Trent-Severn Canal to Orillia 7-23-10

I know a number of you have emailed me that you would like to trade places for a day but today would probably not be the best choice. We’ve had steady rain since 4am and although it brought a welcome 64 degrees this morning, there are 25 knot winds out on Lake Simcoe, our destination for today. We decided to wait until 10 am and then slop along in the rain through 5 locks (#37-41). This canal section carves right through farmland and the cows had more sense today and remained in the barn. Luckily, the lake calmed down by noon and we had a good crossing over to Orillia.

Port of Orillia Marina offers great service at an excellent price ($1.40 per foot and 3rd day is free.) It is a chance to power up, take a really looooooong shower and explore a neat town. The town is decorated with artistic guitars to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their folk festival and also their hometown troubadour, Gordon Lightfoot. Any Lake Superior boater knows all the words to his song, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and we try not to focus too much on “the lake, it is said, never gives up her dead….”

Orillia has another famous denizen, Brian Orser, the Olympic skater from the 1980s who landed the first triple axle in the Olympics. My daughter Kate was a figure skater then and we watched him with awe. His legacy lives on here at the Brian Orser Skating Arena and he trained the 2010 Olympic gold medalist, Kim Yu-Na, close by in Toronto.

We will probably be leaving here tomorrow to get ahead of some more bad weather headed our way. We did enjoy the street fair but I am not really sure where Bob is---sometimes it’s like trying to Find Waldo.

PS--It's good to have a plan but stay flexible. I woke up at 6am on Saturday, 7/24 and it was a stiffling 85% humidity with absolutely no air flow. New plan is to stay here at Orillia and wait for the weather to get ahead of us. We had a great day here starting with breakfast at Zats, a long walk to the Stephen Leacock Museum and then another long walk on the Lightfoot trail. Stephen Leacock is the Mark Twain of Canada and the used book store had a copy of his famous book, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. It really makes small town Canada come alive with colorful characters and anecdotes.

The next 2 days we will be making our way towards famous lock #44, the Chute. You do not want to miss this one--we will be traveling by railroad track laid in the water, then over land and downhill like a roller coaster with a splashdown on the other side.

Trent-Severn Canal to Lock 37 at Bolsover 7-22-10

Today’s journey took us across Balsam Lake and the highest point, 840 feet above sea level, on the T-S Canal. We’ve heard that 300 buoys have been removed since we were last here in 2005 and sometimes we question the economy of this and it increases the value of a Chartplotter.

Descriptors for today include claustrophobic narrows, dizzying heights and wide beams. The narrow section of the Trent Canal from Balsam Lake to Murray Lake is not for the faint of heart as its shale rock borders will crush you if you make a mistake. It is customary to issue a Securite upon entering so it can be negotiated safely. You are rewarded for your efforts by a chorus of songbirds and catch a glimpse of herons and osprey in the low-hanging trees.

You go from this pastoral landscape right into the upper pan of the Kirkfield Lift Lock where you quickly descend 49 feet below. Here’s a picture from the top and then from the opposite end. As the old Chicago song says, “What goes up, must come down…”

The adventure continued through Canal Lake with skinny water (4 foot 8 inches lowest) and stumps below. We draw almost 4 feet and did a bump the stump between green buoys # 405 and 403 and thank goodness for single engine keel protection. Then there’s the “Hole in the Wall” Arch which often traps debris but today was being dredged and we had 5 foot 8 inches here so no problem.

We tied up at narrow Bolsover, Lock 37, but had to move twice as a wide beam Bayliner was locking through and needed a lot of the mooring wall width to come through. This canal was built in the 19th and early 20th century at a width of 32 feet but with some modern boats having beams of 20+ feet it makes it difficult to all fit securely. The canal recommends boats not having more than a depth of 5 feet and we think a beam width maximum should also be added.

Trent-Severn Canal to Fenelon Falls 7-21-10

We had a peaceful night at anchor and awoke to the call of loons. The rode and anchor were surprisingly easy to hose down and we left for the second locking through at Bobcaygeon. It was sprinkling so I did not have my camera on deck to photograph the exquisite canal front properties competing with each other for your attention with multilevel decks with coordinated flower and furniture motifs.

You will be in many photos if you lock through Bobcaygeon from 9:30 am on as boat gawking is a medal sport here. When we were here last in 2005, the crowd was 5 deep with lawn chairs and cameras and we wondered who they were waiting for, realized it was any boater locking through so I immediately developed performance anxiety, and dropped my line in the water.

We just met a boater who did $1,200. in propeller damage hitting a rock between green buoys #363 and 365 at Bobcaygeon so we asked the lockmaster if the greens were off-station. It is clearly marked on Chart 2025, Sheet 1 and buoys have not been moved. The boater may have been affected by wind and some current through here so stay in the middle of the channel.

We had a fairly easy day today doing only 20 miles and 1 lock as we stopped on the mooring wall before Fenelon Falls by 12 noon as there was space here. If you start hunting for mooring wall space any time after 1- 2pm, you might not find it in this busy area of the canal. We only had 10mph wind, but it kicked up later in the afternoon to 25mph + creating a real challenge for locking and docking.

Bob and I are voting for Fenelon Falls for best lock garden. Here’s a picture of the dam at Fenelon Falls complete with fishermen of all ages trying to catch huge bass and walleye. We’ve seen this all along the canal, and at Hastings, I thought that I had overslept when I heard a crowd outside our boat, but it was 20 fishermen heading to their favorite places on the canal at 5am. I love seafood and one of these days I am going to learn to catch my own dinner.

Trent-Severn Canal to Bobcaygeon 7-20-10

As of our 35 mile trip today through Buckhorn and Pigeon Lakes, we are half way through the length of Trent-Severn and have completed three-quarters of the locks. I’m sure many of you are wondering why I have not included more scenery pictures. The grassy marshlands and flooded rivers lack definition and appear flat and lumpy with my camera. That changed briefly today as we began to see more rocky pine islands of the Canadian Shield and they give a hint of what lies ahead in Lake Huron. If you want rocks, Hell’s Gate is your place as we zigzagged through here at first light.

We did 3 locks today, each with a very different ambience. Our mooring wall at Young’s Point last night got really crowded with huge rental houseboats being wedged in everywhere. This morning we passed through the Burleigh Falls Lock and that mooring wall is smaller and more isolated and would probably have been a better fit for us. Here’s a picture of Lock 30, Lovesick, named for a jilted lover who took refuge here. This is not a problem for the Canadian geese that come here to mate and party but the park staff do great clean-up duty. It is an island lock with a bridge to another island with a walking trail to explore and would be a good stop.

Lock 31 is Buckhorn and is right in the busy tourist area with ragtime music playing, a Farmers’ Market and boats going every which way. We were hoping that the houseboats bearing down on us in this picture would slow down but then there were speedboats trying to overtake them coming up to this narrow channel. We were longing for some solitude and found an anchorage just before the hectic Bobcaygeon lock area in Pigeon Lake off Big Island in the Back Channel. The holding ground is grass and mud so you know the washdown pump will get a workout tomorrow morning but tonight we will float freely.

Trent-Severn Canal to Young’s Point 7-19-10

Some days we do 5-6 locks and relatively little mileage like 14 miles to Hastings on 7-17; other days we do 40 miles and only a few locks to get to the outskirts of Peterborough on 7-18. You can’t really do both easily. The big story this week is weather—thunderstorms and heavy rains that are swelling the dams and rivers, overflowing the banks and creating 2-3 mph current against us as we head towards Georgian Bay. Imagine my surprise when there was a tornado spotted in Hastings as I was reading Wicked, the real story of the Wicked Witch of the West from Oz.

The waterway locks raise boats 600 feet from Trenton on Lake Ontario and then lowers them 263 feet to meet Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. Most of the locks so far have been hand-cranked simple locks with a 7-26 feet lift, a few double hydraulic lifts of 48-54 feet but on 7-19, we floated in a huge pan of water lifted 65 feet in the air like a ferris wheel in the Peterborough Lift Lock. This is all accomplished with the addition of a 1 foot of water on one side—amazing 19th century technology.

We continued in lock mode through 7 more locks on 7-19 and traveled with Loopers, Blue Max, Tadpole and Takitez. We had a rhythm going with the four boats entering the locks in an orderly procession, tying off lines, fending off as needed and then relaxing and visiting. We all dispersed to different lock walls for the night as there is simply no room for 4 boats traveling together on mooring walls filled with vacation boaters.

What do we do at the end of the day? Here’s a picture of Joe and Joyce on Takitez giving their dog, Rosie, a bath. We opted for special dinner out at the Old Bridge Inn at Lock 27 and the meal was fantastic. Lockside Trading Company is also located here and is a great place to browse.

Trent-Severn Canal to Campbellford 7-15-10

We did another 6 locks today and the only “biting” point was killing flies on the aptly named “flybridge” as we cruised through the lower marshlands. Our destination was the town of Campbellford where we tied up on the Old Mill Park west mooring wall that has power and showers for a reasonable price. The Chamber of Commerce manages this and their tourist information staff even helped us get haircut appointments on a busy Friday.

You can do a self-guided walking tour of historic homes and churches. We made a beeline for Canadian Tire—funny name but it’s like Home Depot. There is good Wi-Fi at the wall and also at the library. If you’re here on a Thursday evening, there is a yoga class at the Community Centre; Wednesday and Saturday evenings, there are free concerts in the park and there is even a one screen movie theatre. I enjoyed a workout in the community pool ($3.00) and I cashed in this caloric burn with a tasting visit to the World’s Finest Chocolate Factory store. Locals and other boaters recommend the restaurant, Capers, and if you have to reprovision, there are 2 grocery stores, a Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning and a clean laundromat. This is not a low cal stop as you have to buy a little something at Dooher’s Bakery.

The highlight of this stop was meeting other Loopers. We have not seen any in quite awhile so it was great to spend the evening with new Loopers, Luc and Jocelyne aboard Blue Max iv; mid-Loopers Richard and Tiki aboard Tadpole and almost gold Loopers, Joe and Joyce on Takitez.

Later in the evening, Marilsnick II, a Grand Banks 36 with Washington state registrations numbers, docked. Johann and his crew are also doing the Loop and he had his boat trucked to Mobile AL by a Marysville WA company with a lowboy truck so the flybridge did not need to be removed.

I asked him why he wasn’t flying an AGLCA burgee and he told me the story of how “a lion ate it.” He was maneuvering around the construction by the Lion’s Gate Bridge in St. Augustine FL when the current slammed his boat ferociously into a bridge piling which severed the burgee mast, took a chunk out of his swim platform and demolished his davits. Next morning, I found our now retired white AGLCA burgee and presented it to Johann. We may have to visit it in the Pacific Northwest. Shall we ship Baby Grand out there to do the Inside Passage or do it by RV and ferry? Always looking to the next adventure……

Starting the Trent-Severn Canal 7-14-10

The Trent-Severn Canal glides across central Canada’s rivers, bays, marshlands and lakes and then fills in the connecting pieces with the canal to link Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. It was built over an 87 year period as a commercial waterway, follows the route of many of the voyageurs and has locks ranging from simple limestone to the sublime lift locks at Peterborough and Kirkfield as well as ending in a flourish at the Big Chute. Come along on the ride.

We started the Trent-Severn Canal on Wednesday, July 14th after picking up a load of diesel ($1.10 Canadian per liter) and having a great night at Fraser Park Marina. Craig, the dock master, is outstanding and even gave us two great food tips: Tomasso’s for dinner and “You have to try Tim Horton’s (like Dunkin’ Donuts but better)—it’s the Canadian way.” I can’t believe that we’ve been in Canada for 6 weeks, toured lots of museums but overlooked this national treasure. We’ve only wimped out on one food tip so far—potine in Quebec Province. It’s made from fried potatoes with cheese curds and gravy poured over the top and guaranteed to stop your heart.

In our 2005 trip, we did the first 17 locks in 1 day; now, we’re taking 4 days. Locks are hand-cranked by a senior lockkeeper and fresh-faced summer hires who are all Canadian good will ambassadors. Each lock has a cottage with a well-tended garden. This year they are distributing lock cards with depictions of flora and fauna along the canal. This lock we got a rattlesnake card but Bob now has snake experience on his Captain’s resume from the 1,000 Islands so not to worry.

We stopped for the day along the mooring wall below Lock 7. Most boaters stay at Lock 6 for power, but this lock has peace and quiet, and with a willow tree for shade, a beautiful garden, and a picnic table, it was a perfect place to while away a hot summer afternoon. It brought back memories of long carefree summer days. Visits by locals, a short walk to Richard and Donna’s General Store for ice cream and the neon dots of lightning bugs at night made this a very memorable stay.