Bobcadgeon, ON

Day 295, June 4th, 2010

We were waiting at Lock 25 at 9:00 a.m. and the two girls there locked us through. The next lock was a Lakefield, and then we did 15 miles across Lake Katchawanooka. This is all beautiful cottage country.

Lock #27 at Young's Point is a popular little spot. Very picturesque. There's a lovely store there, where we've been before. We tied up for a bit and treated ourselves to an ice cream and a walk about, stopping at the general store for some milk.

Back on the boat we motored through Clear Lake and Stony Lake. The scenery changes here from the marshy low lands to a the rockier landscape of the Canadian Shield. And, fortunately, deep water with no weeds!!

From Burleigh Falls, Lock #28 into Lock #29 and Lovesick Lake, then Buckhorn Lake through Lock #31. We were doing so well with visions of getting to Fenelon Falls before dark, when we got hung up on weeds again at the top part of Buckhorn, Gannon Narrows. The lake was shallow there - about 7 - 8 ft deep in the channel and the weeds were thick. The rpm dropped until we were hardly doing 2 knots. We stopped the boat and I went down to clear the prop, shaft and rudder. However, we thought we could just do it quickly and continue on without anchoring, but the wind blew us out of the channel a little where the weeds were even worse. We got going again but immediately got bogged down again. This time we dropped the anchor right in the channel and after waiting for a motor cruiser to pass, I went down again and had another go. Freed up again, we chugged through another 1.75 miles to a patch of deep water where we had to repeat the performance and cut away more weeds. Our hopes of making Fenelon Falls were dashed. We didn't think we'd make it even through the lock at Bobcadgeon.

Just as we were approaching the lock in a narrow channel right in the town, a tour boat pulled out just as we were passing, without giving any kind of signal and obviously without checking for traffic! Fortunately John had the horn right beside him and gave the danger signal of five loud blasts. We came within 3 feet of him but didn't hit! He had been about to do a 360 degree turn, so waved us ahead to the lock. It was 7:05 p.m. We thought we'd missed locking through by 5 minutes so we tied up on the blue line. Then we heard the lockmaster call out to us that if we wanted to lock through, to give him a high wave. We waved and he called us up. He said he had to bring the water up anyway so might as well give us a ride! That was kind of him. We tied up on the blue line on the West side ready to make a good start the next day.

Once tied up we had a nice chat with Bernie, Sylvie and Ann who were having a few days fun on a little houseboat. Even though they owned cottages in the area, it was their first time at using the locks!! We went for a short walk around the pretty little town before turning in for the night.