Traversed June 28 – July 16 (plus a few more days to come)

Written July 14 – 16, 2026

I have needed to write for awhile but having traversed 42 locks so far on the Trent Severn Waterway, my brother Chuck visiting for two weeks, and LOTS of very shallow, rocky or plant filled waters, I have been busy. No time to write while driving (as I did most of the driving during these days) and when not driving I wanted to spend time with my brother whom I’d not see in a couple years (far too long!).

It turns out this is a video filled post. I am not a videographer but I hope you enjoy them anyway!

The Trent Severn Waterway

If you look at a map, you will have to zoom waaaaaay in to be able to see it. It is long, 240 miles from The Bay of Quinte to Georgian Bay at the northern end of Lake Huron. It connects multiple natural lakes, man made lakes and narrow canals cut through the Canadian Shield rock. It rises 840 feet through 34 locks to Balsam Lake then drops 262 feet into Georgian Bay. It was started in 1833 as a safer route than navigating the Great Lakes to move freight before there were railroads. Today, it is a Canadian National Park.

Exiting a lock into a piece of the waterway. This was near the beginning of our transit.

Types of Locks

There are multiple types of locks. Rather traditional ones with doors that open, you drive in, doors close then the water rises or drops.

The old fashion locks are opened and closed by hand. Good old human power. There are cranks like this at each corner of the lock. Depending on the size of the lock door, weeds and sticks, it can be quite a good workout to open or close.

Some of the older locks also have cranks in the middle of each door which open to let water in and to make it easier to open and close the doors.

The newer hydraulic locks are operated from a booth such as the one you see to the right in the picture. This was a big lift. No way this could be opened by hand.

Two of the locks are called lift locks, but I call them bathtub locks. You drive into a tub of water. They close the pan behind you and then the entire pan is lifted to the next level.

Approaching Lock 21, The Peterborough Lift Lock. One of only two locks that can lift up and down bound traffic simultanously. In this case, we’ll take the right lift as it is down. This is the greatest lift lift lock in the world.

We are in the lock. You just loop a line around a small metal rod running the length of the pan. We shared this lock with another boat.

And up we go!

Once you reach the top, the gate in front of us comes down and away we go.

And then we have the Kirkfield Lift Lock (Lock 34) a bit farther along the Waterway. The strategy is very similar.

Wedrove out into the upper pan. Doesn’t that sound exciting?

It is a bit disconcerting but not as bad as it seems. Luckily we did not have another boat with us and thus I did not have to pull all the way to the front.

And down we come.

Both of the lift locks have a roadway under them.

There is one other unique type of lock, a railway, but that is our second to the last lock so you’ll have to wait to see that in my next post as we’ve yet to do it.

Spending the Night on Lock Walls.

These locks in general seem to be in much better condition than those on the Erie and essentially all locks have walls to tie to for the night above and below the lock, some even having power. Some walls are very isolated, others in the middle of a town. Canada graciously has make traversing the lock system free for all boaters this year. If you want to stay on walls, you can buy an annual pass that gets you unlimited access. After about 6 nights on walls you’ve broken even. A great deal as it also gets you access to National Parks in Georgian Bay.

Very typical of many of the lock wall camping spots. There are usually tie ups at the top and bottom. They all have picnic tables, bathroom access and some have power.

This one at Lovesick Lock is on an island. The Lock workers arrive by boat at 9 am and leave at 6.

The Locking Process

Interestingly, the locks do not communicate with boats via radio. If they have to talk to you, they use a loud speaker, but usually it is not confusing. You drive up to a lock and there is a blue line that you can tie to, or just hold station in the water waiting. The lock will then get ready for you, raising or lowing the water as needed and opening the gates to enter. You pull in to the lock, stop the boat and grab a couple of cables that are attached to the walls, loop a line through them and hold the boat. They close the lock gates and then raise or lower the water.

It can be thrilling entering the locks. We will rise to the top of the gate. The water level once up will be 5 – 6 feet above the concrete sill.

Another of the big lifts. We barely fit in the locks sometimes with other boats.

We had to move way forward in this lock as there were boats behind us. The squirting water and the the height of the lock did not help. This is a double lock, so you are lifted, the doors open and you immediately enter another lock.

Believe it or not, we were in a lock. It was a long day of locking and this particular one, although a big lift it was apparently not too tough for Jim. We try to keep the kittens in during locking, but Tori just had to join Jim.

While Chuck was here, I “only” had to drive the boat. A piece of cake…. not! Chuck and Jim did all the lines. Now that Chuck is gone, I have to do a bit more work. However, most of the time doing down locks there is less difficult.

The Plants and Rock and Locks

There are lots of things that make this particular waterway challenging. First, much of it is quite shallow – 5 to 8 feet. Parks Canada “guarantees” 6 feet and, well, that is mostly true. We have bumped slightly in sandy bottoms a couple times and had a small “clunk” from likely a log. Nothing that concerned us much.

However, because it is so shallow, the plants grow like crazy in the heat. They become quite thick, making our depth sounders non-functional, wrapping around the stabilizers and rudder and making the boat work harder. At least once, we carried a medium size branch for a bit and the thickness of the weeds has a couple of times pulled the bow down momentarily.

We have seen several marinas that have “zamboni” machines (that is what we call them.) They drive through the marina cutting weeds growing in the water and load them into a hopper for disposal… somewhere.

We found this “twig” clutching to one of our stabilizers. We removed a couple of these along the way.

This lock was especially thick with plant matter.

Then there are narrow canals dug through the Canadian Shield. These canals are roughly 40 feet wide with rounded bottoms. We are just under 18 feet wide, so if we stay in the middle, we are fine. We, so far, have managed that, but it requires concentration. We cannot put the boat on autopilot as it is only accurate within a yard or two (variation we cannot work with in these tight spaces) and it is less accurate at slow speeds which are required for a variety of reasons.

A sampling of the rock in the areas where the canal has been dug. One would NOT want to connect the bottom of the boat with this.

The reason for slow speed? First, these narrow canals generally have a 10 km/hour (just over 6 mph) speed limit to protect the shores, docks and boats along the shore. Our boat requires 5 feet of water to freely float. This number varies based upon the salinity of the water (we are in fresh water), drinking water (400 gallons), fuel (1000 gallons), poop (can be 100 gallons) and all the other stuff we have on the boat that make it “lighter or heaver”. This changes the 5 foot number making it a bit greater for example in fresh water with more stuff, or smaller in salt water with the same amount of stuff. On a full displacement hull which we have, when the boat is very close to the bottom of the sea/lake as you move through water, the boat is pulled down towards the bottom. The faster you go, the more the boat is pulled down. You can very definitely notice this effect in very shallow water. As much as a couple knots of forward speed. In addition to slowing our forward speed, you are now closer to the sea floor which is only a foot or two below making you more likely to bump something Thus, in many cases where we COULD legally go 10 km/hr, we tended to run 5 – 6 km/hr (not even 4 mph). Barely enough speed to steer the boat.

Sometimes we had lakes to traverse. Other times it is just a long narrow stretch where you really do not want to meet another boat.

Lets not forget locks and bridges that are not functioning. A couple days after entering the waterway there was a big fast moving storm that took out the power at about 6 locks. Rather funny at one level as most of the locks also have a power generation station. It was not just the locks, there were hundreds of power outages across a big swath of Ontario. A little lock was not a priority when clumps of hundreds of homes were without power.

We did not get the brunt of the storm. We were concerned that the tall trees next to us might cause trouble, but we only got twigs and leaves. The Canada Day concert was just starting when the storm hit and sadly, it was cancelled.

It took a couple days for Parks Canada to get generators in place to support the locks that are hydraulically operated. As there are many boats doing the Great Loop, there was big backup of boats stuck waiting for the locks to open. We waited an extra day to get through the lock near us that was down.

We can’t wait for Rincon to get her mast back up and her dinghy reinflated. She is just not as happy this way.

There are also many swing bridges one must go through. We’ve lowered our mast which gets us under 18 foot bridges, but many road and rail bridges are less than this. The Canadian National Railroad has a bridge just beyond where we are now that at best has issues in hot weather where the rails expand such that they cannot open the bridge. They have been opening once in the morning when cool. Plus, it had some other problem which closed the bridge completely for several days. It just reopened yesterday and more than 20 boats passed through! They all then had to go through the lock which was just ahead of that. No interest in that big crowd. The next day another 6 or 8 boats left. We are hoping tomorrow will be a bit calmer at the locks as the marina we are at has basically cleared.

The culprit bridge. We left a day later. We were second in line for the railroad bridge with 3 boats behind us. Unfortunately, the locks were a bit busier and we had delays of 45 minutes or so at each to get through.

Fires

After dropping my brother off in Fenelon Falls, we continued for a few days to the town of Orillia. Tonight will be our third night here. We plan to leave in the morning. The first day, the weather was hot, but clear and nice. Yesterday became windy and then the smoke arrived. Lots of smoke. There are large, devastating fires in upper western Ontario blowing smoke 450 miles and further on into Maine. We are now in the 2^nd day of smoke and the skies are yellow and make Jim and I and the kittes feel like we are in an altered reality. And not a happy one.

This is not a sepia toned picture. It is what our sky looked like yesterday. Happily this afternoon the skys are only slightly hazy. lets hope the fires have actually calmed in western Ontario.

Make New Friends

We have met so many new, wonderful people on this trip. An example is couple we met in a restaurant in Cambellford who live in Felelon Falls. We did not know their names, nor they ours; it had been a brief encounter discussing the oppressive heat that day and their planned pontoon boat trip from the Bay of Quinte back to Fenelon Falls; a route we had taken from starting the Trent Severn to Felelon Falls. Their plan was to travel by pontoon boat with stops at B&B’s. It sounded so fun. We had docked in Felelon Falls and who happens to be walking the dock wall and recognizes us.

Rob and Jim during our tour of Balsam Lake.

A day later we are with Rob and Tracey on their pontoon boat for a tour of Balsam Lake and a visit to their home for appies and drinks in their lake front yard. So totally fun!

Then there is Mike and Callie whom we met in Lakefield. They were docked on their boat and we got to talking. They live in Orillia and were dropping their boat off in Buckhorn for work. We kept in touch via text, Mike checking our progress and answering questions I had along our route. We made it to Orillia and Mike took us to Costco to pick up a few items. Yesterday, they toured our boat, then we went to their home for a wonderful surf and turf dinner and ideas on where to go when we get to Georgian Bay. Above and beyond and so helpful. We are all considering meeting up while in Georgian Bay.

These are local Canadians. It is so wonderful to meet these folks, learn about their lives and understand how in tune they are with our views on US and world politics.

And then there are the boaters that we play hopscotch with. There are two boats we have gotten together with once or twice who seem very simpatico. They are both doing the Great Loop so past Georgian Bay it is not sure how much we will see either this boating season but I have a sense we’ll be in touch with both couples.

A Pump Out Tutorial

It has come to my attention that when I talk about a pump out, it may not make sense to many people. It is not a pump that is out on our boat that needs replacing or repair. A pump out is emptying our poop tank which may be as much as 100 gallons. When we are 3 miles offshore anywhere in the world in the ocean, we can open a valve and pump this poop into the ocean. Fertilizer and food for fish?

In inland water ways (in the US and Canada) and the entirety of the Great Lakes, this sort of discharge of waste is illegal and can incur a very stiff fine. Thus, one has to go to a marina that has a pump out capability.

You open a cap on your boat deck, a hose is attached and a pump on shore is used to pull all the poo out of your tank into city sewer or a holding tank that is then dumped into a sewer system. In the US these pump outs typically cost $5 – 10. In Canada, they cost $40 – 60 per pump. Not all marinas have pump out facilities, many that do seem to be broken and given the shallow water along the Trent Severn Waterway, many of the marinas do not have sufficient water depth for us to get to the dock where the pump out is. Thus, our focus on pump outs. Note that we can go 2 – 3 weeks between pump outs which is nice to say the least.

Cruises on the Trent Severn

One can rent a houseboat and ply the waters of the Trent Severn. Many people do. Or, you can take a cruise from The Big Chute to Peterborough on a small customized ship called the Kawartha Voyager.

The Voyager headed towards the lock. It tips its bow up so that it can fit in the lock.

As you can see, there are lots of boats tied to the wall. There is just enough room for the boat to get to the lock.

Here it is in the lock and the gates have closed behind him.

This lock at Fenelon Falls drops 24 feet. There is a bridge the Voyager needs to go under but the boat is too tall. Thus, it automatically lowers it’s radar arch and the top of the boat temporarily to get under the bridge. The Captain opens a hatch and sticks his head out the top to steer. Crazy! (for those who need more, Jim has a video of this action)

A Few Words About My Brother’s Visit

I was so happy that my brother could come and experience most of the Trent Severn with Jim and I. As we thought about it, we realized we had not see each other since he and his wife Jan spent a week with us on the boat in Belize in 2024. That is WAY too long. Chuck and I have always been close, so it was wonderful to just be together, chat as it came to us and experience this piece of adventure together. We have agreed to see each other more often. I missed him.

We had fun together!

Sylvia Crain – Hoy!

Life is about choice

Traversing the Trent