Friday June 25: Orillia

After a nice run across Balsam Lake, we entered the most 'canal' like portion of the Trent System. The entrance to this section is off of the western end of Balsam as we continue to move generally in a western direction. This part of the canal was dug so it is often very straight and very consistently 6' deep. Piled alongside the canal you can see the rock that was removed as the canal was dug. We spent Wed night at one of the remining 5 locks above Lake Simcoe as we head to Orillia - and were not suprised to hear there was a tornado warning for the area as the wind and skies were doing very strange things. At a house near where we were docked we saw a guy on his roof - apparently looking for the tornado! Our plan was to abandon ship and run to the nice solid brick washrooms at the lock! The second lift-lock on the system at Kirkfield is the first downstream lock we went through. It is really an odd feeling looking over the front of the tub - waiting for the lockage to move us down and the other tub up. I ALWAYS have my escape route planned (which means jumping from the boat to grab a bar on the side of the tub) just in case the front door should open and all of the water pours out! And I'm serious :-)

A fun bridge on Canal Lake - and one of the reasons we don't yet have our mast up. Not sure we can clear the 22' bridges on the system. We passed the golf course that sits right next to the canal - my mom always wanted to be dropped off for 'just a quick nine' but my dad never went for it! Saw several farms with cows standing 5 feet off of the side of the canal.

The remainder of the trip down was somewhat slow due to intermittent sometimes heavy rain. I still drive from the top as it is almost impossible to really go through the locks while driving down below due to the limited vision from inside. This is the kind of day I wish I had had time to finish the plastic enclosure for the flybridge .... It's also a slow go simply because the last 5 locks down to Simcoe are still totally hand operated as they were when the locks were originally built (between 1820 and 1890). Which means the doors are still opened using a turnstile and manpower - as are the valves which let the water drain out of the lock. It is kind of neat but somedays it's just too slow!

At the bottom of this last set of locks: the entrance to Lake Simcoe!