Chambly

Chambly, Quebec
N 45 26.950 W 073 17.016

The morning started with a grounding. You see, the day before, as we pulled in to the slip, we grounded in soft mud and had to force Tarwathie in to the slip. There is only a slight tide at Sorel, but this morning it must have been an inch or two lower than when we pulled in. It gave us a chance to demonstrate a little seamanship and practice warping.

Warping in a boat is not a reference to Star Trek. Rather it means moving the boat using lines tied to fixed objects. In this case, I took a long line from our stern and tied it to a cleat two slips away. To do that I had to walk over someone else's boat and I woke up the man sleeping inside. I apologized profusely.

With the stern warped to the dock we could back with full power, yet be assured that as we backed out, the stern would swing in a circular arc with the fixed point of the warp at the center. It worked just right. We used full power, and just as we broke away from the bottom and Tarwathie backed toward a collision with the boats behind us, the warp swung us nicely in to the channel. The other boaters watching us said, "good job."

The trip down the Richelieu River was very pleasant. The river banks are picturesque pretty. (Grrr, we have no camera to take the pictures.) Most of it is developed with a mixture of permanent homes, vacation homes, and farms. As the day went on, the boat traffic increased and increased until it was extremely heavy and crowded. It was also dangerous. There were very many water skiers in the water and there were also cigarette speed boats roaring past at 50 to 60 knots within the confined space
of the river banks. It is a recipe for tragic accidents. Fortunately, none happened yesterday for us to see.

We got to Chambly around 18:30 and tied up at the lock wall for the night. We went out to the village to explore. The first thing we found was a public exercise/aerobics group in progress. They had a dynamite young man leading it and it looked like everyone was having fun. That is everyone from 5 to 70 years old. I was tempted to join in myself, but I couldn't understand the instructor's commands in French. Then we found a supermarket. Like the one in Kingston, it had better quality food,
more variety and better prices than USA supermarkets. This time, Libby was with me to see it.