Two more locks then Stopped Again!

July 27, Thursday! Newboro, Ontario

We are moving again. The next two locks after the Portland marina were open, but the one after that, Chaffeys, was still closed this morning. We decided to go ahead through the two open locks and hope that Chaffeys Lock would open maybe early afternoon. But no! And maybe not even tomorrow because so much water continues to flow into the area.

In case you are wondering why I keep talking about being held up by closed locks, there were 49 locks to navigate between the Ottawa River and Kingston Ontario. We estimated 4-5 days for the trip. It has already been 5 days and we still have about a third of the locks left to get through.

The lock locations are in the map here and some of those stops include up to 4 locks. We still have 6 lock stops that include 13 locks to reach the city of Kingston.   Since we are enjoying ourselves where ever we end up, why do we care about getting through the locks and arriving in Kingston, Ontario? Because we have friends from Vancouver flying into Toronto this coming Tuesday, and we want to pick them up at the airport and bring them to the boat. That requires us being at least somewhere near Kingston, the end of the canal, where we can rent a car and leave our boat for a day.  Some solution will be found, somehow…?

Our plan was to anchor out tonight in a bay recommended to us by a boater at Len’s Cove Marina, but an engine problem changed that. After going through the first lock Dirk noticed that the water temperature was high and the oil pressure was low on the port engine, so he turned it off and went below to work on it while I continued to pilot at 3 mph up through a beautiful lake with many little islands and some granite cliffs.

The indicators seemed improved after he removed seaweed from the “sea strainer”, but not fully, and so when we came to the lock in Newboro with an open spot with electrical power, we were happy to stop here for the night. Dirk worked further to clean out the sea strainer and he “back flushed the inlet”, and we are hopeful that has resolved the issue.

Newboro is a very small town but we saw two major landmark businesses when we walked 10 minutes to the center of town. It is home to the Kilborn’s store, an usual store that has “everything”. There are beautiful clothes and shoes, kitchen supplies, furniture and rugs, children’s gifts, Dutch Indonesian supplies, gormet foods, etc. All looking very high-end in a lovely setting, and in about 20+ different rooms spread over a large antique building. Quite a surprise in a small town but people come from all over to shop there. And they have good ice cream too.

On the way back to the boat I stopped at the Sterling Inn that dates back to the mid-1800’s. I was struck by the amazing floral display everywhere I looked outside, and the antique yet warm inside of the inn.

There was a group of retired people tenting at the locks near our boat and we chatted awhile. They were from the Rochester NY area and one women was originally from East Syracuse, the town next to my home town of DeWitt, NY. Small world, eh? (I’m in Canada).