Fort Lennox to St. Jean de Richelieu

We had found a nice hotel in St. Jean de Richelieu on the 22nd after touring Ottawa for a bit, visiting the Rideau Canal Museum and driving to Quebec. I had made the mistake of going down Rte 87 toward Rouses Point, New York where we had taken out a few years ago at the northern end of Lake Champlain. I began to think about the hassle of crossing the U.S. line by car and turning around and coming back to Quebec right away by boat. So I determined to avoid this and find a place to put in just north of the line in Quebec. This meant back tracking and getting pretty lost picking our way accross Quebec. 

 

Looking at our chart of the Richelieu River there were no ramps right close to the line but there were many a few miles downstream near the midstream Island home of Fort Lennox, a French Fort built in the early 1800s. We decided on putting in and rowing south around the island so we could see the fort and also make up for some of the three miles we were skipping by not putting in over the line in NY not that we were concerned about such things. We wanted to add miles to our total so to raise the amount donated by the pledges!

 

Ft Lennox was completely grown over with bushes and we could not see any of it from the water. A West wind blew from the port side constantly. To avoid having to compensate for this wind  by pulling only on my starboard oar I headed right into the wind and moved us over next to the shoreline where we were protected except for an occasional area where the trees on land had been cleared and the wind was allowed to hit us. So we added more miles by following a crooked course compared to the route marked by the bouys. I was wishing I had installed a rudder as I have been planning to do for several years. Next time this will be done!

By the time we had rowed down to St. Jean de Richelieu a strong wind had come up and it made me Glad that tomorrow we would be rowing the well protected Champlin Canal.

 

We pulled into the ramp near a Marina at the mouth of the canal and Elaine was there with the car and trailer in a wink. We pulled the boat up on the trailer, tied it down and went to the Hotel Harris to clean up in our two room suite. I never used the whirlpool bath and I doubt may people do. I made note of the massive tank of the toilet which had to use more than five gallons! TOTO's rep in Quebec will hear about this.

 

We went to a sports bar for dinner and were seated next to some very loud and not very polite twenty somethings.  We decided that they were going to spoil our meal so we asked to be moved and we were moved to a table in another room where we were forgotton by the waitress. On the way back to the Harris Hotel we could not find a good ice cream shop as we are accustomed to doing so we went into a supermarket and chose a tub of fat free, sugar free

yogurt and took it back to the hotel to devour it before bed.