Kawartha Lakes

many days of motoring through narrow and shallow passages. beautiful. 

sunset at Lovesick Lock - tied up here overnight

it's been like sailing (well, motoring) through hundreds of miles of the Boundary Waters.

s/v Northern Whisper

Cynthia and Eric, leaving Bobcaygeon through the lock --

Bobcaygeon

We're still here this morning.  Watched s/v-Northern Whisper leave through the lock, then we are here using the free WiFi in the town library.  In no hurry to pull out today - might stay another night.

BETTER TRAVEL NOW

Leaving the Kirkfield Lift Lock, we switched the lines since we are now going DOWN to Lake Ontario (RED LEFT LEAVING).  Only one bad hour, crossing Mitchell Lake & connecting canals – more weeds, more shallows – just for a couple of miles.

Then great!  Deep water – sometimes over 8 feet!  And now, often 30 feet deep through the lakes.

Stopped at Fenelon Falls for lunch, another lock, and walk through a cute canal-side town.

Ihana at Fenelon Falls

Fenelon Falls

Just below the Fenelon Falls lock

Ihana below the Fenelon Falls lock

We thought about staying the night (tied up to the wall below the lock - see pictures above), but it was getting pretty hot and windless (memo: stop ABOVE the lock next time), so we continued on across Sturgeon Lake (deep! - 10 to 30 feet) and on to the really neat town of Bobcaygeon.

A real nice surprise: As we were nearing the lock, I picked out spot to tie up to the wall. Told Ilona: right behind that sailboat.  And it was Eric & Cynthia of s/v-Northern Whisper.  Didn't think we would see them again (but that's not how it goes while cruising).  Beer, immediately. Then dinner with them in town.

Note: Bobcaygeon was NOT named after Bob Caygeon.  It's an Indian word - something about a channel connecting 2 lakes between the rocks or something.

Kirkfield Lift Lock

The second highest lift lock in the world (the highest is coming for us, in Peterborough, in a few days).  There are two "chambers" - one is up, one is down - sort of like a Ferris Wheel.  Boats motor into the upper or lower chamber, at the same time. The gates close, they put a little more water in the upper lock, and the hydraulics then have the upper (heavier) lock come down and push water under the lower lock, and they switch places. One comes down, the other goes up. The gates open and everyone motors out.

Really neat!

boat coming out, above the lock

The lock on the left is open to the upper canal.
Looking down to the other lock, at lower canal level.

Big height difference here.
Too big for a single conventional lock.

How it works

View from below.
Right lock is at the upper canal level.

Left lock at lower level

This is the highest point of the Trent-Severn Waterway.
The buoys here are (logically) RED RIGHT UPSTREAM.
So, we now keep the reds to port, as we will be going down from here
to Lake Ontario.
[Picture shows Red to Port for boats going downstream to
Georgian Bay]

A better boat for traveling the Trent-Severn

Shallow draft, no keel, no motor to catch weeds.
We met this woman traveling, solo, at the Kirkfield Lift Lock.

A VERY BAD DAY

Rain, Shoals, Deadheads, Weeds, Towing --

Today was a very BAD DAY.  The worst of our trip so far.  We had rain most of the day – often heavy, but this wasn't the real problem.

Fuck - #1: To start out, we hit bottom coming out of the (expletive-deleted) Mariposa Marina in Orillia.  We couldn't motor off and, stuck in the channel into (preferably, out of) the marina we couldn't run out a kedge.  A local marina sent a boat and towed us off.  It only cost us CN$ 280.  Hopefully TowboatUS will reimburse us for some of this. Hopefully.  

Fuck - #2: Since we a later start, we had an awful crossing of Lake Simcoe.  People tell us that this lake (the 4th largest in Ontario) has the worst waves of any place on the whole Trent-Severn Waterway - INCLUDING Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay.  It's about 20 miles + around, sort of like Mille Lacs in Minnesota.  It must be the varying depths - very deep, shallows, mixed. The waves were much stronger than they should have been for the 10-15 knot winds.  The sail didn't steady the boat any, since the mast was down.  15 miles, 2.5 hours. Hang on.

Then, thankfully off the big lake and back in the canals, we had a series of 5 locks.  We met up with Eric & Cynthia of s/v-Northern Whisper, a Catalina 28 out of the Thousand Islands, who were returning from the North Channel of Lake Huron.  We shared the series of locks, and some conversation between the boats. We were going to meet up with them  for the night at Rosedale (sic!) Lock, but ran out of energy and patience and stopped at Kirkfield lock for the night  Because of:

Fuck - #3: We got hung up, again, in the middle of Canal Lake.  And, again, we could not motor off.  We were right in the middle of the "guaranteed 5 foot channel".  Probably ran over (and up onto ) a deadhead; depth gauge showed 8 feet, but ...   [This time, I was really ready to call Cross Country Boat Transport back home, for a "tow" all the way back to Minnesota.] We flagged down a fishing boat and they would have tried to pull us off but they couldn't get their motor started so THEY called another boat for a tow.  Their friend did pull us off, saving us another big towing charge.  [Thank you.]

The weeds are in the channel - right of the red buoy!

Motoring through Canal "Lake"

Motoring along side this in the canals

This was the worst part of the entire waterway.  Shallow, weeds everywhere.  We had to continuously stop and back up to clear the crap off the rudder and keel.  Canal "Lake" is a large, (barely) flooded swamp they dammed (damned) up to create the T-S Waterway, and they didn't make it deep enough.  Rows of pairs of buoys down the middle and through the weeds. Miles of shallows.  Thankfully, mostly mud and weeds - done with the rocks for now.  And deadheads - whose idea was it to flood a forest?

We won't do the T/S again with a boat with more than a six-INCH draft!  I think we are finally through the worst of it.

But we did make it through (slowly!).  We were doing 5 knots at 2500 rpm; normally we would have been doing 6 knots at 2500, but we were mowing our way through a forest of weeds. Didn't dare back up to clear the weeds off the keel and rudder, for fear of getting 2 feet off the middle of the channel (I'm not kidding).

This got us to and through the Kirkfield Lift Lock. Spectacular.  See separate posting with pictures.  Nice quiet night, all by ourselves, tied up to the wall above the lock. I slept 11 hours.