SVJoli: An Unexpected Opportunity to Try Out Our New Dinghy (We ran aground)

7/14/19 - Iroquois, Eisenhower & Snell Locks

We pulled up the anchor and were on our way by 8:15 on Sunday, 7/14/19 to get to the Iroquois Lock. No problems with Iroquois - easy-peasy. The next two locks following Iroquois are the only two American Locks on the St. Lawrence Seaway - the Eisenhower and Snell Locks near Massena, NY. The two drops (downbound) are 45’ and 38’. A cool thing about the American Locks - they have floating bollards that one line from your boat is looped around, so it makes if very easy as the water level changes, especially if you have only two people aboard. At this point, we thought we had a pretty good handle on doing the locks. Just before we approached the Eisenhower Lock, our son called so Bryan and then I, spent a few moments talking with him. That’s my excuse - we were distracted and maybe getting a little too confident. As we approached the wall on the north/east side of the lock, we ran aground. Oh no!!! We didn’t see the sign “Warning - 6 Foot Depth” until it was too late and although Bryan was watching the water depth, it shoaled up very rapidly from 45’ to us being aground with our 9’ draft. We had a mad scramble to get our dinghy in the water with the intent for me to take the dinghy to the wall with a halyard in hand, secure it to the wall and have Bryan crank it in to use the halyard to heel the boat over. In the meantime, several powerboats came out the the lock, upbound, and threw up enough of a wake for us to bounce off. Whew! Now it was a mad scramble for me to gather in the halyard and get back to the boat, get the dinghy out of the water and get into the lock while it was still open. We were able to do all that, but when we got into the lock, they asked for our receipt for advance payment. I had paid on-line the day before and had received e-mail confirmation but didn’t realize it needed to be printed. The line-handler ashore said, “Well, try forwarding the email to us or we will have you back out of the lock and wait until we have confirmation”. Really??!! Fortunately, we did not have to back out of the lock and the rest of the day was uneventful. As far as a time and place to run aground, this was not a bad situation and it gave us some practice on getting the dinghy in and out of the water. Thanks to our friend Bob, the lifting bridle and chocks work very well. AND, it is not a matter of IF you run aground, but WHEN you run aground. I’ve heard it said, “Any sailor who tells you he has never run aground is either lying or never leaves the dock”.

We were anchored in Lac Saint Francois, formed by a widening of the St. Lawrence River, by 5:00 pm, just off of Saint Zotique ashore and the shipping channel. We each took lake baths in the 69 degree water, followed by a warm water rinse. It was quite refreshing and we slept well, confident in our giant anchor to hold us in place.

The Iroquois Dam is parallel to the Iroquois Lock and it is used to control the level of Lake Ontario. All the gates were open, presumably to try and lower the lake levels.

This freighter passed up the channel at a pretty fast clip as we were anchored of St. Zotique in Lake St. Francis. For some reason, we both got a kick out of "Wagenborg" and we have been saying "WAGENBORG!" ever since. Maybe we were both tired & giddy from the day's events??