Through the Welland Canal

Another near perfect day on the water. We pulled out of Sugarloaf Marina at around 6:20 this morning. It was a beautiful sunrise over Lake Erie with temps in the mid 60's. We headed over to the start of the Welland Canal hoping for a lucky break and a quick transit through the canal. The average time to transit the 27 miles of the canal is 11 hours. We were not lucky today. We sat at bridge #21 until 9:30 when they finally called us to start the trip. We locked through today with one other pleasure boat; a 1984 36-foot sail boat with a husband, wife and daughter heading to the Thousand Islands for a two week vacation.

We had a few stops and starts along the way as large commercial traffic went through the canal, but overall we had a good trip through all the locks and the trip went without a hitch. We finished up tonight at Port Pier Marina in Port Dalhousie, Ontario around 5:30. We were right on the average of 11 hours to transit the canal.

Tomorrow we will cross Lake Ontario and enter the Oswego Canal and then into the Erie Canal. We are not sure how far we will get tomorrow, but we hope to make it all the way to Brewerton, NY at the entrance to Oneida Lake. The boat is running really well and Steve and I are getting along great. We might get some rain tomorrow, but the winds are forecast to be light and variable so it should make for a very smooth ride in the morning for the 150 miles to Oswego.

Here are just a few pictures from today.


Here we are tied up at Port Colborne waiting for the first bridge on the Welland Canal.



The sail boat "Wild Flower" behind us going through lock #5.




One of the many commercial ships transiting the canal today coming out of lock #2.