Tuesday July 31: Couchiching Lock

It was late afternoon Sunday by the time we finished up with laundry, one more trip to the hardware store and a final trip to the grocery store then headed out. It was going to be a long day of 4 miles to an anchorage at Big Chief Island :-) On the way there, we backtracked to the Narrows to fuel up and pump out our holding tank. Coming back through the Narrows was crazy with a whole line of boats passing by us. Of course it is Sunday afternoon!

The anchorage was as expected very crowded although not as bad as we've seen in the past. We anchored outside the pack (to catch the breeze) until a spot in the shade opened up. This anchorage is a sandy bottom and fairly deep (7 feet) until you get close to shore. It's a great place to spend a night if the wind isn't out of the NE. Very quiet except of course for 1 boat who thought everyone in the anchorage should share in his music!

The nice thing about here is that we had a chance to discover two things: is our depth finder accurate? And how much depth do we really need before hitting bottom! The depth finder IS accurate, we need 1 ½ feet of water with the outdrive up. And we also found out the outdrive won't STAY raised up! Not great but at least we know. There are 2 O rings that apparently need to be replaced. Mmmm … not sure when we'll do that.

It was a beautiful moonlit night with no wind at all. Even still it was quite cool – enough that most of the boat was closed up. The noisemakers finally went to bed at somepoint! If only they had been playing country music :-)

Monday morning the local ducks greeted us early. Sadly, we didn't have any corn to feed them – clearly they are used to getting food from boats as they all came over in a flotilla - good thing they are friendly.

The other nice thing about this anchorage is it's the perfect place to finally be able to wash the sides of Guppy. What we really need to do is polish and wax the whole boat but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Perhaps when the boat is pulled for the winter??

Once the washing was completed, we headed out but weren't sure where we were going to stay. Maybe an anchorage again or maybe Swift Rapids (location of what used to be a marine railway until it was replaced by a lock. Wrong on both counts – a short 9 miles to Couchiching Lock. A very nice shady spot on the west wall was too appealing to resist. We are now just above the junction of the Severn River (hence the Trent-Severn canal system!) so we kayaked a bit UP the river (so easy coming back). Very populated – moreso that we expected but still enjoyable.

Off tomorrow to Swift Rapids!