Here is a shortcut to it: The New York State Canal System and the Trent-Severn Waterway.
We will be taking a much more leisurely time through it this season
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We visited the Trent-Severn during our 2005 cruise, albeit from the
other end.
Here is a shortcut to it: The New York State Canal System and the Trent-Severn Waterway. We will be taking a much more leisurely time through it this season
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| There are two ways to come up to the lock from the west, One through
Potato Channel which didn't look like anything I wanted to travel at all
and the other through the Waubaushene Channel with its own curvy, rock
lined channel. Both channels come together and then proceed up under the
Hwy. 69 Bridge (now TransCanada Hwy. 4) and up to Lock 45, the last on
the Waterway.
Notice that the chart says "Channel Buoyed". (Just above the corner of the purple box).
Even more dramatic was our introduction as we locked up!! We had left Midland when we did in hopes of avoiding bad weather as we went through the two tight spots. The weather had been perfect. Light winds and light seas. We got to the lock which was already open and waiting for us. About halfway up in the lock Mary said 'Thunder!!..' We got up and saw 'Great Darkness...' in the west. We fired up the engines and pulled out and moved around to the backside of the lock approach wall. We had three lines attached when the thunderstorm hit us. Once again providence smiled on us. July 10, 2008 |
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Into the Trent-Severn
| It seems to me that the Waterway is defined by the waterways (small
letters) that make the whole. These waterways are themselves distinguished
by what lies between the dams and locks that form them.
As I thought about how to describe 33 days of travel and 240 miles of extremely varied scenery, it occurred to me that I could talk in terms of three main features of the Waterway:
Let me see if I can give a feel with a few though. |
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The job of a waterway lock is to raise or lower a vessel from water at one level to another. The levels are almost always created by a dam of some sort which forces the water depth to build up in front of it.
Normal Locks
Forty-one of the Trent-Severn locks are big holes in the rock with a pair of doors at each end. I'll call them 'Normal' locks. The lockmaster either fills or empties the chamber between the doors, depending upon what level the boat is. In other words, If I want to go up, he will drain the chamber until the level equalizes with the water I'm sitting in. I drive in. He closes the door behind me and then fills the tank. When the water has raised me to the level at the other end he/she opens the doors and away I go.Click here for pictures.
Lift Locks.
Two of the locks are 'Lift Locks'. They are a pair of big tanks sitting on top of interconnected hydraulic cylinders. The operators fill the top tank with more water than the bottom tank and the weight forces the top tank to fall and the bottom tank to rise. Take a look at the pictures.Click here for pictures
Big Chute
Big Chute is like nothing you have ever seen. Well, maybe... It is a Marine Railway system . You motor up and onto to a conveyance sitting in the water similar to a TraveLift except that the boat is not suspended, it rests on its own hull. The operators adjust the straps to keep you upright and then start driving up and out of the water. After crossing a big granite ridge they drive you down into the water on the other side. There are a set of tracks for the front wheels and a set for the back so you are always level. It's cool!!
Sometimes you just go through a lock and on the the next. There are stretches where you may go through 5 locks in 6 miles. Other times there will be 30-40 miles between them. What you do and how you view a lock, or set of locks is a situational type thing. We had days where we only went 7 miles down to the next lock because we wanted to stay at its park like setting. Other times they were just an extra 30-45 minutes on our day's trip.Before going further let me talk about definitions and sometimes the lack there of. The charts, the cruising guides, and even we talk about the 'Lock'. It took me awhile (actually only until I went through the first one) to realize that you really have to think about the upper approach walls, the lock chamber and its walls, and the lower approach walls. The only time we would tie up to the walls of the chamber is when we lock through.
Each lock has a lockmaster (and usually one or more helpers) in charge. The lockmasters house has restrooms although no showers. In addition to opening and closing the chamber, the locktenders are groundskeepers for some of the loveliest small parks you will ever see. You can tie up it the either the upper or lower approach walls, free for the day or for a fee for overnight. We bought an unlimited use pass for the season. The break-even point between paying by the night or paying by the season is 11 nights. We spent 25 nights tied up to locks along the Waterway!
The lower approach wall at Swift Rapids lock. The boats along the lower right side are tied up on the 'Blue Line', and hence are telling the lockmaster they want to go up. The top two have come down and have chosen to stay for some time.
The chamber of Lock #1 at Trenton Black rubber coated steel cables hang down from the sides of the chamber. You loop lines around these cables to hang on to as the boat goes up (or down).
I'm not going to try to give a geography lesson of the Trent-Severn. That is better done on some of the other sites on the web. What I will do is talk about our impressions and observations.
One end of the T-S is at Port Severn at the bottom of Georgian Bay. It crosses above Toronto and finally connects with Lake Ontario (almost) at Trenton. Those of you who are fairly astute will have noticed that my description starts at the western end instead of the more normal eastern end. Well... Since we started this year from Port Severn, I'm going to start there.Map sections (above) 9, the eastern part of 5, 4, and 3 looked fairly similar to me. They had granite domes, rocky islands, and really hard looking rocks. All of the T-S has hard rocks!! Some just looked harder than others. The area around Lake Simco (the big lake in 8) was flatter with a reasonable amount of agriculture. The same might be said for areas 2 and 1. With that very broad brush at geology. I'll post some pictures.
I have selected some pictures of the countryside between the locks. Click HERE for a Scenic Drive through the Waterway. I have tried to put some place markers in to orient you a little.
The Trent-Severn was the high point of this summer's cruising. The weather was moderately good (but when we looked at the Texas temps it got a much higher rating), the scenery was outstanding, and probably best of all, we may have learned to slow down a little.
Till Later!!
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