It started to rain about 7 am so we got up and closed the hatches. The skies were pretty grey and it looked like we could get some real weather. Gale and Lucy decided to walk to town and bring back coffee before the lock opened. They returned in about 30 minutes soaked to the bone but with two cups of Tim Horton’s French vanilla coffee which turned out to have been well worth the walk in the rain! We were in the lock at 9 am and planned on a long travel day barring any significant wind or storms. We traveled 40 nautical miles, came through eight locks, traversed Lake Simcoe, a very large lake, navigated through some very tight areas appropriately named, The Narrows, and it rained all day long.
Lock 36 at Kirkfield was the second Lift Lock of the system. Of the nine locks of this type ever built, the Kirkfield Lift Lock is the second highest. It raises and lowers boats 49 feet in a matter of minutes. The highest lift lock in the world is also located along this same Waterway at Peterborough which we experienced on Tuesday. The other seven lift locks are found in England, France and Belgium. Kirkfield is in a unique location at the highest point along the Waterway and for some it provides an even more thrilling ride than the trip up the Peterborough Lock because the lift structure is not enclosed. It is more of a feeling of “hanging out there.” If you are north bound, as we were, you proceed out into a pan suspended nearly 5 stories in the air! For some reason, this ride down did not bother Gale nearly as much as the Peterborough ride up.
After coming through Lock 41 at 4 pm, and even though it was raining, we decided to continue into Lake Simcoe since we still had 5 hours of daylight, the winds were nearly calm and our vision was not hampered by fog. We reasoned that it might be nice and sunny tomorrow, but it could also be windy which would make a trip into the lake less enjoyable or, perhaps, not recommended. Our path in the lake was about 12 miles long and only represented a fraction of the north east corner of this body of water. We were glad we didn’t have to cover any more than that!
At 7 pm, we found a nice spot to anchor in Lake Couchiching, between Heron and Bird Islands. The rain quit and the wind picked up but we were safe and ready for a little dinner and some sleep.
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