Off to Canada

Our electrical and mechanical problems had one good result -- we had a spectacular crossing of Lake Ontario, south winds at less than 5 knots, seas of less than one foot and sunny, blue skies.  It doesn't get any better than that.

We entered Canada in the town of Picton.  Canadian Customs and Immigration is a very casual affair.  You dock your boat at one of the approved marinas and call an 800 phone number.  They have all of our information in their computer from last year, so you answer a couple of questions (do you have any cigarettes on board? how much liquor are you carrying? how long are you staying?) and then it's "Welcome to Canada." It was harder to come home last year through U.S. Customs than it is to go into Canada.

After one night in Picton we set off for Trenton, the self-advertised "Gateway to the Trent Severn." In addition to being the city at the entrance to the Trent-Severn Canal, Trenton is home to the largest military base in Canada. With the good weather, the Canadian Air Force spent all day doing touch and go practice with massively large cargo planes right over the waterway.

Down Time in Trenton marina

Everybody going up the canal spends at least one night in Trenton. This is because there are six locks you have to go through in the first 5 1/2 miles of the canal and, depending on how long you have to wait at each lock, it can take 4 - 7 hours. The night before we planned to leave, a tour boat pulled into the marina to spend its night before going up the canal. This boat, the Karwartha Voyageur, plies the canals of Canada. It does tours up the Trent-Severn and the Rideau Canals for folks who want to see them but don't have their own boats. It holds 45 guests with 12 crew.  Each of its three different trips lasts 5 days. She runs from the middle of May to the middle of October.

Karwartha Voyageur

The locks open at 9:00 AM and by the time you get through lock 6, you are ready to stop.  The next lock is six miles away and the locks close at 4:00 PM this time of year, so most folks call it a day at Lock 6. Parks Canada offers a mooring permit that allows you to spend the night at any of the locks. Most have a concrete wall with cleats to tie to, picnic tables and restrooms. But no water or power hook-ups. We have a propane gas stove and solar panels that keep our house batteries fully charged and run everything but the air conditioning and water heater, so power at the dock is not a big issue for us. But lots of power boats have all-electric kitchens which means you can't cook without a power connection or running your generator.

Typical lock docking area

The town of Frankford at Lock 6 figured out that boaters would stay and spend money if they had access to power, so they installed power hook-ups at the lock. Overnight traffic at the lock and in the town has increased three-fold since the power was added according to the lock master. We were happy to be among the Lock 6 stayers.

One of the interesting things we've observed in our first month on the water this year is the Canada goose families. We've been able to watch the growth of the babies from barely out of the egg all the way to teenagers. Geese are great parents and several families tend to group together to watch over the kids. We noticed last year that flocks of Canada geese on the ground post sentinel geese at the edges of the group. These geese keep their eyes focused outward, looking for dangers. Periodically, the sentinel duties are passed to other geese, so everyone gets a chance to eat. The sentinel geese are also responsible for keeping the kids together, a job that gets harder and harder as the goslings get older. The other day we finally saw a group of teenage geese out without parents. They were old enough that they were starting to get their colored feathers (up until then they are a soft brown all over). I guess that's the point when they start to form their own flocks.