And so our Welland Canal “adventure” continues…
We were just comfortably tied up on the canal wall near Lock 7 when the canal authorities told our group to move further up the wall to make space for a freighter that was coming towards us & would be tying up on the same wall.
Repositioning Santosha this time was much easier as the wind gusts were dying down a bit & the crew from Eagle took our lines as we approached our new parking spot on the wall.
The photo below is a “sister ship” to Eagle. Unfortunately I did not take a decent quality photo of Eagle but this one is virtually identical. Eagle is built by Riviera & is 58 feet long. A really beautiful boat.
We also received an update from the canal authorities informing us that it would be at least 9:00pm before we would be permitted to move through the next locks. Apparently a freighter further down the canal had a small collision with one of the safety gates in a lock & that basically stopped all traffic through the locks until the damage was repaired.
Now that we had to stay in one place for at least another 6 hours, we started making plans for dinner & to take some short walks along the shoreline.
The photo above shows the Bristol Bay along with its barge. Santosha is much further down the line behind Eagle.
The Captain of Bristol Bay walked down to visit with us and pass on the latest information he had about when we might start moving again.
Apparently the canal authorities were considering making the pleasure boats stay tied up on the wall overnight while Bristol Bay would be permitted to move on. The canal authorities were concerned about having the pleasure craft in the lock with the ship & barge during nighttime hours. Thankfully the Captain of Bristol Bay said he had no problem sharing lock space with us.
The freighter came to tie up behind us around 6:00pm
It was pretty slick how they tied up to the wall. Once they were close enough one of the crew was lowered from the deck by a small crane & then he caught the lines from his mates up on deck. It only took one person on shore to tie up this massive vessel.
Around 8:00pm two Canadian Coast Guard cutters passed by us – headed towards Lake Erie. The locks were back in operation!
A while later a freighter went past us & the canal authorities told us that it was finally our turn to enter the lock. By that time it was getting very dark and approaching 10:00pm.
Just before we were ready to cast off the owner of Eagle came over to tell me that he was instructed to have our boat raft up against his as we passed through each lock. This was not something that I was looking forward to doing.
to be continued…