August 14, 2008: Penetanguishene, Ontario

We left the Narrows this morning, the place that reminded me of home with its silver grey pilings topped with sea gulls and expanse of tall green marsh grass.

Sparrow Lake, supposedly the best fishing place in Canada was filled with black cormorants. Ships Island trees were covered with them. This is duck that the Chinese have domesticated and use to fish for them on their house boats. They put a ring around the cormorants neck so he goes out and catches a fish and has to bring it home since he can’t swallow it.

McDonald’s Cut with swift current and high red granite walls is the beginning of the Canadian Shelf. After long stretches of secluded water, we found the Swift Rapids Lock a point of congregation. The stone approach walls were full of transient boats and local partiers. So we decided to join them and docked and ate our sandwiches on a picnic table on the nicely mowed green lawn. The Swift Rapid lock is very modern and has a special honeycombed bottom which allows them to very quickly raise or lower the water level with virtually no turbulence. They empty the lock through a tunnel and the river there seems to be boiling as the water is ejected. We transcended the lock, dropping 46 feet in 8 minutes – very fast.

The exciting event for today was the Grand Chute railroad. This is the passage over land along a descent where the lumber jacks originally used a long wooden chute to slide their crop down into the water way below. There is a huge cart on railway wheels that rolls down into the water on one side, picks up the boats and carries them down. The carriage is open on the end for each boat to drive into the car. The boats are suspended on straps and then the rail car rolls up and over the rocky land passage and into the water on the far side. I had some discussion with the rail car man about how it all worked since the placement of the straps did not seem to be lined up to hold our boat and I was envisioning us falling off the back. He explained that the boat was actually resting on its keel with the propellers hanging off the edge. He was nice enough to take a look at our propellers and tell us the it was the port side that was dinged. Take a look at the ride on YouTube - Big Chute Railway

Big Chute Railway

Today we finished the last of the 42 locks in the Trent Severn Waterway at Severn, Ontario. That alone is an interesting accomplishment and it has been such a rewarding education about history, physics, and human personality. Next we headed out into the choppy Georgia bay. Tonight we are tied up at the city docks of the old port of Penatanguishene (and we are practicing pronouncing it). It settled soon after the War of 1812 as a British military base. We walked around the small town and saw the Jesuit Memorial Church that we had heard ringing its bells when we arrived. The huge stone cathedral was built in 1886 and overlooks the bay.