We had an uneventful day today. Winds remained strong for most of the night but we were secure. There was very little wind today so we motored across the lake Port Colborne, 25 miles or so. Cleared into Canada by phone while making the crossing, everything went well since we have Nexus cards.
Tied up here at Sugarloaf Marina then visited with some of the local boat owners for a bit, very nice people. We walked to to the nearest lock to check things out prior to our journey through tomorrow. There was no pleasure boat traffic at the time, just a freighter. We did watch the entire process of the boat entering the lock, the water level being brought up to the final level then the boat exiting the lock. Jeff had been through the Soo Locks on a freighter many years ago and we have subsequently watched many freighters pass through the Soo over the years… Wondering how many other people have spent so much time watching freighters pass through the locks?
Taking Echo through ourselves will be a new and intimidating experience for us, spending the evening reading over all the details in preparation for our journey.
We hope to head through tomorrow but the current forecast is for very high winds and 90% chance of rain, will check again in the morning but may have to wait till Friday when a much lighter wind is forecast.
We have a piece of equipment aboard called AIS. Standing for Automatic Identification System, it is a transponder we have that broadcasts our position to other boats so they can see us electronically, and receives broadcasts from other boats so we can see them.
Although set up as a boat to boat system, there are websites that have set up shoreside receivers that pick up ship broadcasts and make the reports available on the internet. So, if our equipment is on and there is a website shore station within about 10 miles of us, you should see Echo on screen. The Welland seems pretty well covered so you should be able to see us tomorrow (if weather is good enough for us to go). Here is a site link: