Port Severen, Ontario

Monday, July 14th is our last day on the Trent-Severen Waterway.

It is about 240 miles long and took about 75 years to build. We travelled up in locks, down in locks, and saw many different kinds of locks.

One of the most amazing locks we went through was on the last day.

We drove into a railroad car, put into a sling, transported across a road and put into the water on the other side. I took some pictures but all of the pictures here were taken by John and Joanie Anderson, who surprised us by showing up here without our knowledge!!! The lockmasters had kept tabs on us during the day and knew when we were coming through!! They are very experienced and knew just what to do with our boat.

This was quite the experience. Port Severen was only 8 miles after this lock, the final stop on the waterway!!!!

Young's Point, Rosedale,and Orillia, Ontario

We had a long day Friday but didn't get very far. We left the Peterbourough Marina at 8:15 and arrived in Young's Point at 5:00. There were 8 locks with a lift of 148' but we only travelled 15.5 miles!

The second lock today was the Peterbourough lift lock. The lift is 65' and an ordinary lock wouldn't work here. It was built in 1904 and considered an engineering marvel. It has 2 pans of water that weigh 1300 tons each when filled. The boats drive into one pan and the other pan is either up in the air or below. They balance each other. It doesn't matter how many boats in a pan because a boat displaces it's own weight in water. When it's time to lower 1 pan and raise the other they add 1 extra foot of water(130 tons) in the upper pan. The upper pan is pushed down and raises the lower pan to the top. When we got to this today it happened to be not working. We had to wait for about 2 1/2 hours for it to be fixed.

There were people watching from the street through the hole in the wall of the lift.

John is checking out the situation!

Saturday was another long day from 8:00 to 6:00 because we stopped along the wall in a small town for lunch and to buy bread and sandwich meat-our lunch every other day!

We only had 6 locks with a lift of 69' but we did travel 53 miles.

Some areas of the canal are absolutely beautiful. You have to pay attention to where you are going. The canal isn't very deep and staying in the channel is a must. The sides under the water are granite. These were all cut by hand to finish the canal for shipping.

Just one of many bridges we went under.

We have now reached the highest point of the Trent-Severn Canal so now the locks will start taking us down. Sunday we went through 6 locks and were lowered 121' in 40.6 miles. Five of them were all within 3 miles. We had another lift lock but this time drove into the pan when it was in the air. This one is not enclosed so it makes you feel like you're hanging up in the air.

Orillia was our stop for the night. It was a very busy marina and part of the waterway. Our entertainment tonight was all the boats coming in off the lake after a weekend.

Campbellford to Peterbourough, Ontario

HAPPY BELATED 50TH BIRTHDAY TO GREG ANDERSON!!!!!!


Thursday, July 10 we travelled 58 miles through 7 locks with a lift total of 142 feet. We were underway from 8:15 to 5:30. We usually tie up to the walls on our starboard side. Lock 13 required a port tie-up, lock 14 required a starboard, lock 15 was back to port and locks 15 & 16 (flight locks) were back to starboard. John and I were busy moving lines and fenders between locks because it was all in less than 5 miles.

We have found we need to plan more carefully where we want to spend the night. There aren't places to stop as frequently as when we started. The lock walls tend to fill up early with groups just out for a cruise.

We stayed at the Peterbourough Marina, right downtown, and the dockmasters were so accomodating. We could walk to the LCBO and to a great restaurant with live music. A Centennial Fountain with 250' jet of water (the highest in Canada) was lit with colored lights right in front of us. Several times on this trip we have entertainment close to the boat!

Today we had very nice scenery along the way. There are some unique houses and one thing we noticed was all the resorts. Minnesota is losing a lot of the resorts but it seems like they are very active here. Many houses have a boat house and the places are all kept up so nice.

We have had several compliments on our boat. The lockmasters all tell us what a beautiful boat we have. One lockmaster said he thought this was the most beautiful boat that had ever gone through his lock. We stopped for lunch one day along the canal and I could see people stop and take their pictures in front of the boat.

Trenton to Campbellford, Ontario

John, Bob and I left as early as we could Wednesday morning on the Trent River heading west.

The locks are open 8:30 a.m to 7:00 p.m and it takes about 15 minutes in the morning for them to get ready. We went through 6 locks in the first 7 miles. We did 31 miles for the day and that was through 12 locks. The total lift for all the locks today was 234 feet! Locks 11 and 12 are called flight locks because when we drove out of #11 we drove right into #12. The lift for the 2 locks is 48' and they needed to have 2 locks rather than having such a large lift for 1 lock.

We see this sign at all the locks.

The lockmasters know you want to go through the lock when you tie up to the blue line.

Other spaces along here are for staying the night.




There are 3 original lockmaster houses left on the waterway. The one at lock 4 is 85 years old, the one at lock 5 is all the original stone and this one at lock 9 was built in 1914 on site.

We were told the lockmasters had to live at each of the locks when they were first built.

Most of the locks have gates that are manually opened and closed. Two people turn the handles to open and close these gates.

Boats usually travel together all day through the locks and we were with a boat from Kansas. After several rain showers we finally arrived in Campbellford.
We stopped for the night at the city wall. We had power(hydro in Canada), water and we were close to downtown. Right across the river was a park with live music. What more could we want?

Well, Bob and John needed to buy some refreshments at the LCBO(Liquor Control Board of Ontario). The store was about 1/2 block from the boat. They looked at it for about 2 hours before they decided to go there. They got there at 6:05 and the store closed at 6:00!

That's what they get for relaxing before they got their work done!

Canada has a $2.00 coin since 1996. We were told they had a

contest for the design of the coin and the artist is from Campbellford. The city has a huge monument in the park of the coin.

Campbellford is also known for its chocolate factory. I tried to find the store but must be out of my shopping mode because I couldn't find it!!! Can you believe it, chocolate and shopping both and I couldn't find the store!!!

Trenton, Ontario

We had a great time in Rochester with John and Joanie. Every day we spent some time on the boat. Joanie and I washed everything we could and did some grocery shopping to prepare for our venture into Canada. I think they might have the boating fever now and I wouldn't be surprised to see them at another time on our trip!!!

We picked up John Grafelman at the Rochester airport Monday night and spent the night on the boat so we could leave early Tuesday morning.

We got an early start on Tuesday, 6:15 a.m., and headed out across Lake Ontario. It was a great day to be out on the lake, not too rough and good visibility.

At least someone is watching where we are
going!!

We arrived in Trenton, Ontario about 12:00 and settled in at the town dock. When we

docked, Bob was the only one permitted off the boat until we had cleared customs.

He made a phone call and that was all we had to do.

All three of us walked to a restaurant for lunch and then found a bank to get some Canadian money. We were right in the town so everything we needed was close by.

The dockmaster was so friendly and helpful. He is the perfect person for his job. We really appreciated all the help and information he gave us. We are anxious to start on this part of the trip, it should be an exceptional experience.

Brewerton, Oswego, and Rochester, New York

John, Joanie, Bob and I stayed 1 night in Brewerton, our last stop on the Erie Canal. Bob had the Caterpillar person come to the boat to do one more thing before we head into Canada.


We wanted to go to lunch so we had to walk about a mile to the restaurant. Joanie and I tried to find some stores to explore but only found 1 drug store on main street. They did have 2 pizza places, so for supper we walked and brought a pizza back to the boat.



Every description of a marina says that restaurants, stores, etc. are only a few steps from where the marina is located. So far, we have not found that to be true. Now Bob doesn't believe anyone when they tell us it is just a few blocks. Maybe it is just us, but a mile or so is not a few steps!!!



John & Joanie are just enjoying the trip while on the Oswego River.



We stayed 2 nights in Oswego because of the weather. It was nice to have a day to rest, clean the boat and Joanie and I got to walk around downtown. The weather wasn't very warm but it was better being in the marina than on Lake Ontario.



Friday, July 4th we had a perfect day to spend on Lake Ontario. The water was as calm as it would ever be. We arrived in Rochester, NY. and Joanie's son Todd, his wife Ann and their 2 sons Jacob and Ryan came to the boat. We had about 3 hours of sitting on the flybridge enjoying the sun and watching all the boats in the harbor.





























Bob and I are in Rochester with John and Joanie until Tuesday. We'll see if they can put up with us that long! Monday night a friend of ours from Woodbury, MN is joining us for the trip through the Trent-Severin Waterway in Canada. We hope, with weather permitting, to start that part of our trip Tuesday.