
Hydraulic locks are so cool
Lifted in the air by a hydraulic ram
JULY 2025 LAKE ONTARIO
7/14/20253 min read
It has been a few days since I have last posted and they have been very busy days. Let’s see, where was I. We left lock 6 where we had power and traveled to Cambellford, Ontario where we had reservations for the night. We had been having issues with the air conditioning pump overheating, so we reserved for 2 nights. Once the engine room cooled enough for Kevin to go down and work, he found that the raw water strainer was full of sea weed and that it was restricting flow to the pump. Once he cleared the mess, it started to work again. He did not have to install a new pump from our spare collection.
We walked up into Cambellford and found the ice cream shop, followed by a stop at Doohans bakery, which has been rated #1 bakery in Ontario. It is like the one in Poulsbo, WA where customers wait in line to get in. We sampled their butter tarts. Oh my, were they good. It was a sugary caramel filling inside a tart shell.
That night we woke to voices outside our boat (2:30 am). The people kept talking and at about 3 am we felt footsteps on our boat. Kevin went up to investigate and teenagers were on our boat deck near the flybridge. He yelled and that scared them off. They ran off like jack rabbits.
Yesterday we cruised to the town of Hastings, Ontario staying on the lock wall with about 6 other looper boats, It was very hot and we ended up running the AC on the generator until 9 pm when the temperature started to come down.
Traveling the Trent Severn
At Petersbourough, we went through the tallest hydraulic lock in the world. A hydraulic lift lock is like an elevator. The boat pulls into a large square bathtub and a hydraulic ram lifts the bathtub into the air to the next level. In our case, we were going up. It was an easy lock lift. We just wish there were more locks like this one.
We managed to get into the Canadian lake region on a Friday. Bad move on our part. It felt like half of Toronto emptied out and were cruising every which way in their jet skis, ski boats, pontoon boats and cruisers. There was little dockage at the locks as the weekenders like to park their boats every which way and spend an afternoon visiting tourist towns. Then, they would get on their jet skis or other style of boats and race back to wherever they had their trailers parked. It would have been much more pleasant if we had traveled that region during the week.
There was another lift lock in Kirkfield Ontario. We had hit the highest elevation on the Trent Severn canal and took a pleasant elevator ride for the first downward locking. They also reversed the navigation bouys and day marks. We were no longer returning from the sea where the red is always on your starboard or right side.
There is a very large lake on the Trent Severn called Lake Simcoe. The wind can kick it up and we were getting late in the day. Bev wanted to stop on the lock wall just before the lake. Kevin wanted to cross the lake to a marina where we would have electric power. Our generator had been acting up and Kevin wanted a lay day to get a handle on the problem. At the last lock, two different sets of Canadians said the lake was reasonably calm. Bev said ok, we can go and got on the phone to make reservations as the marina would be closed by the time we would arrive. Well, we got out into the lake and it was not calm. We cut through a 3 foot chop on the nose with about a 2 second period. The closeness of the waves made it like a bucking bronco for two hours. We watched the Canadians stop for a swimming break then put their high powered deep vee hull up on plane where they disappeared over the horizon when we were about halfway across. We arrived at the town of Orillia, Ontario two hours later exhausted and crabby.
Today was a day for laundry, shopping and making sure the genset was happy.




