Friday, July 19, 2019
We were up early on Friday, another heat-warning day with a humidex (the same as what we call a “heat index”) estimated at 38C (100F). So, by 8:40am we began our daily adventure by moving the boat one-tenth of a mile upstream to Campbellford’s lock 13. Seeing three other boats already there, we expected to be in the second lock through. To our surprise, the locks here are willing to raft two trawlers together, so four boats would fit into a lock chamber! Yes! (FYI, rafting means one boat is secured to the lock wall cable/rope, and a second boat is secured to the first boat’s side, rather than secured on a wall.) Because of this, we were on the first trip through lock 13, behind “Jealous Mistress” and “Seas Today” which were in the front of the lock. We secured our lines to the port side cables and had a power boat rafted to us. Eventually we all came up to the second set of tandem locks on the TSW, #16 & 17, the Healey Falls Flight. (For an explanation of tandem locks, see the previous post.) While going through these locks, each boat was able to secure itself independently to its own side of the chamber, no rafting required! Yes-again!
After these locks, we had a 15 mile stretch of water along the Trent River to reach lock 18 at Hastings. The Jealous Mistress, (not a trawler) and the power boat were way ahead of us, and Seas Today travels a bit slower than us, so we ended up going through lock 18 by ourselves, then we turned left into the Hastings Marina. By 2:15pm we were tied up at our dock and got pumped-out right there in our slip! Unfortunately, we only had a single 30 amp power hook-up available, so we used it for the AC to cool down us & the boat. (We have 2 power circuits on the boat, one is for the AC, the other is for the rest of the boat’s lights, outlets, refrigerator, stove, microwave, water heater…)
Completed today: 6 locks (#13-18), 20.1 miles and 132 ft vertical rise!
We got to the main local restaurant within walking distance of the marina, McGillicaffy’s, just at its peak dinner time. We found a group of familiar Loopers that had tied up to the wall (instead of getting power and water at the marina) and thye were on their way out after an early dinner. That was OK, we were happy with a dinner for 2 of us instead of 10! After a couple of seats opened up at the bar, we had dinner and a fun conversation with a local fire fighter, Paul, who knew everyone who came and left the restaurant/bar. His description of Hastings: We have 1000 people, 4 churches and everyone’s friendly. After learning we are Blackhawks fans, he told us Bobby and Dennis Hull (used to?) have farms in Hastings – they’re great guys! He was full in interesting information and stories. By the time we left, we were not surprised his nickname was “Giggles”!
For the evening we turned the AC off so we could have lights and found it was cool enough to sleep without the AC. The next morning, we found hundreds of little (1/2” long) white flying bugs with a double tail all over the windshield cover and on the window screens, but they didn’t move. A little research and we determined they weren’t bugs! They were the casings shed by mayflies that had come out overnight. It looked really strange, but obviously harmless.