Trent Severn Canal - Day 1

Today is the day we started the Trent Severn portion of our trip. The Canal is a Canadian Heritage site. There are a few interesting things about the Trent Severn. It is a series of canals, lakes and rivers that take you from Lake Ontario north to Canada's Georgian Bay which is north of Lake Huron. It is a 241 mile trip with 45 locks. Since the canal is a heritage site, the doors are opened and closed manually, more along the way it was done in the 1800's.

One or two college kids man a manual windless causing movement of the doors. Normally Parks Canada requires purchase of a cruising permit to do the Trent Severn. However, about a month ago they announced that it would be free for this summer. We like free!

Today, the weather called for 10 mph winds with gusts to 18 mph. We decided to leave the Trent Port Marina early before the winds really started to blow. As a result, we arrived at the lock 1 1/2 hours before the first opening of the day. The Canadian locks have a system where boats line up at the blue line if they want to lock through.

We were the first boat at the blue line this morning. Bev walked up to the lock masters house to register for the the canal as we had not pre purchased the cruising permit. The lock master showed up at 8:30 and said he would open the doors at nine and we could do the registration process while in the lock. He was only going to lock 2 boats at a time through. After locking through, we understand why. The locks on the Trent are not as wide and are shorter than the Erie Canal and between our boat and the one that arrived after us, we filled the lock.

The Trent Canal is more picturesque than the Erie and the water is definitely cleaner.They have vertical cables that run along the side of the lock for boaters to put there lines through to hold them to the lock wall while going up or down. It is so much easier on the old bodies sliding a rope up and down the cable than hanging on with all their might to a rope that hangs down on the Erie. As Bev's mother used to say: "The old grey mare ain't what she used to be".

There are parks along side the walls leading up to or away from the locks and boaters are able to moor on these walls for the night. Some of the locks have power available which is nice. It is in the mid 80's and with the humidity, we are very happy running the air conditioning. We purchased a mooring permit for the night and it included two 30 amp power cords. It is a very good price for moorage. Too bad not all lock parks have power.

We decided to stop after lock 6 because it did have power. We only cruised 4 hours and travel 7.5 miles. Tomorrow should be a longer day as we have about 25 miles to travel and we are planning on doing another 6 locks.