July 7, 2019

This morning we departed the lock wall in Frankford and continued up the river to Campbellford. This region is a series of small lakes, rivers and manmade cuts (canals) connecting them. The surrounding countryside is low farmland with houses along the shore of the waterway. This is attractive country.

We transited six locks again today, including our first stairstep lock. I will write more about that in a future post.

We are spending the night tonight on another free lock wall just outside Campbellford. There are three other looper boats here tonight, so the usual cocktail hour (termed ‘locktails’ in this instance) was enforced.

7/6/2019
This morning we departed the marina at Trenton and entered the Trent-Severn Waterway. This canal is roughly equivalent to the Erie Canal in the US. After passing through six locks we spent the night tied to a lock wall in the town of Frankford.

The locks on this canal are manually controlled. There are electric controls for the water valves, but the lock chamber doors are cranked open by hand. A large handle, roughly 10 feet across, turns a gear that moves the arm attached to the door. In the photo below you can see the lock attendant walking in a circle pushing the door handle. He has to go around about 25 times to fully open or close the door.

The locks do not need pumps to operate. The water level is controlled by valves that channel water into or out of the lock chamber. I suspect these were controlled manually when the locks were first built, but the valves are controlled electrically now.

We bought a seasonal mooring permit that allows us to stay on the lock walls. It is a good investment as opposed to about $100 a night for a marina slip. At this lock there is power available so we are plugged in tonight. We often do not have power available, but our icemaker won’t run in those conditions. We plan to go to Campbellford in the morning.

July 5, 2019

After a couple days on lock walls, and anchoring out for a couple more days, we decided it was time to spend a couple nights in a marina.  Thus we stopped at Trent Port Marina in Trenton, Ontario.

Yesterday and today have been hot.  Damn hot!  Too damn hot!!  It was good to be in a marina on shorepower where we can run our air conditioners without running the generator.  It is supposed to cool down over the next couple days.

We aren’t actually in Trenton, but in Quinte West which is just across the bridge.  There isn’t any discernable difference.  A pretty neat town with a character between Europe and America.  European (British and French) influences and customs, and an equal part American customs.  You can buy things in the grocery by kilogram or by the pound.  People refer to the temperature in Celsius, but don’t miss a beat if you say something in Fahrenheit.  Measurements are in centimeters or inches, nobody seems to care which.  OK, well you get the idea.

The vibe of the town here is good.  It is small, but everyone seems friendly.  And they have a sense of humor, even if their waitresses don’t go along with the jokes.  Trenton hosts one of the primary Canadian Forces bases, CFB Trenton.  Military aircraft are flying very often during the day, a welcome sight to us.

Trenton is the start of the Trent River, and the Trent-Severn canal.  This canal was first surveyed for military purposes, specifically to keep shipping off the Great Lakes in time of war with the Americans.  The experiences of the conflict we know as the War of 1812 shaped that thinking.  The first lock was constructed as a commercial venture and opened in 1833, but the waterway wasn’t fully completed until 1915.  Not much military purpose by then.

Anyway, tomorrow we will begin our trek up the canal.  There are some very unique locks that we will traverse over the next couple weeks, so please keep reading the blog.  And please consider joining us!

7/3/2019
We left the Howe Island anchorage later in the morning today, and continued west through Adolphus Reach. Near Picton we turned north, and then west again near Nappanee. It was a hot day with little wind, and without our bimini we are at the mercy of the sun. Both of us have sunburned our scalps, so we’re having to wear hats in all the heat.
This stretch of the trip is through long fjords with high banks on both sides. There is plenty of water, with the depths often registering over 200 feet. It is a pretty area, but we wished for a little breeze to cool us off.

I promised to write about flags on boats. In the days before radio flags were the primary means of communicating intentions to other ships. Those traditions continue today, and displaying flags in the appropriate place on the boat is important to us. You won’t get into trouble if you don’t know how to do it correctly, but others will rightly call you unknowledgeable (or worse) under their breath.
The traditions are pretty simple.
1. Display the National Ensign on the peak of the mast, on the yardarm, or on the stern of the boat. This should be the biggest flag aboard. In our case we fly an American flag on our stern.
2. Display any club flags (called burgees) on the bow of the boat. In our case we display an AGLCA burgee there (American Great Loop Cruisers Association). We do that so others doing this trip can find us in a marina, and so we don’t miss out on docktail invitations.
3. On the starboard mast spreader display any courtesy flags or other communication flags. When we came into Canadian waters we flew a ‘Q’ flag (yellow square) on our starboard VHF antenna since we don’t have a mast with spreaders. After we checked into Canadian customs we replaced it with a Canada Maple Leaf flag, which is called a courtesy flag. It’s an indication that we have cleared customs and are respectful of the country we are visiting.
4. On the port mast spreader display the Captain’s flag, the flag of any Naval Admiral aboard, or the national flag of any foreign visitors aboard. We have a friend who is a Jamaican native, and when she is aboard we fly a Jamaican flag there. I don’t have a Captain’s flag, but I might get a flag from the thirteen time world champion Green Bay Packers and fly it in place of a Captain’s flag. We also sometimes fly a gin pennant in this position.
The gin pennant has an interesting history. British Navy ships fly this flag to invite officers from other ships aboard for cocktails. Not surprisingly, junior officers are often trying to sneak aboard neighboring ships to hoist a gin pennant so they can get free drinks. We fly one occasionally when we are inviting other boaters for docktails.
We are anchored tonight in a cove near Belleville, Ontario. It is a quiet evening. Tomorrow we will go to Trenton for a couple days for provisioning, and to have a little break.

July 2, 2019

This morning we departed the Wolfe Island anchorage and moved about 5 miles northeast to the town of Gananoque (pronounced gan-ann-OK-way…Marilou struggles with that big time). There we cleared customs, and then moved west in the Bateau Channel to an anchorage off Amherst Island. Again, a peaceful spot with the right price (free!!). We are now flying a Canadian courtesy flag.

The waters in this area are inlets off Lake Ontario, and as such they have identical water levels. The water is 12-18 inches above normal, and a large number of boathouses are partially submerged. We tried to go slow to avoid damaging their property, but we were certainly the exception.

Along our path today we passed a couple cable ferries. These ferries have a cable that runs along the seabed, and the ferry (really a souped up barge) pulls the cable with a winch to move back and forth across the channel. A clever and inexpensive approach to providing ferry service.

This area is known as the Thousand Islands, and it is a Canadian National Park. There are actually over 1300 islands in this area. To qualify as an island it must be at least 1 square foot above water year round, and support at least one tree. We saw a couple islands today that had private residences, and were less than 2000 square feet total land area. Pretty impressive they could build something like that.

Tomorrow we plan to move further west nearer the entrance of the Trent-Severn canal.

July 1, 2019
Today is Canadian Independence Day. I’m not sure the Canadians take it as seriously as we Americans do with our own Independence Day, but they are not interested in passing up a holiday. Good for them!
Today we departed Oswego, passed through our 32nd lock on this trip, and went to the northeastern corner of Lake Ontario. We are anchored tonight in Canadian waters on Brakey Bay, an inlet on the northeast side of Wolfe Island. This is a great anchorage.

After passing through the last Oswego Canal lock we pulled over and raised our radar arch. This enables us to use our radar should weather conditions deteriorate, and also our anchor light for nighttime anchoring. We did not put the bimini back up which left us without shade on the flybridge, and my reluctance to wear a hat resulted in a sunburned scalp. I’m wearing a hat from now on in these conditions.
We went northeast on Lake Ontario and entered the St Lawrence Seaway. We didn’t go far before turning off for our anchorage. This is a very pretty area.

We are anchored in a cove off of Wolfe Island. Because we haven’t cleared Canadian Customs yet we cannot go ashore, and we are flying a quarantine flag. More about that in a future post.

6/30/19

The weather forecast for today was marginal for Lake Ontario.  Winds were 10-15 knots with 2-4 foot waves.  We could have gone out on the lake safely, but maybe uncomfortably, and there was no reason to do so.  Tomorrow will be very favorable conditions, so we sat in port for a day.

The high flow rates in the Oswego River continued most of the day today.  This, with a strong northwest wind blowing against the current, led to strong waves in the Oswego harbor.  We heard from friends that are in a marina just off the harbor that their dog got seasick while they were tied to the dock.  The photos below show the harbor sea conditions.

We are still tied to a free lock wall between Oswego Locks 7 & 8.  It is a separate pool from the main river as you can see below.  Inshallah is the second from last boat in this photo.  The flows are dropping quickly tonight, and the water level in our pool are down at least a foot in the last couple hours.

Tomorrow we plan to head northeast along Lake Ontario to somewhere near Clayton, NY.  We may actually anchor across the Canadian border.  If we do so we can’t go ashore as we won’t have cleared Canadian customs.  There is a process for doing this.  Tomorrow is Canada Day, the Canadian independence holiday.  I expect the harbors to be borderline crazy, so we will wait to go into a Canadian port until a day later.

Late this morning we departed Ess-Kay Yards in Brewerton, NY, cruised through the Erie Canal until the point it meets the Oswego Canal, and then down the Oswego River to the eponymous city.  This was a slow stretch because virtually all of it was no-wake zone.  We had a favorable current, so it didn’t seem as slow as usual.

Ess-Kay was a great place to stop.  A family run marina and boatyard with friendly people and unusually low prices.  There were a family of red foxes that we saw almost daily.  They wouldn’t come right up to us, but they clearly weren’t afraid of seeing people.  We will stop there again.

This stretch of the Erie has many homes on the fairly narrow Oneida River.  Boaters are responsible for their own wakes, so we have to go slow to avoid damaging docks, boats and people in the water.

At the confluence of the Oneida and Oswego we turned north to follow that latter.  The bridges in the Erie west of that point are 15.5 feet clearance and we can’t get under that.  The Oswego Canal is newer than the Erie even though it isn’t as well known—it opened seven years later than the Erie, and was first used in 1828.  Remnants of the original canal are move obvious than on the Erie and we saw many places that were original canal structures and locks.

Today we transited seven locks, and are moored on a free lock wall between Oswego locks 7 and 8.  This is a good spot to wait for a weather window to go out on Lake Ontario.  We’ll look at the weather in the morning and decide our next steps.

June 26, 2019

On 6/19 we moved the boat across Lake Oneida and into Ess-Kay Yards.  This is a family run marina that is well known in the cruising community.  Friendly people that have good pricing for their services.

From 6/20 to 6/24 I went to Maryland to hook up with my good friend, Tim Floyd.  Together we traveled to our cabin in Wisconsin, and then to a memorial picnic for our coworker and friend Pat (Tricia) Myhre.  We visited with many people we hadn’t seen in years, and I thought we had been there about three hours.  It was closer to six hours.  What a great time, and what a great tribute to Trish.

After a trip to Florida to sort out the boat registration we are now back to the boat.  Several locks on the Erie Canal, and all of the Oswego Canal, have been closed due to high water from unseasonable rains.  We could not have moved the boat had we tried.  We got a Notice to Mariners today that the Oswego Canal will open tomorrow morning.  I shipped some oil filters that won’t come until Friday, so we will stay here until Saturday morning.  It’s just as well to let the pent-up boat fleet move on through before we enter the mix.

We are still at Ess-Kay Yards in Brewerton, NY.  Really friendly people here.  They have a wintertime boat storage business, marina, and boat repair services.  We saw a 1929 Elko (picture below) just outside the main building under repair.  It’s really hard to find a yard that will work on an old wooden boat like that one, let alone one that has experienced it’s 90^th birthday.  Gorgeous boat!!

6/18/2019

It was a nice day for a change.  No rain, and the sun came out around noon making it downright hot.  It must have been at least 75 degrees F.  Almost unbearable in this country.

We went through two locks today, 21 and 22.  They are close together, and have only a mile or so between them.  Pretty country, if unremarkable.

We are tied to a free lock wall at Sylvan Beach.  This is a town on the east end of Lake Oneida.  Lots of tourist stuff, and I think the town is in the outskirts of Syracuse.

Tomorrow we will cross Lake Oneida and dock the boat in a well known marina, Ess-Kay yards.  We will leave the boat there for a week to visit Wisconsin for a memorial service for a respected friend, visit Marilou’s Dad, and to go to Florida to sort out our boat registration.