August 8 – Gatineau/Hull
45°25′45″ N 75°42′10″ W
This morning (Wednesday) Catherine went back to London on the 7:30am train from Ottawa. Around 8:30am we moved Santosha off the overnight docks to the blue line dock for the 8-step locks down to the Ottawa River.
There were already 5 boats tied up on the blue line, they must have been there overnight. When the locks started operating we were placed in the second group of boats to start the trip down.
Angela & John & Levi did a great job handling the lines as we moved from lock to lock.
While we were waiting I contacted a few marinas a short distance down the river to see if they had any overnight docking space but they were either already full or our boat was too big for the spaces they had available. I was disappointed but later on in the day this would turn out to be a good thing for us!
It took 2 hours (to 12:00 noon) for us to work our way through the locks to the river. I contacted the Hull Marina as we were passing by – basically just across the river from the locks & managed to get a slip for the night there.
While I was paying my fees the marina manager told me that there would be a big fireworks show that evening only a few hundred meters from where we were docked. What luck! And, on top of that, there was a fantastic plant sculpture exhibition on right beside the marina. It’s as though fate was after-all working in our favour today.
These plant sculptures were really amazing. It must have been a tremendous amount of planning & effort to get these set up & then to maintain them.
Santosha was tied up on one of the outer docks – a great place to watch the fireworks from. As darkness approached Levi was ready to catch the show with his new camera.
The fireworks went on for almost an hour. Very impressive!
It will be hard to top that for an evening’s after dinner entertainment.
Cheers!
