Hello everyone - we made it through the Welland Canal! We are hot and tired after a 9 hour transit, but we are on Lake Ontario, yay! Here is a short diary of our progress since the last update.

July 9-10 Port Stanley

We left early from Erieau, 7 am, and had excellent wind to get to Port Stanley. It was bordering on being too strong but we did a port tack the whole way with very few course adjustments and were in at the dock by 3 pm. This is a very civilized time to arrive. We tied up to the west wall in the harbour, near the visitor information centre and along a lovely promenade with grassy banks and hanging flowers. This used to be an industrial area but fortunately the grain silos we feared would be our neighbours must have been removed in the past few years - they're marked on the charts, but they're gone now. Opposite us across the harbour are a row of five fishing boats which we discovered the next day start work at 5am, diesel engines thrumming as they head out.

Port Stanley is a picturesque beach town and former rail terminal carrying goods transferred from lake schooners and steamers onto rail cars. The London and Port Stanley railway now operates a tourist train that passed by us on our bike ride and we exchanged happy waves with the passengers looking out the open windows.

We had a delightful dinner at the Two Forks. It has outdoor seating in a tree-filled courtyard and we were just next to the chef's garden of herbs and greens. We both accidentally ordered gluten-free meals, having ignored the subtle GF designation, so my lettuce ahi tuna tacos had lettuce instead of taco shells! They were delicious. Andy supplemented his pickerel and eggplant dish with an order of crostini. Inside the restaurant (in Ontario, restaurants are still closed for indoor dining but you can go in to use the restrooms) there was a skin of a sturgeon mounted on the wall and I was surprised how reptilian it looked - I had to ask what it was as I thought it was an alligator or crocodile.

We stayed two nights, waiting for wind, so got to enjoy a rest day. Just next to our boat was a stand for the local bike share, so we installed the app and signed out two bikes, thinking we might ride to St Thomas which is around 30 km away. We soon discovered the bikes were incredibly heavy and you even had to pedal them to make them go downhill. We had a good workout pedaling up the long hill out of town, along the Kettle Creek, and only made it as far as the first farm stand where we bought some corn and blueberries. We rode down a side road that was marked 'closed due to bridge work' and 'local traffic only' and took a chance that we could get through. It was indeed closed at the bridge, but we had a peaceful ride (no cars!) through rolling farmland interspersed with stands of trees before we had to turn back.

July 11 Long Point (west base)

We left Port Stanley early, 6 am, although not before the fishing boats at 5 am. We were trying to get around the tip of Long Point, which is a very long point and unfortunately placed if you are trying to get to eastern Lake Erie. I was fantasizing how nice it would be if someone had built a canal across the base of it. In the end it took us two days to get around it. This was a challenging day, rainy and wind in the wrong direction, so we were tacking into the wind all day. We gave up around 7pm and anchored offshore in a very bouncy sea. I was confined to the cockpit until bedtime, to avoid nausea that going below would have caused, and Andy cooked supper and did all the cleanup - he's so good to me!

July 12 Long Point (east tip)

Andy has told me of a saying "Gentlemen don't sail to windward" and I can definitely see why. We had to do this today, for the second day in a row. It happens when the wind is coming precisely from the direction in which you want to go, and you have to tack back and forth to make slow progress, bouncing against the waves. If you are following us on the Spot tracker, and you see a zigzag or saw-tooth track, that's the times we are sailing to windward.

We did finally make it around the point and in to a wide anchorage that is inside a hook-shaped sandbar that's actually underwater now as the waters are high. But the sandbar still provides protection against waves and swell. It got sunny and calm just as we arrived and it was a flat, blessedly peaceful, evening.

July 13-14 Port Colborne

I was bracing myself for a windy trip to Port Colborne, as Environment Canada had issued a strong wind warning. But the strong winds waited until late in the evening so in fact it was a day of wishing for the wind to be stronger. 'Come on wind' is the fruitless exhortation we utter when the sails start to flap. But it was a good day, with the wind in exactly the right direction for a beam reach, where the wind is at right angles to where you want to go. It's a much calmer point of sail than being close-hauled and heading into the wind.

The excitement on this day was riding out two squalls that hit us in the afternoon. You see the black cloud and rain in the distance, and hope that it passes around you, and some do. This time we heard thunder, and went over the plans - if hit by a squall with thunder and lightning, furl the jib (front sail), winch in the mainsail so that the boom doesn't bang back and forth, and then turn into the wind and ride it out. Do not go close to the mast because lightening will hit it and travel right through to the water. Oh, and put your rainwear on.

Luckily neither squall included lightning. But it was scary and exciting nonetheless. The rain starts as a few drops then becomes a deluge, pelting onto the waves and bucketing down onto the deck and canvas on the boat. An aside about canvas: There is a dodger over the companion way (the ladder down into the cabin) and a bimini shade structure over the wheel where the helmsman stands. Some sailboats have a full enclosure but we don't so there is lots of space for rain to blow in. For the first squall we had the mainsail up, and the boom and rigging was rattling very loudly. Everything was shaking in the high winds. I cowered under the dodger and Andy was at the wheel. The whole episode lasted 5-10 minutes and then the sunshine came out again. It was a very intense experience. And we got to do it one more time as we were nearing the harbour, this time motoring with both sails down which made for a lot less rattling and noise, but we still got drenched.

There was more stormy weather that evening in Port Colborne, and we were so glad to be tied to a dock when the winds picked up even further at midnight.

We stayed 2 nights in Port Colborne, waiting for our start time to transit the Welland Canal. This is how you get from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, down the Niagara Escarpment and bypassing the Niagara River. For pleasure craft like us, as compared to the big commercial freighters, the canal does downbound and upbound traffic every other day. We are downbound and Thursday July 15 is our day.

We spent the day doing chores (laundry, groceries) and exploring Port Colborne - there's a nice promenade with plaques about the history of the canal, and we visited a pretty, open air maritime and pioneer history museum.

There was a lot of activity around our dock in the late afternoon as an American boat arrived for an overnight stop before transiting the canal. They are allowed to dock after checking in with the Canadian Customs and Border Services Agency (CBSA), but not get off their boat. There were uniformed CBSA officers patrolling the dock earlier in the day, looking for American boats that aren't allowed to be here due to the pandemic border closure. Andy later saw a family being escorted off the dock by police officers, presumable for processing, before being told to leave? Then another sailboat arrived that was also a CS36, same model of boat as ours, and docked right in front of us. They had come upbound on the canal today, a group of 3 young people (yes, everyone is young when you get to be my age) in their 20s. The skipper had just bought her boat and two friends were helping her move it from Oakville to Port Elgin, so they are doing part of our trip in the reverse direction and we were mutually interested in each others' experiences. To go upbound on the canal it's mandatory to have 3 people aboard, as it's more turbulent to be in filling locks than going downbound in emptying locks which requires only 2 people.

July 15 Welland Canal

The canal is made for commercial traffic, and pleasure craft are tolerated but treated strictly by the authorities. They don't mess around - you must be present at the departure dock at 7am, and check in. In addition to Heartbeat, there were 3 power boats that would be part of our cohort going through. As we were checking in, the controller asked us about the two other boats because they hadn't checked in yet. He threatened that we would have a 12 hour day if we didn't get started on time at 7am, and we couldn't start until everyone had called in. We had to rap on the hull of the one next to us to wake them up and get them to call in.

There are 8 locks in the canal, numbered 8 down to 1 in the direction we were going in. We made a checklist to remind us where we were, and which side we were to tie up on because we have to switch the fenders around - I included a photo of the completed checklist showing the actual times that we passed each lock. We got to be old hands by the end but the first few were nerve-wracking. In some cases we had to wait for a lift bridge to open, or wait for a commercial ship to go through, and I do not like this pattern. You need to idle and circle in the boat, alternating between forward, neutral and reverse, trying to stay put, and avoid hitting anything including the other 3 boats in your group who are doing the same thing.

The routine in a lock goes like this - you pull up to the side where there are two staff at the same level as you, who throw a bundle of rope to you. I was at the bow and Andy at the stern. You wrap the line around a cleat loosely, and when all the boats are ready the water level starts to drop. It goes slowly, taking around 15 minutes. During this time you let the line slide out carefully - picture a boat suspended on two lines being lowered slowly down the wall of a multi-storey building as the water level drops. At the end you're looking up at a massive wall, and behind you are the massive walls of the closed lock, looking very much like the gates of Mordor from Lord of the Rings. It was quite windy, from the south, so Andy had the harder job of holding on to his line and paying it out without letting the boat slip away. My line at the bow had less stress. Once the water has dropped completely, you see the massive gates in front of you swing open, and then carefully coil up your line and toss it well to the side (so it doesn't get caught in the propeller) and the invisible lock attendants way up above pull in the dangling lines.

One of the boats had a minor emergency when one of their lines got jammed. In the end they cut the line which snapped like an elastic, and another line was thrown down to them. I think the operators stopped draining water while this got fixed up. There was lots of shouting on the boat involved! As an aside, Andy and I have Bluetooth headsets that let us talk to each other without yelling. These have been invaluable. No more yelling "What?" or "I can't hear you!" over the sound of the wind or motor.

Finally we got to Lock 1 and congratulated each other - we did it! We are now tied near Port Weller and will discuss over dinner exactly where to go tomorrow. Our next big sail will be across the lake to Toronto but the winds don't look good tomorrow (north winds) so we will do something shorter somewhere along the Niagara peninsula first.

Photo album: Lake Erie and Welland Canal

P.S. I included a photo of our instrument panel, since I stare at that a lot while sailing. From the top down - Lev-O-Gage (who comes up with the names?) I just ignore. Then we have the speed over water - in this picture 5.8 knots which is great. Then the dial showing apparent wind, and in the digital readout on this dial, the apparent wind speed. 16 knots - also great. When it gets to 20 that's getting uncomfortable. The closest we can sail to the wind is a number 3, and that's called being close hauled. In this picture it is 7 which is almost a beam reach (9 would be a beam reach). The dial at the bottom shows the depth. Anything under 10 feet is cause for concern. Our draft is 6.5 feet. We anchor in 10-25 feet.