Short Trip Through Two Big Shipping Locks On the Saint Lawrence River

Hard to Believe, in All Our Boating Experiences, We Had Never Cruised On the Saint Lawrence River – 

That was about to change after we left the quaint Quebec town of Saint-Ann-de-Bellevue. On our last day cruising to Montreal, we would encounter two huge international shipping locks on the Saint Lawrence River, Cote Sainte Catherine, and Saint-Lambert. These are the first of two locks on the eastern end of the impressive Saint Lawrence Seaway. Over 50 nations, use the Seaway ports in the United States and Canada.

Although this last leg of our cruise to Montreal was short in miles, we had to be prepared to experience delays and work with a whole new set of procedures, while locking through these mammoth locks. On the Saint Lawrence Seaway, cargo ships, freighters, and cruise ships have priority over recreational boaters. We were lucky that shipping and recreational traffic were both light that day. We followed a smaller cruise ship most of the way through both locks. The captain of the cruise ship had a say in if we would lock through with his ship or not. A courtesy call we suppose.

SAINT LAWRENCE SEAWAY LOCK FACTS

Each Seaway lock holds 21 million gallons of water,
equivalent to roughly 30 Olympic- sized swimming pools.

The locks use the law of gravity to fill and empty.
To raise a ship, they open the upstream lock valves and the water flows in.
To lower a vessel, they open the downstream valves and the water flows out.

Each lock in the system is 766 feet long, 80 ft. wide, and 30 ft. deep over the sill.

A lock fills with approximately 24 million gallons of water in just 7 to 10 minutes.

Transiting a lock takes about 45 minutes.

We tied alongside this boater through both locks. The captain helped us with translating instructions from the lock masters, as they operated mostly in French.