Lake Erie to Lake Ontario via the Welland Canal

If you want to get into Lake Ontario from Lake Erie by boat, you have two options, a very quick trip over Niagra Falls or a much slower venture through the Welland Canal lock system. As the Niagra Falls option doesn’t have the highest success rate, we chose the Welland Canal…

Port Colborne is the entrance point for outbound vessels beginning with Lock 8.

We arrived in Port Colborne just in time for “Canal Days” which is a four day open market festival on the Welland Canal replete with live music, tall ships and amazing kites flying in the field overlooking our Marina.

While enjoying the festivities we spent a lot of time perusing the docks just trying to figure out the logistics of the next phase of our trip, staging “Grace” for our imminent trip through the Locks.

The journey itself consists of eight locks in twenty six miles and a drop in water level of 326 feet, in sync with the Niagra Falls escarpment. Seven of the locks are concentrated in the last half of the canal and lower the boat 43 to 49 feet each.  There are also lock transit signals

and etiquette which you had better know or risk your little pleasure craft getting squashed like a bug by the gargantuan commercial vessels.

We called Seaway Welland operations that evening to get an idea of canal traffic for the following day. They told us that while there are no reservations allowed, the next morning at 7 am would be an opportune time to go as there were already a few other pleasure craft scheduled for that time and it would be a slow day for commercial traffic. GREAT! After a tumultuous night of sleep, Jeff jumped out of bed spry and chipper, (me not so much) at 05:30 am and scurried GRACE over to the canal “pleasure craft” holding area which turned out to be a tiny slip at the municipal marina. Getting GRACE into that dock was like helping a size 12 women squeeze into a size 4 dress. GRACE’s aft end was unashamedly jutting way out from the end of the dock, but she had no choice, what’s a gal to do?

As soon as you arrive, there are strict orders to call to Seaway Welland via the direct hotline located near the dock. VHF or cell phones are not permitted for this call. Why? We were not privy to their rationale but I’m thinking that maybe they want to make sure you’re actually where you say you are.  After that all Seaway Welland communications were via VHF.  They told Jeff that scheduled departure would be around 09:00 am as they were waiting on one more pleasure craft.

Our actual departure time was 10:30 am. We were both very pleased because we had heard horror stories of boaters waiting up to eighteen hours for departure. 

For some reason we were designated the communication vessel. They relayed info to us via VHF and we in turn relayed info to the three other boats in our group.  As Jeff did most of the driving I was handling most of the communications which consisted of receiving instructions via the VHF and shouting them over to the other boats in our group.  Anyone that knows me, knows that I am quite soft spoken, so my screaming probably sounded like a normal tone of voice! Somehow they actually heard me…

We were off like baby ducklings to Lock 8.

Lock 8 must have been a warm up because we descended a total of maybe four feet. It was a non-event, we just had to stay in the center of the lock while the boat descended. This is no sweat!!!! We moseyed about 10 miles down the canal to Lock 7 and that’s where the fun began. Have you ever read Pinocchio? Well I was fascinated by that story as a child especially when Gepetto in his search for Pinocchio is sailing the seas and gets swallowed by a sperm whale.  Well this story came back to me in full force at lock 7, our first full-fledged lock.  There we were, in our relatively tiny sailboat, slowly getting swallowed by walls that were growing  more and more cavernous around us…huh somebody light a fire please!

Eventually the mouth of the whale opened and we hightailed it out of there only to repeat the experience over and over six more times in a short span of only seven and a half miles.

  Like anything else, you get used to it! By our forth lock we had a system down.  Of course we started this venture well prepared.  We had fenders on both the port and starboard sides of the boat as locks 7-1 required that we pull up to a wall, catch the 75 foot polypropylene lines that the locksmen threw to us and slowly pay it out as we descend taking care to keep the boat as far from the rough concrete wall as possible.

I mentioned in a previous post that Jeff had made a fender board specifically for this trip and I would highly recommend one. We only had one for port side lock descents which was the majority of our locks but it is well worth it to have one for each side. For our two starboard descents we had to be much more vigilant to prevent damage to our side and fenders. After a lock descent of approximately 50 feet, the lock doors start creaking open, the locksmen call down that they are pulling up the lines, and you had better be prepared to immediately let go the line and scadaddle out of there quickly to move on to next lock.

We made it through the last lock at 05:30 pm. We were both extremely impressed with how quickly we made it through the Welland.  The operation was extremely efficient, bridges opened quickly and contrary to public opinion, the locksmen were very friendly and helpful.

Thoroughly pooped, we pulled into an anchorage called Chicken Bay near Port Weller, just around the corner from the canal, and enjoyed a nice quiet two day rest. 

Wondrous journey to all,

Pam