081: Trent Severn's Waterway Part Three: Stuck and no "Chunky Dunk"

 On the 25^th of July we woke up to a pretty nice sunrise at the lock with high hopes for the day’s travel.

 

We hoped to possibly get as far as the Smith Falls lock, but to quote Rick from Casablanca, “Destiny took a hand”.   It was windy and I checked the conditions on Lake Simco, a rather large lake that we had to traverse for approximately eleven n/m’s, and the Canadian weather service indicated 1.5-foot waves on our nose (technically they said .48 meters).   At the last lock before the Lake, Nancy asked one of the lock staff what they had heard and the gal said, “a boat said it was 1.5 meter waves out on Lake Simco” (five feet) which I knew was b/s, but caused a bit of anxiety on the good ship Hygge.     We decided to tie up to the lock wall for lunch and see if any boats came our way off the Lake for more direct information.  

 I got in a grove working on the previous blog posting and eventually some boats came off the lake reporting three footers from the northwest, which meant three footers on our nose.  Not great, but not terrible either.  A couple of larger boats that we had met that week came into the lock, and long story short, we decided to go for it, a few hours behind schedule.  

 It was a bit saucy, but not too bad (at most, three footers, no 1.5 but not 5 either).  Here is a “two for one” video:  lake conditions and our resident spider getting lunch:

As we approached the end of Lake Simco, reports came in that the Swift Rapids lock was broken, so we pulled into the Port of Orillia marina for the night.    We wound up staying four nights as the lock wasn’t fixed until Sunday (we pulled in on Thursday), but we didn’t leave until Monday as there was a big backlog of people wanting to get through.    If you had to be stuck anywhere on the TSW, Orillia is the best town to be stuck at on the TSW, IMHO.    A very nice town.   Here are some pictures from our stay:

 

Cool boat:

Street Art:

GORDON!

We filled our time watching the Olympics (the Opening Ceremony was “so French”) and Sunday night we went to a concert in the park and enjoyed some big band jazz music with a picnic dinner.  Nice.

 

We did learn a new term.  It was suggested that if we lacked entertainment during our forced stay at Orillia we might want to run up to Big Chief Island for the day.  Apparently this is like the "playpen" in Chicago where boats raft up and party, only with a bit more free spiritedness.  When I mentioned this to a Canadian couple to request some local knowledge, the response was: "Are you going to take a "Chunky Dunk?"   "What is a Chunky Dunk?" I asked.   The response:  "When you are young and thin, it's called a "skinny dip," when you are old and put on a few pounds, its called a "Chunky Dunk."  We passed.

On Monday, the 29^th, we finally headed out and made it to Port Severns where we stayed at a marina before going through the last lock on the TSW.   Along the way we took the famous “Big Shoot Railway.”   Rather than having a water-filled lock, the Big Chute is a railway that lifts your boat up and over a small spit of land from one body of water to another.   Quite the experience.  

 

Our ride on the Big Chute:

 It gets rocky and you go through some narrow channels:

We pulled into Starport Mariana that night, watched some Olympics and Nancy got this picture of a nice sunset.   The next day we’d go through the last lock on the TSW and officially be out on Georgian Bay!

 

 Dave

 

Odometer: 5,270 n/m’s

080 Trent Severn's Waterway Part Two

On July 21^st we left Hastings, ON heading toward Peterborough home of the famous hydraulic lift lock, the highest in the world.  More on that later.   We got some nice pictures on the way.

 War Memorial:

Double lock:

Not a real bear, but we are looking for them:

We got a marina slip at Peterborough to relax a bit and get some laundry done.

 

A highlight of our visit was the Canadian Canoe Museum.  Just fantastic. 

I liked this: 

Inuit kayak:

That night Gary and Pip, the Canadian couple we met in the Thousand Islands, stopped by for a visit and it was nice to see them again.   We got a strong admonition to play the song “Bobcaygeon” by The Tragically Hip at sunset when we got to the town of Bobcaygeon.  More on that later as well.

The next day we took the famous lift lock, it operates on hydraulics.   Earlier the previous day they did their annual “stuff as many canoes and kayaks into the lift” event:

The lift lock:

Kayak event:

We followed this boat into the lock:

Sign at the lock:

 

We had a long day (twenty-eight n/m’s and eleven locks!) wanting to get to Buckhorn as that lock station has power.  We were delayed in Peterborough as the lock masters needed to lower the water a bit before we could lock through that region (seven locks in nine s/m’s), so we weren’t sure if we could make it through the Buckhorn lock to the upper side where the power pedestals are located.   The locks close at 5:30 pm on the weekdays (except Friday till 6:30) and they will lock you through if in the lock by then.  Well, long story short, we pulled into the Buckhorn lock at 5:28 p.m. (I might have gone a little faster than no-wake speed in certain areas 😉) and got through.

Getting through the lock that late probably meant that all the power stations would be taken, but there was one opening that we just barely fit into on the lock wall.  And by barely, I mean less than a foot on either end of the boat, but we made it.   We had dinner on the boat, but did go out for ice cream, which is why I’ve gained weight on this trip.  

 We left Buckhorn on the 23^rd, but not before Nancy got this nice sunrise shot:

 

We only had to go fourteen n/m’s to get to Bobcaygeon.  This is a crowded section of the TSW, so I wanted to get to Bobcaygeon as close to 9:00 a.m. as possible, when the locks opened.   The logic here was that some boats would be leaving their lock wall spots when the locks open at 9, and we could get a highly coveted wall spot with a power pedestal.   I had to put on my Captain Bligh hat and order the crew to shove off by 7:15 a.m.   We made it to Bobcaygeon at 9:15 a.m. and just as we were arriving, a boat pulled out of a spot with a power pedestal, and we slid right in.    This was two days in a row where Hygge’s diminutive size proved major bonus as larger boats would not have fit.

We walked around the town and then walked over to the Settlers Village, which is small recreation of a village circa mid to late 1800’s.   They moved older homes, log cabins, barns, to this area where an old church was located, and now you see how it was done in the late 19^th Century.  Not particularly picture-worthy though.  Later that day Nancy went over to a beach for a swim, and I worked on the prior blog post.

And later that evening, but not at sunset, we got the “ok” from our boat neighbors and played Bobcaygeon Hygge’s stereo.   There were a few wet eyes on the dock as the song is practically Canada’s second national anthem.   (There is a backstory*):

 

On the 24^th we left Bobcaygeon not exactly knowing where we’d stop.   As motored to the town/lock of Fenelon Falls, we saw a front coming in with severe thunderstorms.   I powered Hygge up to full throttle and long story short, we made into the lock at Fenelon Falls, got through it and seconds after tying up to the lower lock wall, all heck burst loose from the clouds.   Wind, lightening, the works.  We spent about an hour there waiting out the storm, and after the front passed, Nancy got some pictures of the town: 

We then continued on and at the Rosedale lock we pulled over for lunch and a shower (a very few of the locks have shower facilities).   

We went through the Kirkfield lift lock, which is the second highest lift lock in the world, and I tried to get a picture to give some perspective of the height:

 

At Kirkfield, you start going down instead of up as you head west, and the red and green channel markers reverse, so it pays to be on your toes.   At 4:30 p.m. pulled up to the Talbot lock and tied off for the night.  The upper side of Talbot was in a very nice setting so we saw no reason to lock-through and just enjoyed the surroundings and a nice pasta dinner.

                                                                          

Dave

 

Odometer:  5,213 n/m’s

 

*click for the  The Backstory

079: Trent-Severn Waterway Part One

On July 17th we left Clayton first thing in the morning for a fifty n/m run to Picton, Ontario.   It was overcast, so not conducive for great photography.  That said, Nancy did get this shot of my favorite house.  It is not a converted lighthouse, but rather a house made to look like a lighthouse.   I’d love to sit up top on a sunny day and smoke a cigar with a little bourbon on the rocks:

Fifty n/m’s is a long run and we pulled into Picton rather late in the day.  We stayed at a very disappointing marina: no power, cold showers and rickety docks, but there weren’t too many options.   A nice Canadian couple came over having recognized Hygge from our Thousand Islands trip, and we wound up going out for pizza with them.  Got a few shots of Picton, but our real priority was to go grocery shopping.  Between our week off the boat, and prohibitions about bringing in meat, fruit and vegetables into Canada, we were low on perishables.  It was a long walk back with groceries.

A few shots of Picton:

The next day we left early and headed out for the thirty-five n/m trip to Trenton, ON, gateway to the Trent-Severn Waterway (“TSW”) which connects Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. Two hundred and forty statute miles and forty-five locks!  The AGLCA has “harbor hosts” (locals who volunteer to help Loopers) in most of the key ports, and the Trenton harbor host took a picture of us coming into the harbor.    Our first stop was to top off the fuel tank to ensure we could make it to the end of the TSW and pump out the holding tank for basically the same reason.   

Coming into Trenton:

The Trenton Municipal Marina is known for having the best bathroom/shower facilities on the Great Loop, and they did not disappoint, but I’ll spare you the pictures we took of them.  Trenton has a decent “downtown” area very close to the marina, with the grocery store about 100 yards from the docks; made us regret the stocking up at Picton and making that one mile walk back to the boat, but you live and learn.   We did have a nice meal at an Italian restaurant, which is notable because we’ve had so few memorable meals on this trip.

On the 19th of July we left Trenton to enter the TSW.   We use the Navionics app on the iPad as our primary route planning tool, but sometimes I’ll route plan with Hygge’s Garmin chart plotter just so I can compare (Garmin calls it “auto guidance”) to Navionics.   This picture shows why you should not use the Garmin’s autopilot feature with its auto guidance feature:  for some strange reason, Garmin’s auto guidance feature wants to run your boat into bridge pilons.   My first thought on the Baltimore bridge collapse was that the ship was using Garmin auto guidance (kidding).  One Looper last year was seventeen miles from “crossing their wake,” got complacent and Garmin ran their boat into a bridge pilon caving in part of the bow. 

Postings on FB boating groups confirm that this is not just us, and nobody has a good reason as to why:

We arrived at the first lock for the TSW with a few boats ahead of us, so we had to wait, no big deal.   We didn’t really have a stopping point as there are a lot of locks and you just don’t know how fast you will go through them all.   We thought maybe the town of Glen Ross which was only fourteen s/m’s away, but six locks.   Well, long story short, the lockmasters perfectly synchronized the locks, so as we came to each one, the gates were open, and we just slid right in.   We wound up going twenty-eight miles and twelve locks (a record for us) all the way to Campbellford, ON (which our guidebook basically said couldn’t be done).   

Sign at Lock 1:

I think they want you to go slow:

Of note was the current as we approached the locks.  Most of the locks are near dams (per usual) and the TSW area had lots of rain (remnants of Hurricane Beryl), so the current was running high.  Some of the locks were close enough to the dams to make it a real challenge (see later video), and we had no problems (just need to angle into the current), but the guy behind us on the second lock wound up sideways for a few moments.   (He figured it out eventually.)

Before reaching Campbellford we stopped briefly to walk across the Ranney Falls suspension bridge.   

I was a bit leery remembering that second Indiana Jones movie, but I headed the advice on this sign and walked back and forth.   

No need to tell me twice:

From the bridge, nice views:

The town dock-wall at Campbellford had a sign out for us:

We had a nice dinner at Dee’s Caribbean restaurant, which was a very nice change from pub food and Italian food.   The next morning, we went to the farmer’s market, but our first stop was Canada’s number one rated bakery, Dooher’s Bakery.  We got there ten minutes before it opened, and by the time it opened, the line was down the block.    

Hygge from the farmers market across the river:

Monument to the artist who designed the "Toonie" which is the $2 Canadian coin:

Having run hard for three straight days, on the 20th of July, we only did six locks and seventeen miles, stopping at Hastings.   The lock at Hastings was right next to the dam and around a sharp corner, so you had to be totally on your game.   This video goes into a bit of the situation with the current flow due to the aforementioned rain.

\

At Hastings I made my second rescue of the trip.   A small (16’) 1970’s era tri-hull runabout came out of the lock wall and right by where we were tied up and its engine died.  I had one of the four adults on the boat throw me a line and they rafted up to Hygge while the guy tried to get the engine started.  He only had to go across the river (upstream of the dam) to a boat ramp, so I offered to tow him with my dinghy.  He got the engine started and took off diagonally (I would have gone up and over 90 degrees) while I put the dinghy in the water just in case.  Sure enough, about halfway across, his engine died again, and they started drifting with the wind and current pushing them toward the dam.   I fired up my little 2.5 h/p engine and zipped out to them.  I rafted the dinghy off them and told the guy to raise his engine.   It wasn’t a fast trip, but I did manage to tow them to their boat ramp.   Nancy, who has taken thousands of pictures, for some reason didn’t get an action shot of the rescue, but she did get a shot of this Northern Pike statue.

And also, this shot of the “Full Buck Moon:”

Dave

Odometer:  we crossed 5,000 n/m’s: 5,103 n/m’s