9/28/26: Big Ships in the Night
Oct 6
2 min read
Our next stop in out trip is Montreal which is 135 miles from Quebec. 135 miles is a pretty routine distance for Pelagic, but it is entirely up-current and against the prevailing winds so predicting how long it will take is a crap shoot. Our deadline is that we need to be in Montreal by the morning of the 30th to make it through the St Lambert Lock so the pressure is on to get up river. Skip arrived this morning shortly after Martha and I finished the last bit of grocery shopping and Fred went out to find some more Sikaflex and we left almost imminently. We needed to get around some tidal rapids before the tide switched and ideally before nightfall so we were happy leaving against some foul current just to put in a few extra miles.
While slow against the foul current our journey was not boring. The banks of the St. Lawrence River contained an entertaining mixture of houses and a spectacular display of trees in their full fall colors. Very luckily, we were accompanied by steady tailwinds on our way up the St. Lawrence, and we were making much better time than expected. We made it through past the rapids in the sunlight as we hoped and were just entering the shipping channels as the sun set. The channels are just large enough for two commercial vessels to pass each other and are lined with shallow rock shoulders. This makes it a hard decision whether to hug the outside or the inside of the channel while letting past the 1000ft long tanker ships that frequent the channel. It's going to be a light night of sleep.
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