Day 338: Friday, August 8, 2013
Port to Port: Swift Rapid Lock to Midland, Ontario
Underway: 7:00 am Motor Off: 5:15 pm Miles Traveled: 24/21 Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First time seeing beavers; first time getting Aurora hauled out (if only for about 10 minutes at Big Chute).
Mile 224 to Mile 240 (Trent Severn) Mile 0 to Mile 5 (Georgian Bay): Today was the end of the Trent Severn leg of our grand adventure and the beginning of the Georgian Bay leg. We left the lock exactly at 7 am and cruised peacefully down the channel past lots of cabins, boat houses and granite cliffs. It’s hard to describe this part of the Trent Severn. Mix green of every shade and texture with granite greys, pinks and black, throw in endless varieties and sizes of buildings tucked in randomly along the shore and perched on tiny islands and add a blue border in front of everything and you might get close. We wove in and out of narrow channels and small bays until we finally saw Big Chute – the only “lock” where your boat is lifted completely out of the water, carried up and over a large granite outcropping and dropped back in the lake on the other side. It’s a pretty amazing experience.
We were early and had time to wander around and take pictures of the “car” which carries up to 9 boats at a time. We followed Carina in and, in less than 15 minutes, we were carried up and over and down and were on our way again. And to think, this was originally designed decades ago to be a temporary solution while they finished building a typical lock at this location. Now it has become a tourist attraction and unique experience for thousands of boaters each year.
We motored another 8 miles and arrived at Severn – the official end of the Trent Severn. As we wove our way through the seemingly random red and green buoys past a large marina we heard someone yelling “Aurora, Aurora”. We looked around and who do we see but our friends Eddy and Linda waving their arms on the end of the dock. What an amazingly small world. We took a quick left (after radioing Carina that we were making an impromtu stop) and had a wonderful and unexpected reunion. We ended up visiting for several hours catching up on our respective adventures, having lunch and hoping that we will meet again in the near future.
Believe it or not, the Severn Lock was our 103rd lock in Canada. Yikes! It happened to be one of our fastest locks, too. We just drove in, tied up and as we were starting down, Eddy and Linda popped up over the top for one last goodbye. Eddy even helped the lockmaster crank the gate open to let up out. We miss them already.
We motored under the bridge and out into Georgian Bay following the small craft route. We passed right by the little bay where, on our first trip here, we anchored and took our mast down so we could go under the same bridge traveling the opposite direction. We left the route and crossed the bay to Bayport Yachting Center in Midland, Ontario where we met back up with Carina. They are getting their mast re-stepped tomorrow morning. We untangled all our lines, reconnected everything and lifted our mast back up where it belongs all by ourselves. It’s nice to be a sailboat again. On to new adventures.
Total Miles: 4,997
