Up the St Lawrence to Kingston

[jadamsson]

We are looking at a trip up the St Lawrence this spring/summer from PEI to Kingston, and I'm hoping to tap into the experience of others on this forum. We have a Beneteau 37 foot sailboat, and because of commitments at both end, we will probably be more like a delivery rather than a cruise, which is unfortunate because I would love to take a leisurely cruise of the St Lawrence.

We're currently looking at getting a start in early June, and are only starting to do our research.

Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

[GRIT]

Made that trip in Reverse, was very nice. All I can say about going the other way would be to sit out the tides while they're flowing outbound. I anchored in the shallows (sometimes in the centre of the river) until the tide turned, then kept on motoring when the tide was favourable. You'll have shorter windows, but you also have a boat that will motor better than my old Hughes 35.

Cheers.
Paul.

[S/V Alchemy]

Against all of the current and most of the wind, bring money for diesel and make sure your ground tackle and engine are in good order.

Other than that, we Canadians are quite civilized and west of Quebec City there are many interesting lay-bys.

[mattilac]

Wondering how the trip to Kinston went?? We are considering doing this same trip in reverse. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Wondering what a reasonable amount of time would be to plan. Thanks in advance. Matt

[jadamsson]

We made it to Kingston with no problems. We took 15 days from when we left PEI, which included a day in Rimouski (weather related) and 2 days in Montreal (just because it's Montreal). The biggest issue was timing the currents through the St Lawrence downstream of Trois Rivieres.

We documented the whole trip on our blog at Sailing Obsession, partly because we found very little information on the web and wanted to make it easier for others making the trip.