June 27, 2011 Port Dalhousie

We are safely through the Welland and in Port Dalhousie. We got to the canal waiting area at 7:30, and were told they would lock us through at 10:00. At 10:00 they said we were waiting on a motor boat for another half hour. We finally left the dock and started our trip at about noon. We thought we would be docking in the dark for sure. Turns out they waited for that motorboat because the guy on it was a Welland employee. We were wondering why . . .

Much to our surprise, there was no traffic on the canal and every lock and bridge gave us a green light to enter without slowing down. We cleared the last lock at 6:30 and Kerry made us a small martini to sip as we motored the 3 miles to Dalhousie. The entire trip from Sugarloaf to Dalhousie was 24.5 miles. It was rather uneventful, but very tiring.

Our 6 1/2 hour Welland transit time was our fastest by far. It would have been even faster but one of the sailboats, Trollop motored only about 5.5 knots, and all the boats need to stay together. Then after the 5th lock his engine quit and he had to be towed by another sailboat - even slower. Not that I could complain because Windchaser had to tow me through the entire canal our last trip when we wrapped a dock line around our propeller. I included a picture of Trollop and Odyssey out of control in the Welland. They should have been against the wall, but were still learning how to handle the lines in this lock.

We had martinis, wine, chicken wings and coffee on Windchaser before crashing for the night. I rewarded the two people who helped us dock with the Rosemary's cookie of their choice. They choose the raisin oatmeal and loved it. No grouching Rosemary - they saw me walking down the dock with a big plate of cookies. What could I do?

The picture at the top of the blog is one of Jim Karpinski's Welland canal fenders. I am carrying it in honor of Jim since he could not be here, and promised to get lots of scratches and canal slime on it for him. Other pictures show the waiting fleet, powerboat missing, and Kerry working the bow line in a lock.

We hope to go to Bronte on Tuesday. There is a high wind warning in effect so I would like to leave early. We have a skipper's meeting at 9:00 to decide.