You may have thought we had sailed off the edge of the world due to my lack of postings, yet we are alive and well in Quebec city at the moment preparing for departure on our passage to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
There has been a lot of water flowing under the proverbial bridge so an attempt shall be made to catch the story up a bit...
. Mutiny In the Fleet
Our last night's anchorage before Iroquois was a fairly quiet one, although some heavy traffic passed through the night throwing some big wake our way at the anchorage. This lead to some restless sleeps. That did not seem to explain the mutiny which was on the way. It must have been brewing on James' vessel unbeknown by us.
James showed little interest in sailing and motored well ahead of us throughout the day. There was some contact via cell that they were suffering from the intense heat due to not having a Bimini to shade them.
They eventually set up a make shift Bimini and things seemed to have settled down. Yet when catching up with them, while they were awaiting the first lift bridge along our journey to open, it was evident this was not the case.
We stopped in Iroquois after passing through the lift bridge and docked in a nice marina at Iroquois.
It turned out that Dewald felt that James had been acting erratically both emotionally but at the helm as well. We had noticed such behavior while awaiting to signals to pass the lift bridge. He seemed to have forced the hand of the bridge operator by steaming toward it while the red with flashing yellow lights were still showing.
Once docked we were informed that Dewald was jumping ship and heading home by train.
This was particularly bad for James due to the fact you needed at least a crew of two to make it through the lock system due to the need of handling lines fore and aft as the vessel is lowered when the dock empties.
We could only offer James our parting advice, the following day, as we left the first lift bridge behind.
- Down Through The Locks
The St. Lawrence Seaway is a very impressive (and massive) system. It allows one to pass downstream through what had likely been rapids through a series of six locks. Two on the US section of the canal and 4 on the Canadian side.
They are not all at one point in the river so one finds nice open water in between and we managed to get in some nice sailing with the wonderful winds in our favor the whole day.
We eventually made our way to Montreal...
... and took a slip in a nice marina.
- Taking on More Crew
During the course of the day while approaching Montreal, Pierre had been in back and forth contact with a fellow in BC. They had been in touch over the summer as Mr. Fish had reached out to Pierre suggesting that he would like to join in on the adventure, first as a crew for James and then when hearing of Dewald's assessment he asked if he could join us on the Makina.
It was worked out that he could leave in the morning from BC and make it to Montreal that evening. We had made it into Montreal only shortly before Mr. Fish arrived by plane and came aboard at about 21:00.
This may be a good place to stop for now. My laptop can now be charged from the solar on board so the hope is not to be so tardy in my postings and bring you up to date over the next day or two. Then daily postings shall likely resume.
Until such time...
May the wind be at your back!
A chronological listing of my sailing posts:
@novacadian/novacadian-s-blog-index-sailing