More Welland Canal

We cleared Canadian customs in Dalhousie the day before going to the Welland Canal. Unfortunately not all of the boats were so considerate. Of the 7 boats of our flotilla going through the canal, 2 not only hadn't cleared customs, they didn't have passports. Customs crawled through their boats delaying us at least 2 hours. This put us out of the canal schedule and we had to wait a couple of times for freighters.  All totalled they cost us at least 4-5 hours. What should have  been 7-10 hours turned into 12. We did dock in Port Colborne at the south end until midnight.




We started as a flotilla of 7 boats.  We were grouped as 2, 2 and 3 boats. The boat against the wall caught ropes dropped from the top. The other boats in the group rafted (tied up) to that boat. We were outermost so we just tied to the middle which tied to the boat on the wall. As the water comes rushing in the ropes are used to stay near the wall but you have to also push off so that you don't drag the side of the boat up the wall. We were grouped like this, all 7 boats in the lock for the 1st 3 locks. The next 3 locks were all one after another (exit from one went directly into the next) where the 1st 3 had a mile or so of canal between them. The double high doors between locks 4 and 5, and 5 and 6 were very high. We all went as individual boats through these with the 1st 4 boats going first the the other 3. This was the first time that we had to deal with the wall. From this point we went as 2 smaller flotilla because a commercial ship came through lock 4 northbound after the first 4 boats got in and before they got to lock 5 so that we could enter lock 4. Another delay for the last 3 boats of the flotilla cause by the morning's delay. Lock 7 us a normal lock that gets us to the top of Niagara Falls. You don't have to tied up for lock 8. It just adjusts a couple feet to the current level of Lake Erie.








One cool thing was getting to see the QEW highway from the canal. I had driven over it so many times not realizing what was below. The are several draw bridges and lift bridges along the way. The operators are aware of the canal traffic so the bridges are ready to go up as the boats arrive.





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