Entry 41
Saturday, May 18th: At 1:30 pm the bridge rose to allow our five recreational boats begin to passage through the locks. Gary and I had been sitting at a coffee shop overlooking the canal when we saw activity on the other recreational boats. We ran to Never Too Late, started the engine and followed the other boats to the now opened bridge. Finally!
As we approached the first lock I received a text from a sailor I had met the previous day. It had taken him 5 1/2 hours going through the locks yesterday in his just purchased Cape Dory 28 sailboat. Good to know, we should be through before 7 pm…
At each of the 8 locks the protocol is to raft boats together. While rafted, we would patiently wait for the water level to lower until it would be at the proper level for the forward lock gate to open. Each boat in our group would then dis-engage and move on to the next lock. ‘Never Too Late’ was the smallest and slowest of the group. When the ‘green’ light went on to proceed, the four other boats would take off for the next lock only to inevitably wait for ‘Never Too Late’ to arrive and tie up. At one point, I responded to a lock officials request over the VHF Channel 14, “Little sailboat, the other boats are waiting at the lock. Can you speed up?” I responded, “I’m giving her all she’s got!” The posted speed limit between locks is 8 mph. ‘Never Too Lates’ max speed with her 8 hp Yanmar diesel is 5 1/2 mph!
We completed the passage through the locks at midnight! It was 1 am when we tied up in Port Dalhousie Pier Marina – over 18 hours from the time we arrived at the bridge! (Boy, a lot of exclamation points.) I thanked Gary as the taxi arrived, walked back to my boat and crashed. Another long day.
Never Too Late For 