Lake Erie at Last
13 June 2018 | Sugar Loaf Marina, Port Colborne ON
Foggy, rainy, cool
After waiting nearly 29 hours at the pleasure craft transit slip in Port Weller the small fleet of 3 sail and 3 powerboats finally got the word at noon yesterday that we were on the move. The transit slipway a god forsaken hole with no amenities whatsoever (although they did bring out a garbage can on Tuesday morning.
The hold-ups are due to staffing issues. The canal was automated a few years ago and there are no canal staff handling lines for the big ships and more, instead they are held in place by giant suction cups that rise and fall with the ship but keep it tight to the wall. Apparently the Seaway eliminated 38 jobs with the automation. Pleasure craft still need line handlers and it took them 29 hours to get a team re-assigned. The complete lack of organization or scheduling is a mystery. The Seaway Montreal sector has regular scheduled times for pleasure craft to lock through and it works very efficiently, why Seaway Welland is so incompetent is a mystery.
Once underway we hit the locks in regular succession, most of the locks are in the first 7 or so miles and lift the boats over 326 up feet the Niagara Escarpment, Locks 4,5 and 6 are flight locks and you proceed out of one lock directly into the next. The boats "raft", that is one takes lines dropped from above next to the wall and two others then tie to their sides. The power boats were in one raft and sail in the other. Once rafted the docks close and the locks start to fill, several of the locks have very strong, swirling currents that make it a struggle to stay in place. Once the next level is reached the upper doors open, the rafts break up and the boats proceed to the next lock. Each lock has a lift of about 40 feet and uses 20 million gallons of water.
Once clear of Lock 7 we had a 2 hour, 15 minute run down the canal through Welland to lock 8 in Port Colborne. This section of the canal passes through some old industrial docks, paper plants and grain elevators. By the time we reached Lock 8 it was getting dark and we went to the canal wall to wait for two lakers to pass through the lock ahead of us. The tug Tim McKiel followed behind us and was locked through with us.
From Lock 8 we went under the last lift bridge and through the town of Port Colborne into Sugar Loaf Marina on the Lake Erie waterfront. We had called ahead to make arrangements for a slip for the night and when we got there everything was as promised, we adjourned to the Don Cherry's Restaurant in the marina centre for some cold beer and perch dinners.
This morning we are completely socked in with fog and there is a small craft warning on eastern Lake Erie, so we may just stay put, do some grocery shopping and explore the town a bit.