Great Loop: The Rapids! - Polly's Gut
On this day we travelled to Cornwall Canada. The day dawned clear and cool. We would pass through Eisenhower and Snell
Locks, for which we had to make reservations and pay a fee. Little did we know how exciting the last few
miles of the trip would be. We travelled with our friends on Dog House and Mountain Mermaid. As usual, we had earlier met to discuss the route
for days travels. By doing so we
combined the knowledge of all members and fine tuned our navigation to achieve
the best possible course.
This day Murphy, always lurking in the shadows, decided to
throw us a surprise! Our travels took us down the St. Lawrence and closer to
Montreal. The plan was to make an
extended stop there and enjoy all this 350 year old city had to offer. We were two stops away. This day’s travel would take us to Cornwall
and the following day to Valleyfield, before reaching Montreal.
Our transit of Eisenhower and Snell Locks was
straightforward. However, commercial and
government boats have priority at the locks, so we had to wait for bulk cargo
carriers and a Hovercraft to complete their trips through the locks before we
could proceed. On the VHF radio, our
vessels were called “PL’s”. This is
their code for pleasure vessel. PL’s
wait for those who make their living on the water to continue their journeys.
Snell was the last lock of the day. We exited just a couple
of miles from our destination, Marina 200, in Cornwall. As we exited the lock, we could see a large
bulk cargo carrier coming towards us.
There were two routes around Cornwall Island. One route was clockwise and the second was
counter-clockwise. We selected the
shorter route, clockwise. What we didn’t
have was “local knowledge”.
I radioed the lead boat, Mountain Mermaid to ask him if he was
going to make the port turn at red buoy “16”.
He replied affirmative and our course was set. The only sign of what we were to encounter was
that the water seemed to be moving rather fast.
Mountain Mermaid, a substantial 55’ long vessel with a
displacement of 72 tons was hit by the current as soon as it made the turn into
Polly’s Gut – the name of the channel.
The force of the water leaned this large cruiser over at an alarming
angle. Seeing this I adjusted Amy Marie’s
orientation prior to entering the fast-moving water. To maintain control and make forward progress
I increased RPM’s from 1700 to 3000. Our
speed over ground should have been ~12 mph. I checked the gauges, and we were doing less
than 1 mph. Essentially just standing
still in the swift current. This was not
going to do, and the bulk cargo carrier was now blocking any chance of exiting Polly’s
Gut via a quick reversal of direction. We
had to plunge onward.
Essentially, we found ourselves in rapids with 30’ water
depth. I throttled up to 3350 RPM and our
speed over ground increased to ~ 4 mph as our fuel economy plunged to 1 mpg
from it’s normal 4 mpg. Beth walked to
the aft cockpit to take a picture of the following boat as well as the
surrounding conditions and was immediately doused by a large wave that chose
that moment to crash over the gunwale and into the cockpit. She returned to the cabin thoroughly drenched!
Committed to our course through Polly’s Gut, we all
throttled up to planning speed and continued slowly, against the current, toward
Cornwall. Once we made a starboard turn
to the east and down the north side of Cornwall Island, conditions returned to
near normal. We had survived Polly’s Gut! We have had previous intense boating
experiences, but Polly’s Gut rates up there with Deception Pass and Malibu
Rapids at tide change. To travel into a
sustained 8 and possibly 10 mph current, in vigorous roiling water, certainly
got our full attention.
After we docked in the marina, we talked to the locals about
Polly’s Gut. They said few people travelled
that direction as the alternate path around the east end of Cornwall Island is
much more benign. The fellow we talked
to, said he would never take his Searay through Poly’s Gut and he had twin 350
Mercruisers as power. We had traversed
that route in a 27’ Ranger Tug, a 42’ Jeanneau power cruiser and a 55’ Offshore. We stood a little taller on the dock knowing
we had encountered a challenging situation and handled it. We did do a “postmortem” to see how we had
missed selecting the “preferred” route.
We did find one sentence in the Waterway guide for the area that
mentioned the high current velocity in Polly’s Gut. All of us had missed this sentence or had
given it insufficient weight during the planning process. We all emerged from this experience a little
wiser and humbled by the force of Mother Nature.
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