Orillia, Ontario – Port Severn, July 20, 2008

We left a little after 7 this morning in pouring rain. We went past a large group of fishermen waiting for the start of a fishing contest. It was probably great weather for fishing.

Today we went through 3 of the last 4 locks of the Trent-Severn Waterway. The second was a 47’ drop. The last one, Lock 44 is called the Big Chute. The Big Chute takes the boats up over a small hill and then down more than 100ft to the lake below. You drive the boat into a very large partially submerged railway car travel lift. Slings are placed under the boat and the car travels out of the water, over land and back into the water on the other side. It’s like a huge travel lift on railroad tracks. The original railway lift was only 50 feet long and could carry only 18 tons at one time and was generally limited to 1 boat at a time. This one can carry 110 tons and vessels up to 100’ in length. More importantly it can carry more than 1 boat at a time.

We arrived at Lock 44 at 1:30 this afternoon. We stopped at the visitors dock and went to watch a couple of the transports. We also checked in with the visitor center. We found that this has been the busiest week-end of the season and, while we were there, about 10 more boats showed up. Depending on the size of the boats sometimes only 2 can go at a time.

We got in line at the blue line about 3:00 to wait our turn. Bellissimo and L’Attitude Changer were too big to be in the lift together. There were 6 boats in front of us and it took 3 trips before it was our turn. They took 2 small runabouts and put them side by side in front, then Bellissimo in the back middle. The next trip was 2 small ones in front and us in the back middle. The ride was certainly interesting. We will probably never experience anything like this again. The pictures show Bellissimo going up the chute and L’Attitude Changer coming down.

We stopped for the night at the top of Lock 45 at Port Severn. That is the last lock of the Trent-Severn Waterway and we will go through it tomorrow at 8:30.

3 locks today – total 74