer the boat.  So we slowed down on the approach, then motored faster through the gap to ensure we had steerage.  We ended up going through the gap at 7.3 Knots!    We made it to Sorel (via 1 more lock) without incident, and docked at Marina Sorel (Parc Nautique Federal) 46 02.89N 73 06.38W.  This marina has a self-service crane for stepping masts, and we noticed a couple of guys on a trimaran, with their masts down.  So we had a little discussion and agreed that we would help each other tomorrow raising our masts. 

Ship’s Log: 2726.8nm, Today's log: 29.0nm, Season total: 272.9nm.