Our trip to the Trent Severn and Georgian Bay
Our trip began on Saturday 7/12/08 from Wolfe Island. We left at 10:30am and arrived in Trenton at 3:30pm. Our plan was to travel at a leisurely pace and arrive at the Georgian Bay in five or six days. We are fortunate Mike and Carolyn joined us in Honey Harbor on 7/21/2008. They traveled with us for 10 days. The boat ran well and the only repairs were a new generator impeller, a new house battery, and two propellers, which got whacked when I drove outside a green marker on our return to Honey Harbor. We were lucky I had two spares on board and the shafts had not been damaged. We returned to Wolfe Island on Saturday the ninth of August.
The most memorable locks on the trip were Peterborough, Kirkfield, and the Big Chute. Both the Peterborough and Kirkfield locks are hydraulic lift locks. The lifts are containers that are huge, 140 foot long steel tubs containing 330,000 galloons of water weighing 1,500 tons. The Big Chute is a marine railway built in 1977. Boats are floated onto a partly submerged carriage, and then lifted overland to be sent gently on there way in the Georgian Bay. All of these locks and the railway are very scary as there have been accidents on all of them that led to some fatalities.
The Georgian Bay is some of the most beautiful water in the world. The rocks are magnificent, sticking out of the water and some, which I found out, are slightly under water. The trip was approximately 600 miles long and involved 88 locks and was a great success. Unfortunately the cost of fuel was over $5/gallon during the trip.