Good morning from Orillia, Canada. We are 200 miles into the Trent-Severn Waterway with 40 miles until we complete this part of our trip. We will be very happy when we are out of this shallow water!

Since the last post we left Hastings, stopped in Peterborough, then Young’s Point, Bobcaygeon, Kirkfield Lock, and now we are in Orillia, Canada. We will spend two nights here before we finish off the Trent-Severn Waterway.

Hastings was a quiet town that did not take much time to explore. Many of the small towns on the Trent are that way. The towns are all along the waterway and survive mostly of tourism, as people are always along the lock walls when boats go through.

Who Dat is at the end of the T dock once again. The rain stopped long enough for us to walk across the bridge and see the one block town. We also met up with our buddy boat Resonance for dinner. Amy and I are really enjoying spending time with them and will continue to cruise with them for a few more weeks into Georgian Bay and the North Channel.

After dinner we were relaxing on the boat when the rain left us a great rainbow over the marina.

We left Hastings the next morning in the rain for a short canal run before entering a larger lake that we could run the engines and clean them out after all the slow idling. Only about 40 miles to Peterborough with a mix of canal, lake, and then canal again. Peterborough is a large town/city along the route. There are only a few large towns along the waterway over the entire 240 miles.

This is a very narrow bridge opening on the left that I had the pleasure of driving through. There are a lot of old rail bridges with one section missing for us to get through.

Coming off the lake and back into the skinny water of the canals. You can see on the screens just how shallow it is right outside the canal. Have to stay in the middle.

Into the tight areas.

Safely tied up in Peterborough.

Tied up in Peterborough on the wall. We arrived on Wednesday as they were setting up for a live concert in the park that night. I would have liked to have been behind the gate on the docks, as we had people all around the boat until after 11pm that night. We only stayed one night but it gave us time to restock the boat and see the town.

Had a great lunch out with very large strawberry daiquiris.

The Canadian liquor stores are on strike, so you can’t buy anything but beer in Ontario right now. If you zoom in, you can see all the empty shelves. Good thing we only brought 4 bottles of wine across the border!!!

The next morning, we left at 8am to get to the lock wall blue line so we could continue our westward progress. There is a blue line painted on the wall approaching the lock and you stop there to let the lockmasters know you intend to lock through. They do not use VHF radios up here in the locks.

Tied to the blue line waiting for the locks to open at 9am.

We would run from Peterborough to Young’s Point traveling only 17 miles, but a lot of locks.

This day we would go through the Peterborough lift lock. This lock has two “bathtubs” that you drive into one and it goes up while the other comes down. This is all done by water weight. Very cool lock to go into! We went in behind these small boats and were joined by another larger boat. Our buddy boat would not fit in with us.

Waiting to pull into the chamber on the right.

If you look on the top right, you can see the sign on the right column with the name of the lock. You will see that again in a couple pictures as we are up and next to it!

Sitting in the chamber waiting to go up. Looks like a castle wall in front of us.

We were lifted 65′ from the waterway below.

And now we are next to the sign. Up 65′.

Coming out of the lift lock and back into the narrow channel.

We spent the next night at Young’s Point on the lock wall right in a neighborhood. The only two businesses in town were the Lockside Trading Company and a small general store.

Tied up to the wall for the night.

Yes, that is me on the back of a pontoon boat. A rental houseboat lost control and ended up on the cable that kept them from going into the dam. They were stuck, so we went out, and put a line on their stern, and pulled them off the cable and to safety.

The next day we would run from Young’s Point to Bobcaygeon. This will be a larger town and we are once again hoping to get enough wall space for ourselves and our buddy boat. We need a total of 125′ of wall for the two of us. So far it has worked out for us, and we are really enjoying traveling together.

For some reason NEBO combined two days of travel, sorry Andy, hope it makes sense. We left Young’s Point and traveled to Bobcaygeon.

Once again waiting on the blue line for a lock to open at 9am.

Coming out of the first lock and into Stoney Lake. Really well named. We had to go through these two rocks. Not too bad for us!

A little tighter for our buddy boat making it through, but George is great with this big girl!

Arriving in Bobcaygeon, just before lunch. There were so many boats just coming into town for ice cream and meals.

The town is not in bad shape, but I loved the old village hall that was run down and closed.

We did get wall space on one side for us, and the other side for Resonance.

The next morning, we left and headed toward the Kirkfield Lock. We had hoped to stop in a few of the towns before the lock, but there weren’t any spots to tie up to, so we kept moving. It worked out great for us as we ended up getting a few more miles done.

Once again, we started through narrow areas, we thought. This would prove to be one of the wider areas for the next two days!

We ran through some really narrow areas, as well as a couple of deeper lakes. Then we entered the Trent Canal! This is a very narrow area, and you can only get one boat at a time through. You make a VHF Security call to announce, and make sure there is no opposing traffic.

We are waiting in Balsam Lake with another boat for an oncoming vessel to clear before we could enter. This all seems like a simple system, except that two oncoming boats ignored the required process and the two of us met mid channel. The boat ahead of us made them back up and wait in a wider area so we could pass. There still is no cure for stupid!

Following the lead boat through the Trent Canal. Oh yeah, and it is only 5-6′ deep through here. We will take two days to get through the Trent canal and back into deeper water. I would only run the port engine in gear so we did not dig in and draft additional water. This would also help not to pull logs off the bottom. Yes, we did hit 12 logs total before reaching Lake Simcoe on the other side! More on that later.

We made it to the Kirkfield Lock just after noon and were able to get wall space for both us and Resonance.

The Kirkfield lock is the first lock on the waterway where we will go down. The first 35 locks we went up and the last 10 locks we will be going down.

We are already in the tub getting ready to go down 49′. These lift locks are very quick. The Peterborough lock was 65′ in about 2 minutes, and this lock was 49′ in about the same amount of time.

Our view from the tub getting ready to go down. You can really see how narrow the canal is in this area.

Going down while the opposing tub is passing us going up.

For the gearheads that are reading this post!

Really is an amazing engineering marvel and simple at the same time.

A view from the park beside the lock.

We spent the night here on the wall. There is not a town nearby so the four of us just enjoyed dinner on the boats, and relaxed after a really tough day of white knuckle driving in shallow and narrow canals. We hit 4 logs this day in the canal, but the water was too murky to go in and look at the props.

On the wall with our travel buddy boat for the night. It was very quiet and a great spot. Wish we had slept better, but we both knew we had another day of running this ditch!

A great look back at the lock.

Yesterday, we ran through the worst spot of the trip so far. We knew it would be shallow, but did not expect to hit 8 more logs in Canal Lake and the Trent canal. Amy stood on the bow and would watch for them. She would call out on our headsets when she would see one, and then I would put the port engine into neutral. We would feel and hear them hit and all we could do was cringe. The channel was too narrow to try to go around them. You would run aground if you ventured outside the channel. What a blast! I would not go through this ever again with more than a 4′ draft!

Looks like NEBO had a tough time following us through the trees.

This is the famous “Hole In The Wall” bridge on Canal Lake. This is also where Amy stood and watched for logs for a couple of hours.

When we got into Lake Simcoe and were finally in 20+’ of water, I shut the boat off and went under water to look at the potential damage to the running gear.

Much to our amazement and delight, we did not sustain any damage to the shafts, props, or rudders that I could see. We did rub through the bottom paint in a couple of spots, but no big deal there! We drifted for about a 1/2 hour and relaxed while having lunch. We still can’t believe that all is good. We then ran the boat up to speed without any vibration. We truly were lucky through this stretch of the Trent Severn Waterway.

We still have some shallow water in the next 40 miles before we are into Georgian Bay, but this was the known shallow water. Wish us luck!

Arriving at Orillia at the top of Lake Simcoe. We had planned to spend only one night here but have decided to spend two and try to relax a little more after the ditch!

There were several other loopers here and we enjoyed some docktails with a larger group for the first time in quite a while.

Walking back after a late dinner out last night, and the marina wanted to remind us of where we are!

I will post again after we are out of the Trent and into Georgian Bay.

I hope you have a great week.