Going North by True North

Adventure lovers will remember Gene Porter’s story of a trip north along the veritable aquatic superhighway that is Lake Champlain and its appendages into the heart of old French Canada. Invited to judge the very first Montreal Classic Boat Festival. In 2008, inspired by to revisit the beauty of this country by waterway, Gene loaded up his trusty Lyman, True North, and launched for a three-day immersion into history. 

Here is the story of his adventure, reprinted from the winter 2010 edition of ACBS Rudder.

Sometimes getting to a boat show is a story all by itself. Gene Porter decided to take the long way around to the nearby Montreal Boat Show. He reminds us that adventure awaits those who slow down and take life as it happens at water level. 

Gene Porter and True North on Lake Champlain (Photo credit: Holly Weber)

All ACBS members know that Lyman boats were built to explore distant galaxies, not just the local fishing holes. And so I had always cheered on our New England Lyman Group and Lake Champlain Chapter members who delight us every year with tales of their harrowing exploits in their Lymans on the Potomac River, Lake Ossippee, Newfound Lake, Otter Creek, Sebago and beyond. 

In 2009 I was feeling a little left out of these trailblazing adventures; I was spending more time in airplanes flying to and from work than I was spending in any of my three Lymans. And
even more embarrassing, I had previously been known to announce at inappropriate moments that those folks who had located on Lake George and Lake Winnipesaukee and similar landlocked prestigious venues failed to appreciate the true opportunities for adventure offered by vintage boating to distant shores sans trailer. We purists feel compelled to locate whenever possible on bodies of water from which we can go anywhere in the world by boat – but only in principle, of course. The lure of the open channel, if you will. Hence we and our Lymans are disproportionately located on the Great Lakes, the Ohio, Mississippi and other navigable rivers, and, in my case, on Lake Champlain.

A local senator once succeeded – briefly – in officially designating Lake Champlain as the Sixth Great Lake. The lake is 126 miles long and up to eight miles wide the northern border between New York State and Vermont. It drains north via the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence River, not south to the Hudson like it seems it should, although the Champlain Canal connects it southward to the Hudson. Thus Lake Champlain and its appendages form a veritable aquatic superhighway from the heart of old French Canada to New York City, a route followed by countless warring tribes and armies over several centuries of recorded history. I have always been taken by the rich and complex history of this fascinating region, including that of my own family roots. 

Thus the stage was set for my receipt of an invitation to judge vintage boats at the very first Montreal Classic Boat Festival in August of 2009. Old Port Montreal is only an hour or two away from my lakefront camp by car, which would have made it an easy quick weekend drive to admire old boats and enjoy great food. But the impetus for a greater adventure took shape earlier that year with the publication of Kathy Muller’s paean to cruising the Richelieu River in the New England Chapter newsletter Cutwater. I looked at my Cruising Guide to Lake Champlain and the NYS canals and found it included both the 100 miles due north down the Richelieu and almost the reverse distance and direction SSW back up the St. Lawrence. So why not go to Montreal by boat? Why not indeed! Three days in an old boat can usually beat a couple of hours in a tow truck hands down. 

And so I went north by boat in True North, my 1959 23’ Lyman Sleeper with its 60-year-old Graymarine Fireball V-8. After all, it had made it to Manhattan and back by water from Champlain a couple of years earlier for the ACBS Annual Meeting in Lake George with no more trouble than one noisy valve tappet. Despite the bravado, I would have preferred to have some other old boats in company, but, because of the lateness of both the decision and season, I found no takers. 

So with my pickup crew of three friends from Washington, we immediately broke Rule One on a Wednesday morning by trailering True North to the public launch ramp at Rouses Point, 40 miles north of my camp at the end of the Lake. We soon passed Fort Montgomery, locally called Fort Blunder because it was initially built on the wrong side of the border in the nineteenth century, and cleared Canadian Customs at their dock with no wait. 

Space doesn’t permit a full recapitulation of this wonderful trip, which included old French towns with their good dockage and great wine, bread, cheese, cozy restaurants and twin-spire historic churches. We stopped overnight at two such towns enroute to Montreal. The first, Handfield, on the lower Richelieu turned out to also be a favorite dinner destination for Montréalers and is only a half hour drive away by car. 

Having preplanned our first B and B stop at Handfield we needed to ensure we reached the canal around the Chambly Rapids starting at St. Jean. We’d have to be there in time to pass through all of the nine, old, hand-operated locks before they were closed for the night. As it turned out, by getting a late start and dawdling enroute, we just made the last lockage of the day down to the Chambly Basin with its waterside mini-brewery housed in an old church. The rapids we bypassed didn’t look too treacherous until I remembered that the main problem they had posed was to the French and British trying to haul warships up the rapids to do battle on Lake Champlain. 

The Richelieu, though settled along both shores, particularly below the Chambly Basin, does not feel like the suburbs of a major metropolis. Our second overnight was at in the historic village of Contrecoeur on a side channel of the St. Lawrence. Our B and B was across the street from an eighteenth-century home that had been used by French rebels briefly and unsuccessfully fighting English rule in the mid-nineteenth century. 

In between Handfield and Contrecoeur we passed through the large lock at St. Ours and then stopped for fuel at the industrial port city of Sorel where the Richelieu empties into the broad St. Lawrence. This was also the site of our overnight on the two-day trip back to Champlain after the show and after a crew change to welcome family members from Ohio. 

French-British-Canadian-American-Indian history is everywhere, from the restored old, stone, Fort Lennox that guards the middle of the Richelieu on Isle-aux-Noix near the border, to the distant St. Francis River, home of the notorious St. Francis Indians, whose villages were torched during the Seven Years War by Rogers Rangers in retribution for years of lethal raids on American farmsteads in New Hampshire and Vermont. One of my crew comes from an Army Ranger background and Rogers seems to have been something of a role model – sort of like John Paul Jones for naval officers. So my friend’s visit to the Indian Museum at St. Francis was a sort of pilgrimage that I was delighted to be able to shepherd. Of course, the museum did not mention Rogers.

The St. Lawrence is festooned with islands and side channels between Sorel and Montreal, which made for easy and delightful cruising. There were endless wildlife-filled islands and side channels that largely avoid the somewhat sparse shipping in the main Seaway shipping channel. 

Weekday traffic was very light on our Wednesday–Friday trip that ended at the show site—a new set of downtown docks in the middle on historic Old Port Montreal at the start of the Lachine Canal. The approach to Montreal involves a rapid transition from bucolic river cruising to major and interesting industrial port activity, none of which impeded our progress, but can be choppy with the prevailing wind and wakes. 

Among the 80 or so lovely old boats at the show that ranged from historic skiffs to big varnished cruisers, we were the only American boat to have arrived by water. And there were many—too many—good restaurants within walking distance to sample in our three-day hotel stay. 

We had only three adverse incidents of note on the whole trip. The first was the employment of the always useful Lyman bronze skeg to keep the prop clear of a rock way up the St Francis River when I wandered from the channel and failed to watch the sounder closely. 

The second was on the return trip with a family crew when my 5-year-old grandson jumped a freighter wake and dislodged True North’s stern light pole into the deep. The third was a shipmate’s minor pratfall when leaping to a dock. All in all, a highly successful adventure. 

Those interested in making this easy trip should get the Cruising Guide and the Canadian charts, but understand that the Guide is written for bigger “sleep aboard” boats and requires
some supplemental research by phone and on the web to find the additional access points and
accommodations available to our smaller boats. There were enough marinas enroute to preclude fuel anxiety, but it was good to have pre-located them on the charts. We had good weather by and large, but the big river and big lake both can build up a sea state that render smaller, flat-bottom boats difficult to manage safely. 

Gene and his family on True North. (Photo credit: Holly Weber).

And yes, it would have been nice to have another old boat or two for company, but making this trip was decided too late to organize such an expedition. Besides, Frank Mahaffey’s many solo exploits should give us all confidence that we too can follow in the wake of Henry Hudson and Sam Champlain.