(Pictures coming soon!)

4 July 2014

Independence Day in the US and our day to ride the Big Chute Railway.

First up was Adam diagnosing the generator problems. Turns out it is a bad contact on the starter switch. I had done some test work, but I was showing voltages in all the right places. He wired a push button, and we pulled the panel light and put the switch in that hole. It’s a little awkward to start but it does work.

We pushed off the dock and headed over to the blue line. A quick check had Belle among the missing. We looked all over for her. I was a little panicked because we had left the back cockpit gate open and I thought she had taken off. Turns out she was at the foot of our bed behind the blanket that was hanging off the bed. Crisis averted.

So we loaded up on the railway car very carefully. We were at the back and then they loaded 4 jet skis in front of us. We had asked if they could take pictures of our propellers and the hull. So the lock master pulled the rail car out of the water and took our camera and got some good shots of the bottom (no damage and the paint is doing well after 850 miles) and even pictures of Susan and I on the boat!

It was then up the short hill and then down the looong hill to the bottom. It’s really neat how the boat stays pretty level for the entire trip. Susan has posted the video of us riding over

The remainder of the trip to Port Severn was pretty easy. There are a few narrow places (see 2:30 and 3:30 in the video) where it’s one big boat at a time. This section of the trip was very pretty, all the little islands with their cottages is very picturesque.

We got to Starpoint Marina and did a bow in tie, but it turns out that their 45′ dock isn’t really 45 long so we had to back out and spin around into the slip. We had lots of help from the dock girls so it was pretty easy.

Starpoint is very nice, they offer to take the trash off, bring you a Saturday paper, and have a gift bag for you. We chilled in the salon for the rest of the afternoon.

For dinner we walked about 10 mins to the Dam Grill, it has a great view of the dam and the lock. We both had steaks, our last attemp had not faired well, but these were well cooked (or in my case not cooked) and very flavorful.

After dinner we stopped and got Kawartha Dairy Ice Cream sundaes. One of the things I’ll miss about Canada is this ice cream. We then walked across the dam and across the lock (one of the smallest in the system and looked at the boats waiting to go through.

After a 10 minute walk back, Susan crashed and I went up to use the fancy low energy washers to do a quick load. The lounge are had comfortable sofas and a 60” TV, so I watched TV for the first time in weeks.