1st day of our cruise. We left the Toronto port early this morning with a short ride across Lake Ontario. We then entered the Welland Canal. The Welland Canal takes you from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. It was built by the british and is part of Canada. The Canal consists of 8 locks, takes about 8-10 hours to transgress and will raise the ship up 375 ft to Lake Erie’s Level. The locks were built in the early 1800s and then rebuilt three times more. The current locks are of the 1930 vintage with several upgrades.

Our ship is the Viking Octantis, a newer ship for the Viking fleet. Nana and I were also on this ship for the South American cruise last year. Our ship just fits in the locks. It looks like to me about 1 foot clearance on each side of the ship. Can you imagine if they got the measurement wrong by 3’ !!

I took my mandatory submarine briefing today. Yes, this ship has two submarines on it and they will take guests down. The submarines can go down 300 ft and will seat 6 people with a pilot as the 7th person. We had to be weighed (limit was 275 lbs)….. lucky I have lost all that weight, and then we had to do a mobility test to make sure we can get in and out of the submarine on our own. They will let us know when and where later for our submarine excursion.

We are slowing progressing the locks. We had to wait a while at lock 3 for the sister ship of our ship. According to the crew, this rarely happens. This class of ship (of which there are 2) go back and forth for the Great Lakes cruise all summer long.

Finally got through the locks, it took about 12 hours. The first iteration of the canal had 41 locks and was private. But, being built of wood it eventually went bankrupt.

For dinner tonight we ate at the Italian restaurant, one of Nana’s favorite.

Tomorrow is Niagra Falls