Down the river to Ottawa (2013-06-28)

As we did last year, we decided to spend Canada Day this year tied up to the canal wall above the Ottawa locks.  It's a great location.  You can join right in with all the crazy crowds, but you're close enough to escape to the peace and serenity of the boat when the crowd becomes overwhelming.

Our future son-in-law volunteered voluntold to assist with the trip, as the cruise director was unavailable due to work.  So, I picked him up on Thursday night, and we headed out to the boat for a steak and beer guy's night.  I had him assist me with the anchor swap that I wrote about in the last post as well.

We awoke to rain, and forecasts of nothing but for the rest of the day.  Not to worry, as I've got a lower helm, so we can run in comfort regardless of the amounts of liquid sunshine falling from the sky.

That of course doesn't help much when you're locking, but at least you've got someplace nice and comfy to duck back into when you get underway out of the lock.

We left Pirate Cove marina at 07:30, and arrived at the Ottawa canal wall above the locks at 14:30.  All in all it was a good day, other than being very wet.  The rain did help in one respect in that it kept most of the other boats off of the river.  We had all of the lock chambers to ourselves, and other than having to wait at Long Island locks for a boat to be locked up we didn't have any delays at all. 

As we turned the final corner before the Ottawa canal wall I was a little dismayed to see boats back as far as Laurier, but I decided to check out the wall at the top of the locks just in case.  Sure enough, as we cleared the Mackenzie King bridge we saw that most of the west wall of the canal in front of Le Cafe was empty.  Thankful for our good fortune I headed for the most northern spot on the west wall, only staying back one railing section due to the last railing section being broken.

The view looking aft from the flybridge - Lots of room!

Neighbours starting to show up by the time this pic was taken

The weather forecast for Sunday and Monday calls for partly cloudy and no rain, so it looks promising for a good Canada Day.  Fingers crossed...