OTTAWA, ONTARIO TO KARS, ONTARIO

Monday, June 29th, 2015

Day 329

Miles Traveled: 26

Total Miles Traveled: 4907

  We started our journey on the Rideau Canal.  The first five miles was on an entirely man-made canal.  Much of the canal is on the Rideau River.  This section was created to bypass the falls of the Rideau which we saw as we approached Ottawa.

  As mentioned in previous post, all the locks on the Rideau Canal are hand operated.  It takes at least two individuals to crank the doors opened and closed.  Sometimes, there are four involved (two on each crank for each door).

lock hands opening the starboard (right) gate by hand crank

  Today's locking endeavor was much better than the first day of locking on the Rideau Canal.  The prior day's experience taught us how best to handle our boat in the Rideau Canal locks.  Although, still quite a bit of work, it was a much better day in the seven locks we tackled today (except for the rain showers).  Our Frog Togs (brand of rain gear) kept us nice and dry.    

  After leaving one of the locks, we ran into a maze of floating buoys.  Dan asked the lockmaster "What are we supposed to do with that?".  He was advised to just keep them on our port (left) side and explained that they were marking an obstacle course for dragon boats.  It was a relief to know that we didn't have to try and weave our way through all of them.

dragon boat obstacle course

  The scenery today reminded us a lot of the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River that goes to Charleston, WV.  The scenery was a mix of tree and grass lined banks and areas with nice homes along the shoreline.  It was not very wide from bank to bank, but not as narrow as some rivers we have encountered.

Rideau Canal on Rideau River

  Our final destination for the day was at Hurst Marina where we hoped to get our generator running again.  Almost immediately after getting docked and tied up, they had a mechanic aboard trouble shooting the problem.  He discovered a short in the circuit board of the control unit (probably due to the age of the unit).  This caused the circuit breaker to trip and also become inoperable.  He planned to order the part the next day and have an estimated date of its arrival.

  After meeting with the mechanic, we went over to the next dock to say hello to "Dollinger"'s crew - owners Brad & Mary and guests John & Bonnie.  We have met up with them at several different locations since New York.  We went to dinner at the nearby Irish pub restaurant.  The theme of the night was fish and chips, which we all ordered except John who ordered the shepherd's pie.  Afterwards, we took a quick dip in the "hot" tub.  Notice that the word hot is in quotations.  A more appropriate name would have been "luke warm tub".  We had fun anyway.  To warm up after getting in the "luke warm tub", we had a fire in the nice fire pit area next to the pool.

Bonfire Fun