A well-timed arrival to the lock at
Port Severn yesterday put us on the blue line as we waited for the
four boats in front of us to go up, the lock to come back down with 4
boats and we went up in the next group. Total wait time: about 45
minutes.
Not only is this the smallest lock on
the system but it is still hand operated. Which is fun for anyone who
has never seen the “old way” of a lock operation. The majority of
the locks have been converted so all that needs to be done is for the
lock personnel to press a few buttons. But it definitely does take
more time with the gates and valves opened by hand cranking.
The rest of the day yesterday and most
of today was a back-up of boats wanting to either go north to
Georgian Bay or south to the Trent. End result? Two hour waits for
lockage through.
And of course it was VERY windy so we
spent much of yesterday and today watching the boats maneuver around
each other. Fortunately there were no crashes. It's really pretty
nice how boaters are always willing to help a boat coming in to the
dock.
One guy was really having a difficult
time. I wasn't sure if all of it was the wind's fault though :-)
There were lots of Cousin Vinnies around – including the guy who
zipped past us in a relatively narrow channel and then proceeded to
miss the next buoy.
Fortunately he pulled up in time to
just barely nudge a rock under the water so no damage to either
engine. Cousin Vinnie (according to Romeo – captain of the sailboat
in Greece) is waiting everywhere to wreak havoc when you aren't
looking. Sadly, we've now adopted the lingo of – 'oh, there's
Cousin Vinnie' :-)
And of course there has been some work
during this down time. The engine has been running a bit rough so we
thought it was time to change the spark plugs and distributor cap.
Plenty of spares so why not swap everything out before having
trouble, right? Fix things on our time frame rather than wait until
there's a problem.
We also need to pick up a replacement
battery. One of the three we have died. Not a big deal but requires
us to run the generator longer.
Of course Steve is always out and about finding good stuff. Today it was a basket of wild blueberries (you can tell by the very small size of them). If he can't hunt them in the North Channel, finding them here was the next best thing.
End product: blueberry muffins! Yum!!
We'll leave tomorrow after breakfast. Steve has in mind that we should spend the night on the lower blue line at Big Chute. Seems there was a guy there last week that had caught a nice 2 pound bass ....
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