Goodbye to Summer '22 🥺

Hard to believe that this gorgeous summer is coming to an end already. But just like every year, it comes too quickly.

 The good news is that we still have a couple more weekends before the dreaded haulout happens, so we hope for decent weather to close out this season.

Boat Cruise on The Trent Severn Waterway 2013, Part Two

This part of our summer holidays voyage takes us through the hamlet of Bolsover to Canal Lake, up the Kirkfield Lift Lock and on to Rosedale. Not as sunny and warm as the day before, but a good day to travel, with no wind and the rain held off.

One of the many locks to pass through in this stretch;

Heading up through one of the locks.

The first of two swing bridges in Bolsover, this one had been operating by the staff from the Bolsover Lock. As a result, when we left the lock, we had to hang around at the bridge, waiting for the lockmaster to drive over by car to swing the bridge for us. Coming the other way, we had to wait for the same thing. This is something new that started in the 2013 navigation season as part of Parks Canada's cost saving measures. I will have more to say about that in the future;

One of the swing bridges at Bolsover, along the Trent Severn Waterway.

Passing by the gas dock at Sunset Cove Marina. A nice spot to spend a night.

Sunset Cove Marina in Bolsover.

 Midway through Canal Lake is this old bridge, commonly referred to as 'the hole in the wall bridge';

Hole In The Wall bridge on Canal Lake.

When initially built on 1905, the location was nothing more than a field. There is a really good book about the building of the TSW called ''A Work Unfinished : The Making of the Trent-Severn Waterway by James T. Angus' that includes the whole history of how it came to be and is full of many period photos. Included in that collection is a neat shot of this bridge under construction - in the middle of a dry field.
 Here's a close up shot of the build date for the bridge;

Hole in the wall bridge, Trent Severn Waterway

More healthy eating, even while travelling. This is my daily fruit intake. Lots of FRESH fruits and veggies every day. Good for the body!

Healthy fruit bowl snacks.

 Crossing Canal Lake we encountered this family of White Swans. A first for us to see the little young ones;

White Swans with babies on Canal Lake

 This sign sits at the easternmost part of Canal Lake, right at the beginning of the man made Kirkfield Cut, advising bigger boats that they must call a Sécurité, warning other boaters of their transiting this area. Reason being is that it is very narrow in spots and for two large boats to pass would be difficult & downright impossible in some areas.
 Trouble with this plan is that sometimes the signal may not reach boaters entering the cut, way over at Mitchell or Balsam Lakes (where there is the same sign for boats heading in the other direction). As well, many boats travel with their radios off (which it down right irresponsible) and wouldn't get the message any ways. My advice? How about if Parks Canada staff were to simply cut back the severely overgrown trees along this stretch? Too simple, I know. . . .

Warning sign for larger boats at Kirkfield

 There is a tangle of weeds as one enters into the Kirkfield Cut and one must stay within the more travelled middle of the channel, or risk becoming completely entangled in them. Right after this shot was taken, we clunked something (I'm thinking it was a bigger branch) at this spot. Fortunately, there was no damage. In a subsequent post, I'll share a video of a couple of scuba divers inspecting the running gear for damage, taken a few days after this incident.

Lots of Weeds

 A closer view of the weeds.

More weeds on the waterway.

 Here we are, just about at the top of the ride up the Kirkfield Lift Lock. This point marks the summit (highest point over sea level) for the entire Trent Severn Waterway. From this point, one is heading downstream in either direction. It's with this in mind that the navigation buoys change - green on the right from here!

Kirkfield Lift Lock

  After exiting the lock, I heard one of the aforementioned Sécurité calls from this boat. Unfortunately when I tried to hail them to discover their position or ETA for arriving at Kirkfield, there was no reply. To be prudent, I decided to tie off to the lock wall and wait for whatever was heading towards us to arrive at the lock. Good thing, too, as by the looks of the beam on this thing, we would have had a lot of fun trying to pass each other in the cut.

Wide beam boat in the Kirkfield Cut

 The lady on this boat was VERY grateful that we held back and waited for them to transit the cut.

A grateful boater

 This is what I am talking about - a very overgrown canal. Apart from a break at tiny Mitchel Lake, this man made cut runs all the way from Kirkfield to Balsam Lake - a transit of about an hour. It is pretty, though.

Narrow Kirkfield Cut.

 This is the tightest spot, with no more than 20' of clearance.

Approaching Balsam Lake

  Coming off of Balsam Lake and approaching the hamlet of Rosedale, at the south east part of the lake.

Rosedale on Balsam Lake

Next stop - Rosedale Lock, but that's gonna take up an entire post to share the beauty of the place, so c'mon back for lots more :-)

Boat Cruise on Trent Severn Waterway 2013, Part One

After a number of years cruising to/through Georgian Bay, we decided to spend our 2013 boating summer holidays with a return cruise through the eastern part of the Trent Severn Waterway. As we had only two weeks to venture from - and back to - our home port on Lake Simcoe, we were only able to get as far as the village of Lakefield. I had hoped to be able to get down to Peterborough, but that's going to have to wait until next summer.

Yes, yes, I know we could have made it to Peterborough and back easily within two weeks, but the days of hammering the throttle just to say we did it are behind us. Theses days, it's more along the lines of 'sit back and smell the roses' kinda mindset.

 As things are, we are hoping to have the whole summer of 2014 to go on extended boating trips, as we have recently put our house up for sale, with the intention of moving full time aboard 'Boogaboo' during the seasonal months, but that's a whole other Blog post ;-)

 Back to this years' fun.As mentioned, we travelled east from Lake Simcoe towards Fenelon Falls and beyond.

Leaving our marina gas dock.

The weather was spectacularly clear and calm. A great way to start the voyage.

Lake Simcoe was unbelievably calm. A beauty day for boating.

For those of you who have travelled this way, you know that there are quite a number of locks to pass through. Oh well, a small price to pay for a voyage like this. And it provides a great opportunity to master your driving skills ;-)

Going through the fist of many locks.

 This is both a funny and sad photo; the car rushing along the side of the canal has the lock staff that has to run between these locks to let the boats through. One example of Parks Canada's way of 'saving' money. Hmm, I wonder what the vehicle costs for the year, with fuel, wear and tear and maintenance costs?

A Parks Canada vehicle rushes to the next lock.

 After travelling for a few hours, we decided to make Lock #39 our first stop and stayed there for one night.

Lock #39 of the Trent Severn Waterway.

 Staff closes the big lock doors after some boats dropped down

The lock chamber.

I love the nature at these locks. Keep in mind that all of the locks are operated by Parks Canada and are mini national parks. The trees are one nice part of the attraction.

Big trees, big sky and a lovely, peaceful afternoon.

As the locks in this area are very close to one another, the lock staff generally tries to have a number of boats all go through at one time. That's why you often see groupings of 4 - 6 boats passing through together.

A group of boats head towards Lock #39 of the TSW

Here's a shot of yours truly walking over to the other side of the canal for some picture taking.

Walking over a lock gate.

 A cool shot of a big trawler, the 'M/V Quimby' that pulled in for the evening. These folks were part way through their voyage through the Great Loop, a circumnavigation of the eastern portion of North America. Affectionately referred to as 'Loopers', the boaters who do the trip typically take about a year to make all the way around the roughly 6,000 mile route.

One of the 'Looper' boats we see along the TSW

Perry The Penguin, our mascot, enjoys a lovely sunny summer evening from the deck of 'Boogaboo IV'.

Perry The Penguin on board 'Boogaboo IV'

 I took this photo hanging out of the forward hatch - the first one I've ever taken from that vantage point. An appropriate spot to finish up this entry, as that is the direction where we will be heading on the next leg of the journey . . .

 Next time, we will be heading to the Kirkfield Lift Lock :-)

:-)

Summer Boating on Georgian Bay #1

Back on The Bay

Ya, ya, ya - more Georgian Bay stuff . . .

 Can't help it, I love boating on The Bay :-)  Nothing like dreaming, planning and looking forward to getting away for our summer boating holidays - and The Bay has been the place to dream about for the past number of years.
 That said, I'm really looking forward to going back to there this summer, but work commitments might not allow for our regular three week hiatus.  We might have to break things up a bit to two or more shorter holidays, including a possible run eastward on the Trent . So, the lovey Anchor Girl & I are talking about, in addition to a shorter trip to Georgian Bay, maybe doing a week or so eastward, toward Peterborough. We'll have to let time & tide decide . . .

 Speaking of holidays and time off, we've been fortunate enough to spend some time down south in Florida this past year and we are already planning for spending even more time down there. Ya, like retirement - but that's a ways away. Believe it or not, but I got one or two pictures I'm going to be sharing here, along with some video of our time in Fort Lauderdale. But that's for another day.

 Back to today's post. Due to the large number of pics that I'm compelled to share, I'm going to break this up to a couple or more posts & will break those up with some stuff from our new home at Lagoon City - including the long winded story of why/how we came to find ourselves there. Apparently, some of you hadn't heard the whole story. Or something like that.

 The Bay. Let's go - - -

 Pulling out of the Pefferlaw River. This would be one of the last times leaving here :-(

We had a BIG little stowaway while crossing Sparrow Lake;

Arriving at the top side of Swift Rapids Lock (#43);

It was nearly 5:00 by the time we got through the lock, so we decided to spend the night here;

Here's some video from this HOT day one of our holidays;


Notice that there's hardly any water flowing over the water control dam. It had been pretty dry out for the previous week or so and the runoff was minimal, resulting in little current through the system. We wouldn't have the same conditions on our return, making for a fun time at Lock #45, as we'll see later on;

 End of Day 1 brought our first pretty sunset of many on this trip;

Next morning we continue on westward;

Next stop - well, more like slow to a crawl - was the Big Chute Marine Railway;

In case you missed it earlier, here's another video review of the ride over (down) the marine railway;


Leaving the bottom of Port Severn Lock where the Trent-Severn meets Georgian Bay. This was the calmest conditions we have ever seen going through here. I'll be including some video from here a bit later on, showing how dramatically things changed by the time we came back home;

All thumbs up as we are officially back on The Bay for another season's worth of memories!

When we got on to Georgian Bay, our first stop was going to be a few nights at anchor at Beausoleil Island. Well, as we keep discovering, boating plans tend to change rapidly when traveling. This time it was our anchor windlass malfunctioning. When we attempted to launch the anchor, the windlass rapidly let out all 100' of chain + rode - and then would not respond to controls any more. Fortunately, I was able to use the built in manual winch to retrieve the anchor, but we didn't want to spend a night on the hook without having the ability to get up and go quickly if need be during the night, so we went to Midland Harbour to tie up and fix the windlass.
 Good thing, too, as that night we had a strong storm blow through with lots of rain and strong winds. So much so, that the rain was blowing through our transom door with such force that it blew the carpet back & soaked it. Lucky? More like protected :-)

The next day I got in touch with the windlass manufacturer & the fellow I talked to suggested the source of the problem & how to remedy it. Fortunately, it was a simple matter of disemboweling the foot controls and cleaning the contacts for the solenoid switches & voila! All operating more better, according to the professional Anchor Girl.
 Listen to the sound of my voice discussing our time at Midland;








 Just north of Honey Harbour the landscape & water becomes much more rough & rocky. This is approaching Monument Channel;

Gotta stay on top of them charts to stay on course in the 30,000 Islands area;

Although this spot looks wide open, there's only a narrow channel marked to get through. No problem, but we wound up catching up to these folks just at the bottom entrance to it and they weren't moving too fast at all. Just after we got behind this boat, Anchor Girl went into the cabin to make me a sandwich. When she returned to the bridge a few minutes later, we hadn't moved very far & she thought they had hit bottom & were stuck!

O'Donnell Point marker;

Sure is pretty boating up here;

Passing through the narrows at Starvation Bay means we are only a short distance to Henrys Restaurant;

See, I told ya ;-)  Taking the 'Inside' passage & doing a slow cruise, this leg of the trip took us 3-1/2 hours from Midland;

Some cool looking rock formations we saw on our dingy trip over to Wreck Island;

The view from our dock at Henrys. Those islands and rock formations in the distance mark the main entrances to the anchorages of the Massasauga Provincial Park & the Moon River basin - an adventure all to itself;

Here's a group of three photos I stitched together to form a panoramic shot;

I took many pics form this vantage point out the back of the boat, attempting to capture the beauty & essence of this spot;

Anchor Gilr walks back to the boat with a bag of ice, as we are moving on to the next spot;

 A quick parting shot of the docks. You can see they can accommodate a number of boats in a row, with the policy being that if you are at the front (closest to shore) by around 3:00, you are spending the night. There's room for up to 50 boats here. Generally, they pack 'em in for lunch & dinner, but overnight usually sees roughly 20 boats staying;

Here we are, pulling in to LeBlanc's Marina - which is right around the corner & on the same island. We needed a pump out & I learned the hard way a few years back that if there's a facility nearby that can do it, take advantage of it;

They also have a small variety store with highly inflated prices. They are also an agency LCBO outlet;

Speaking of highly inflated prices, gas here was $1.90 per litre. That works out to $8.64/gallon. Oh well, ya gotta remember that this place is on an island, many miles from where it has to be delivered from by water, and the the next closest place to get gas is at least an hour away. . . . Nobody said boating was a poor man's hobby. It only makes poor men out of us.
 No, we didn't get here - this time ;-)

Next stop was Parry Sound. Good municipal marina & complete shopping facilities available, as the local Sobey's supermarket offers a free shuttle service to their store for the boaters. And there's a Canadian Tire right beside it, along with the usual assortment of stores in these bog box pods.
 This is looking out from the back of the boat;

 . .  . And a look forward from the flybridge;

We were only here a day or two, to catch up on groceries and do some laundry, hit the beer store, etc.. We'll be returning after our next adventure.
 I just wanted to share this pic of us leaving, as the big express boat to the left in this shot (a Canadian built Neptunus yacht) was equipped with a wireless remote docking apparatus. We saw the captain pulling that thing into the gas dock in town - with him maneuvering it standing on the bow. A neat show & when I yelled over to him that I considered that cheating he laughed & called it a marriage saver ;-)

Next stop was Killbear Marina;

This was our first time visiting here;

Did I promise nice sunsets or what?

Killbear has alot of bigger slips, all with 2x30 amp shorepower;

Our 2nd big bug visitor of the holidays;

Of course, Anchor Girl saw that & immediately zipped up & snapped in all the canvas. She already had one big bug on board & didn't want any more getting on;

A look out on to The Bay from the southern dock;

This is looking back from the office/chandlery store;

They have a restaurant (upstairs) and small grocery store (down) in this building. The restaurant food was quite good - they served both regular Canadian fare, as well as specialty German dishes;

Killbear Marina is in a very well protected cove, surrounded by land on three sides;

This photo shows how far out of the water the fixed docks are, a testament to how much the water level has dropped in the past 20 years;

A brave soul heads out on a windy day;

Enjoying the sunset as I prepare an evening snack for the first mate;

Mmmmmmmm, garlic bread;

 Next time, we're heading north. And then south.
 Stay tuned to see our encounter with a swimming dear, a very tight passage and video tours of a bunch of anchoring bays of the Moon River Basin. Heck, I might even throw in some more spectacular sunsets :-)

:-)