Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Since we had fishing licenses now but no dip net, we decided to walk back to the hardware store where we purchased the licenses yesterday afternoon. It was about 2 miles to the store, but we all enjoyed the walk on this cloudy morning. On the way back, we were hoping to get close enough to the swans to identify whether they were mute swans, whistling swans or of the trumpeter variety. The locals said this was the first time they’d seen swans in Trenton. Unfortunately, the swans were staying at a distance because of a large group of canoes that had put in and were paddling about.

By noon, the boat was fueled up, the water tanks topped off and the holding tank was pumped out. We headed up the Trent River to Lock 1 of the Trent-Severn Waterway. The Trent-Severn Canal is 240 miles long and made up of 44 locks, numbered 1 to 45. Lock 29 does not exist. The controlled clearance is 22’ so the mast will remain down through this part of the trip. The controlled depth is 6 foot which was not a problem for us since we only draft 18 inches. Most of the Canadian locks do not use VHF radios to communicate with boaters. Instead, as you approach each lock, you see a stretch of wall painted blue where boats waiting to go through the lock tie up. In general, all of the locks on the Trent-Severn are manually operated. In these cases, the lock tender must walk the controls around in a circle turning a gear mechanism to open or close the lock gates and the water valves.

The first six locks occur in the first seven miles of the waterway. Gale rigged up one of the fishing poles and tried trolling between the locks. Within moments of putting the hook in the water, he had a little small mouth bass. Small Mouth Bass fishing season does not start for another couple of weeks, so even if it had been big enough, we would have released it. Maureen drove for awhile so Gale could do some casting for fish but, as it turned out, the first bite of the day was the only one. At 5 pm, we decided to throw an anchor in a nice little bay just above Lock 6 where we could take the dinghy out and do some fishing. The dinghy engine was running very “rough” so Gale ended up having to work on that. We either had some bad gas or there was water in it; whatever it was, our “fishing hour” turned into “working on the motor hour.” We grilled a couple of burgers and enjoyed listening to a bullfrog and the birds as we ate our dinner in this beautiful anchorage.