Monday, July 13th, 2015
Day 343
Miles Traveled: 25
Total Miles Traveled:
5121
Today we started our journey on the Trent
Severn Waterway. Immediately after
leaving Fraser Park Marina, we were welcomed to the waterway with a sign on the
bridge at Trenton.
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| Welcome to the Trent Severn Waterway |
This waterway took 87 years to complete. The first lock, built in 1833, was at
Bobcaygeon to help with the transportation of lumber between two lakes. It was an engineering disaster. The lock was built at the wrong level and on
porous rock - the water would never fill the lock. In 1836 an attempt to repair the design flaw
was started. This lock worked, but
wasn't deep enough or long enough for large vessels transporting goods. Finally, in 1857, a new and functional lock
was created. In the meantime, between
1834 an 1920, the Trent Severn Waterway began to take shape. Multiple locks and dams were constructed. In 1907 hydroelectric power entered the scene
and power generating dams were built as well.
The official opening of the Trent Severn Waterway was on July 6, 1920
- 87 years later at a cost of over $19 million dollars.
We were excited to see the channel leading to
the first lock of this great waterway.
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| channel leading to Lock 1 on Trent Severn Waterway |
These locks, like the Rideau Canal Locks, are
mostly operated by hand. The mechanism
of opening and closing the gates is a little different. The lock tender walks in a circle pushing a
handle that operates a mechanism to open or close the gate. Like the Rideau, we tie off in the lock by
hooking our lines (bow/front and stern/back) around plastic coated cables.
 |
| see the lock hand on the right behind the turnstile |
We had heard that the locks can be very busy,
especially on weekends. Today was not a
weekend, but there were quite a few boats taking advantage of the nice weather.
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| busy locks - several boats leaving as several boats are ready to enter |
The first section of the Trent Severn
Waterway is made up of the Trent River. We had some beautiful scenery on our travels
today.
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| Trent River |
Tired from so many locks, we stopped at the
lock wall after Trent Severn Lock 8. It
was a quiet and peaceful setting with shade trees (much needed on this hot
summer day). Soon after, other Loopers
began to arrive and dock on the wall as well - "Plane 2 Sea" (we had
met them in Beaufort, NC and hadn't seen them since Oriental, NC) and "Perigee"
(whom we met in the Chambly Canal and locked through with today). Dan did some fishing while Angie worked on
the blog. Later, we visited with Charlie
& Kay from "Plane 2 Sea" to catch up on each others travels. The evening ended with a beautiful sunset.
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| beautiful sunset at Lock 8 - Percy Reach |
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