Day 327: Sunday, July 28, 2013
Port to Port: Cranberry Bay to Kingston, Ontario
Underway: 7:37 am Motor Off: 4:55 pm Miles Traveled: 18 Stayed At: Marina
Mile 107 to Mile 125: We finally passed through the last of 44 locks on the Rideau Canal System. We wish we had more time to enjoy the journey but, because of the delays caused by the Erie Canal closure, we had to keep moving. Next time we will take more time and not be here during the busiest three weeks of the entire summer. Live and learn. We will be back, though, I hope.
After a quiet night being serenaded by resident loons, we motored a leisurely couple of miles to the first of seven locks for the day to get our place in line. Idylle was on the dock too. We got through on the first lock down and were on our way through. We had to wait a while at both step locks – we just missed going down with everyone at the four step lock at Kingston Falls so we had to wait two hours for the next run. We were frustrated but decided it didn’t matter because we were just going to anchor in a couple of miles anyways so we laid around and read until our turn. It took about an hour to lock through all four locks and then we were free and finished with the locks on this canal system. Yah. We are getting pretty good at getting in and out of these things, though.
We motored downstream to catch up with Carina at our chosen anchorage near Kingston and soon heard a hail on the radio that they found a marina with room for all of us so we aimed for the dock and found a home for a night or two. We haven’t stopped at a marina for a long time so we have laundry to do, gas to get, groceries to stock up (we ate our last fruit yesterday) and internet to search. Every once in a while, we need civilization.
We had hoped to get more projects done tonight but we were tired and had trouble getting a good internet connection (to map the places we need), so we settled for groceries, a chicken sandwich and locating the laundromat. We only made 18 miles today, but we completed a pretty amazing journey and now we need to get ready for the next phase of our adventure – the Trent/Severn Canal System. We are looking forward to a more peaceful and slightly more leisurely couple of weeks exploring this amazing part of Ontario. Wish us luck.
By the way, thank you to everyone who has left comments on our blog. We have comments from California to Florida and Canada to China. Amazing. It is a special treat to see good wishes from everyone – it makes the effort to write and blog about our trip everyday worth it. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
