HASTINGS, ONTARIO

Tuesday, June 31

Rain. That about sums it up for the day. It started raining about 9:30 AM while we were waiting for lock #11 to open, and was still raining in the afternoon when we tied up at lock #18. 

Lock #11 is a “flight” of 2 locks, i.e., it’s a multi-stage process, going in one chamber, getting locked up to a middle chamber, then getting locked up again to the upper water level. Another boat was descending #11, and they locked them down first, before we could even enter the lock. So, even though the lock opened at 9 AM, we didn’t get to the upper side until almost 10:30. As nice as the Canadian locks are, one cannot be in a hurry around here. That’s not a bad thing, we are just traveling anyway, without a deadline, so it’s OK.

We’ve had a lot of great, fun times cruising this boat - well today was one of the “less fun” days. Although the temperature was not too bad (around mid 60’s), having to stand out on deck holding on to lines and cables as we went through all the locks in the rain still felt cold. I maneuver the boat from the flybridge while entering and exiting the locks, and many of the locks were so close together (500 yards to 1 mile) that I spent most of the morning in the rain. By afternoon, we had a stretch of water about 18 miles between locks and we could pilot from below, out of the weather. We even turned on the generator to make a hot lunch and heat up the cabin a bit.

Our destination for the day was Hastings, a small town known for their fireworks display on Canada Day, July 1st. They have a wall to tie up to on the upper side of lock #18, but it is usually very crowded on Canada Day since they set off the fireworks from the marina across the river and all the boats in the marina have to leave. They all go across the river and tie up at the wall, several boats deep. Rather than get caught up in all that mess, we tied up at the bottom of lock #18, right next to the lock where there is no room to raft together. That way, we can leave the morning after without waiting for the crowd to untie…