Warsaw, Ontario

First thing we did on the morning of Sunday, July 29 was to walk across the street to a very good supermarket called Metro to do a little grocery shopping.  And by 9:30 we were underway on our foray through the Trent Severn Waterway.  Within a mile we encountered the first of the 44 locks we would be going through on the 240 miles of this historic waterway.

This waterway took 90 years to complete.  The desire was to find a good route  (free of possible military intervention by Americans)  to transport men and supplies from northern Canada to to the southern border.  Efforts to build a route from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario began in 1834 in bits and pieces but was frequently thwarted and was not entirely completed until 1920.  Today the waterway is a wonderful draw for boaters, tourists and an important source of electric power due to the many locks and dams. 

The route took us through serene low lying flatlands, farmlands and other areas with lots of summer cottages.

Throughout the day we went through a total of 10 locks and met a number of interesting people.  We chatted with Phyllis and Bob, aboard the sailboat Gabriel whose mast was stepped due to the low bridges encountered en route.  They were returning to their home in Michigan having traveled all the way to the Florida Keys. 

After awhile we ended up in the same locks as a huge old tourist canal boat that had seen much better days.  It was being crewed by four men who were taking it further into Ontario to be totally refurbished.  It was rather unwieldy, traveling like a wide barge and it struggled just a little inside the locks.  Because the boat was so large, the locks could only handle two, maybe three, additional boats if they weren’t too large.  And the third one could only be accommodated if it rafted up to ours.  So that’s how we got to meet Laurie and Bob on Misbehaving.  They rafted up to us for three of the locks.

One bit of excitement occurred when Jonny who was busily chatting with the small boat behind us in the lock, neglected to tend his line.  As the lock lifted, the line that he had tied became so tight that try as he might, he was unable to free it.  Finally he called Lynn who was handling the line on the bow of the boat to get the knife from the fly bridge and he cut the line.  It was his favorite line but had he not done it, we would have had a big problem!  Another story for the archives...

We decided to stop for the night on the lock wall at lock #10, Hague’s Reach.  We were the only boat docked at this peaceful park-like setting.  

The lock master gave us the keys to the squeaky clean bathroom and we were set for the night.  We celebrated our first day on the beautiful Trent-Severn Waterway with some liquid refreshments.

Afterwards, we had sausage and peppers for dinner on the aft deck.  Georgio, however, decided to be naughty and jumped off of the boat onto the grassy lawn.  This is the first time he had ventured so far from the boat, in fact only the second time he even tried to get off of it. Jonny spotted him halfway across the lawn near a picnic table and when he called him, Georgio froze and then quickly returned to the boat.  After that he had to stay inside with all the doors closed.  He wasn’t happy about that at all since he really likes to sleep on the aft deck chairs at night. That’s no longer possible if we are docked on a level basis with the shoreline.

We did manage to have another spectacular sunset after a busy and eventful day of travel.