Smiths Falls

Thursday August 1, 2013
44 53.804 N
76 01.344 W

It got really dark

The next lock was about 5 miles away and we wanted to be there by the first opening (9AM! These guys must be ex bankers). So we were up at 7 AM and underway at 8 AM and arrived at the next lock (# XX “XXXX”). Of course they opened it the other way, so we had to wait. The forecast called for lots of rain, and this is where it started. (My Christmas present last year was this very cool all weather sailing jacket and I had never had reason to wear it until today. So I was sorta happy)

After the lock we had about 15 miles of lakes ahead of us so we had a chance to get some miles under our belt. Our target for the day was Smith’s Falls, about 27 Statute Miles, and if we made that distance we would be back on schedule.

The rain bucketed down and visibility decreased to half a mile or so. Without the chart plotter we were navigating the old fashioned way with paper chart, dividers, parallel rulers and the binoculars. It was annoying rather than concerning, although we did have to keep our wits about us. It is just amazing how ambiguous a normal conversation can be when navigating this way,  dispersed with questions like “What do you mean by 100 yards up? Up what?” Fortunately, the route was reasonably well buoyed. And better still Deidre made hot chocolate for morning tea.

On that topic. We were able to make phone contact with C-Maps today. It took a while to convince the chap (“Phil”) that we were running blind with the chart he had sent us just 2 weeks ago. It’s too late to do anything about the Rideau, but I need charts for the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers. (We have the St Lawrence covered in another system, but I wanted Phil to sweat a bit). He pulled up the chart he had sent us and I gave him our lat and long to enter. Silence. Then he said, “Oh, you are UP THERE”! Made me feel we were in Hudson Bay.

Taken by a friend

Some of the canal had been blasted out of solid rock and they only made the channel as wide as a “horse and cart” sized barge. We had received a lot of comments about the size of Tide Hiker, and through some passagess today I felt like I was navigating the Titanic up Mordialloc Creek. There were some sections where I felt the need to broadcast our location on the VHF radio and blast the horn to warn oncoming traffic. But all went well.

The “Upper Rideau Lakes” are just as I imagined Canada. Did not see any beavers or mounted police, but lots of water, lots of little islands, lots of fir trees and some very deep water. We were in lakes today that were just about as deep as they were long. With a very broad brush, the canal today was really a bunch of deep glacial lakes connected with narrow man made canals. (I have inserted a video below)

Tide Hiker ran OK today. The vibration seems less. But she does not like having here engines started and stopped in every bloody lock and dock. It’s as if they never get hot enough and run rough at idle, and the starboard engine even stalled a couple of time.

We arrived at Smiths Falls about 2 PM, and parked under two trees. Alongside we have a picnic table and colorful flower beds.

It was a pleasant little town. It had grown with the canal era and then faded , but revived now by tourism and proximity to Ottawa.  The areas around the canal and locks has been nicely developed with walking and biking trains and public parks. Tonight is “Movie in the park” night in the park adjacent to where we are moored.

We headed into town and found the local coffee shop and spent a pleasant hour or so catching up with emails and updating the blog. When we got back to the boat they were setting up for the movie plus pumping up those “bouncy things” for the kids. I took a bike and went to the local excuse for a marina to check out the pump-out and for a bit of a roam around town.

We had picked out a Hungarian restaurant for dinner and walked back into town about 7PM. Dinner was most forgettable.