Sunday July 9: Chaffeys Lock

We met up with Rahn de Vous Friday at Westport. Nice enough town – very touristy with many shops along the main drag.

The water here is still quite high – seems like there is still just too much water around. Not sure what we will find back in Kingston when we arrive there later this week.

The best of Westport? A very nice breakfast place called the Tangled Garden. Craig and Karen had already been there and said it was good so off we went Saturday before getting ready to travel again.

Skies were threatening off and all most of the day but the real storm arrived after dark last night. Quite the show of lightening. We love storms at night though – way better than during the day!

So the destination for Saturday was Newboro Lock. There was a store there that is the ultimate “have everything you want” kind of store.

The strategy involved in being able to end up with a spot on a Saturday night is quite involved as the boat traffic continues to pick up. Do we leave Westport early – thinking boaters will be up early and moving on to the next lock? Or do we drag our feet thinking anyone leaving will be up having a leisurely coffee and breakfast?

We opted for the leave early only to arrive at Newport to find all spots above the lock already taken! (These are the spots with power – how spoiled we have become :-) ). No problem – we found plenty of room below the lock on the floating dock. Time to pull out the solar panels.

Steve, Karen and Craig made the trek to the 'everything' store. I thought the outdoor chairs were quite interesting :-) Plus Steve did find a zester which he's been looking for.

He was also impressed with the obvious care taken with the grounds around the town – flowers everywhere!!

What I found more interesting were the almost ripe red raspberries! Makes me thing the black raspberries are probably ripe at the farm.

The guy who is using his trailer as a seaweed harvesting tool was also interesting! Gives an idea of the amount of seaweed growing in the canal system. Sadly it will get worse as the summer progresses.

Steve found an interesting plaque at the lock that detailed the difficulties in building this particular lock.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Leaving this morning from Newboro posed the same challenge as yesterday: early off or wait. We choose the early off again and arrived at Chaffeys Lock about 15 minutes before the first lock.

As luck would have it, Steve and I ended up above the lock as a smaller space was empty. Rahn de Vous also scored with several boats below the lock leaving. Life is good …..