Montreal at anchor.

Wed Aug 24

We made it through the last lock at 11:00pm last night.
Steaming down the Seaway in the dark was "interesting".  I was on helm for about 40 minutes and trying to stay in the middle of the unlit channel using the streetlights aand trail lampos alongide was rather scary. On the plus side I only got close to the bank once. The Pilot's comment was "I wouldn't go any further to port unless you want to get your Captain's feet wet."  Yikes :-O

We anchored off the industrial docks of Montreal, in the distance we could  see the lights and towers of downtown Montreal.

When we went off watch at Midnight I hit the rack and was dead to the world until all hands were woken up for breakfast at 7:00 this morning.  Niko is doing a fantastic job as cook, his breakfasts are great, simple but robust, just the way I like them.

Then it was all hands turn to to get the ship ready to motor sail down the river toward Quebec City, Gaspe and the Gulf of St Lawrence.

I got to do some "mousing", using thin wire to essentially lash the pins on shackles into place so they can't come loose and drop out.  The shaclkles were on the iron bumkins that support the blocks for the main braces on te quarter deck.  This meant I had to be leaning over the side of the ship, so my harness was a useful thing.

Then we unshipped all the canal fenders and lashed them back into the breezeway.
They had all been covered with crisco so they would slide easier along the lock walls so manhandling them back aboard was tricky. Like great slippery logs.

We reset the main and foryard back from their "cockbilled" for and aft  position that was needed to clear the sides of the locks. Then using tackles rigged on the end of the main yard and the main stay we hoisted the skiff off the hatcway and put it back in the water so it coud be hoisted back into its davits on the  starboard side. That was an all hands process as it is a very heavy boat.

Finally once everything was squared away we started to hoist up the anchor using our ancient hand windlass on the focsle head. Interesting bit of trivia for you, the windlass was made at the Lunenberg foundary and was the very last one ever made, It was put together from spare parts that the foundary still had!  And unlike other things on this ship that have changed, hoisting the anchor is still a pain in the butt! At least we were using the modern Starboard anchor not the Fisheman style Port anchor and there wasn't much wind blowing. A couple of people asked if I needed to be spelled off, which was nice, but I decided to try and stick it out and made it all the way till the anchor was safe in its hawse on the bow.  I'm going to pay for that later I think :-)

Fiji oversaw the mornings operations carefully going around everyone as they worked.

We just finished lunch and everyone broke off into their watches, which means I'm off till 8:00pm. Woo.

We are curretly motorsailing down the river under Lower Topsails with the Pilot aboard and it is a beautiful sunny day.