July 13: Brewers Upper Lock

Brewers Upper lock was a nice dock to spend the night after traveling a short 12 miles. Still unusually warm but that is supposed to change. The Rideau is not quite what we expected! It is not nearly as overrun with cottages as we had remembered (we also made a trip us here with Mom and Dad in 1984 in our Sea Rays). Farms along the waterway with rolled hay and cattle along the shore also!

Finally, the kayaks came off the boat yesterday – first time since Florida! The water was clear and lots of little fish, mostly bluegills. Also saw a number of carp (big ones) one of which let me know my heart is still OK because it scared me half to death as it unexpectedly and noisily swam away from me. Also spotted today was a snake – not sure what kind though.

We left this morning about 10 for a leisurely travel of about 5 miles to a lake not on the channel but listed as doable and it looked very interesting. Some winding around was involved but with the chart it seemed alright. Let's just say it's been an interesting day as we have been sitting on a stump for the last 10 hours or so!! With no channel to follow, I guess it's sort of hit or miss – and we hit. So first, try reverse, right? Wrong. The shaft pulled out of the transmission (go figure – with the engine pulling overtime in reverse that's just asking to pull the shaft out of the transmission coupling. So first was the issue of water coming into the boat through the shaft tube. Fortunately it was not a lot of water as the rudder prevented the shaft from pulling totally out.

What to do......... Steve made some dives into the water to check out the situation. He managed to get the shaft back in place – but we are still stuck on the stump. Even a storm rolling through didn't wash us off as we had hoped. There was a nice sunset and a georgeous view so all is well except for the stump :-)

A call to BoatUS confirmed what we suspected – they have no towing service in Canada but were still great to work with. Everyone we spoke with was concerned about anyone being hurt, was water coming in the boat, was there damage to the prop, were we ok with spending the night on the stump, etc. This is the first night we have 'anchored out' that there was no concerns about the anchor holding or not! We called it a day and had a plan for getting us off …. tomorrow.