Canadian Waters
September 13, 2024
Before beginning the Loop, we had never even heard of Georgian Bay. After seeing pictures of its rock formations emerging from crystal clear waters, it became the most anticipated destination of the entire adventure.
To get there, we first had to cross the Trent Severn Waterway, which graced us with 240 miles of near-effortless cruising through pristine canals, rivers and lakes. Besides pausing often to ride the 44 locks along the way, most of the planning and work involved with boating was absent. Weather? If it feels nice enough out, go. Navigation? Just follow the line. How many miles should we go today? Doesn’t matter. When we get tired, we’ll just tie up at the next lock wall and fire up the grill for tonight’s dinner.
Whereas walls on the Erie Canal were free to tie to and strictly utilitarian, the Trent offered well-groomed parks surrounded by flowers, trees and clean “washrooms”, as they say up there. It felt like staying at a quaint campground without any RV’s in sight. Parks Canada charges a modest fee for use of the facilities, which is far less than a marina in the US.
At risk of being too unkind to the Erie Canal, it has to be said that the lockmasters in Canada are on an upper plane of friendliness. At one lock we asked a college-age young man if we could tie up and walk our fuel tanks to the nearby gas station. He insisted we allow him to drive us and our tanks with his pickup. It made us think back in contrast to a particular day on the Erie where we encountered so many gruff, grumpy and uncommunicative operators that we wondered if the NY Canal Corp. had just announced the cancellation of everyone’s bonuses.
We can verify the stereotype of Canadian courtesy is mostly true, and we met many kind boaters along the way who helped us stay on track with our journey, invited us on to their boat for pie, or offered advice on must-stop places. All of this goodwill was offered despite the shabby appearance of Novella during this stretch, which Meriah aptly dubbed the “garbage barge”. The mast was still strapped to a wooden cradle on deck, and due to our thriftiness it was soon joined by Puff, our dinghy, rolled up with the crusty barnacle side out. (We usually tow Puff but we were going to be charged an extra fee in the Trent.) Our folding bikes joined the party on deck so we could easily pedal around the towns each day. At a marina near the end, a woman sheepishly asked Meriah if our boat was “the one with all the stuff on it”.
The placid waters of the Trent Severn gently carried our garbage barge on a lazy tour of Canadian culture, beauty and delicacies. We stuffed ourselves on butter tarts, butter chicken, poutine, Tim Horton’s breakfast, fresh cheese curd, and fish and chips. It seemed every business along the route was also moonlighting as an ice cream shop, and we were never far from Kawartha Dairy coolers beckoning us near for just one more “baby” cone, which apparently means it is the size of a human baby. It quickly became obvious the Canadian diet may not be any better than America’s, so we were thankful to be gaining weight in metric units which we did not understand.
In small working-class towns like Trent to the bustling small city of Peterborough, we burned off many of the calories by riding our bikes almost daily. Swimming helped too. The water was inviting, especially as we made it farther north and the water became more and more clear. After a hot day of traveling, it was mandatory to take a quick dip in the cool refreshing waters, and no greater morning exists than taking a refreshing swim out our back door before coffee. It’s unfortunate that most of the Loop took us through water too polluted or cold to swim in, but we made up for lost time in Canada, of all places.
The locks themselves are a big part of the appeal of the Trent, so much so that tourists arriving by land go out of their way to see how they work, watching the boats lift and lower to their intended route. Many of the locks along the way are more than a century old and still use manual cranks to open the massive doors and the valves that allow water to flow in or out of the chambers. These persisting marvels of engineering use no electricity at any point. Three locks in particular are showstoppers: the Peterborough and Kirkfield lift locks and the Big Chute marine railway. These special locks were designed to quickly move boats a great height over a short horizontal distance. The lift locks do so by employing two giant counterbalanced containers of water. (Think of the type of balance scale held by Lady Justice.) The weight of the water in each container is roughly 3.3 million pounds! Near the end of the system, the Big Chute marine railway lifted Novella completely out of the water on an underwater train car of sorts, taking us on a breathtaking ride down 60’ of stone and into the water below. While traversing these locks we became the entertainment for tourists gathered around, and we no doubt live on in several summer vacation photo albums.
Unfortunately around the time we crossed to Canada was the time many things on the boat started breaking, despite being brand new at the start of our journey. An auto life jacket inflated in the cabin, rendering it useless. The refrigerator plug melted in its socket. Our Starlink dish failed. Our bilge pump hose fitting snapped. Our Honda outboard developed a new problem to add to the pile, but this one quite concerning: no coolant water was coming out the side. A friendly local couple delivered an outboard stand so we could lift the motor and work on the problem. After days stuck in the marina, hours of work and $200 in scarcely available parts, the problem persisted. More research suggested we clean the passage using weed trimmer line (which the Canadians charmingly call “whippersnipper” line). Our problem was gone.
Once in Georgian Bay, we paid a marina to help us step our mast and Novella became a sailboat once again. We raised our sails, heading toward a dreamland every bit as beautiful as we had imagined. With our pantry and refrigerator full to the brim, we anchored for up to two weeks at a time, as far from civilization as we could manage. We spent days alone in secluded coves of rock carved by glaciers many eons ago. We swam in water so clear we easily could spot our anchor 15 feet below. With so much natural public shoreline (known as “Crown land”) surrounding us, we adopted the local practice of “shore tying”. This process involves dropping anchor then backing the stern as close to shore as is safe. From there we would dinghy, paddleboard or even walk to a tree or rock on shore to tie our stern with a long line. Once secure, we could easily pull ourselves back and forth on the paddleboard for mini nature expeditions. We hiked mossy woodlands, craggy shorelines and our own private beaches. We picked wild blueberries and blackberries. We rigged the hammock between the mast and our bow pulpit for optimal sunset viewing. At night, we would scavenge wood and enjoy a campfire on the beach or along a rock ledge overlooking the water and our tiny floating home. This period was pure magic, living inside scenery reserved for paintings and screensavers. Sometimes it is tempting to long for the easy parts of the life we left behind. A comfortable couch. A full size refrigerator. A dishwasher. But in these moments of overwhelming beauty and freedom there was no room for such thoughts.
In an anchorage up Bad River, we took Puff for a ride through “Devil’s Door”, upstream against rapids through a large cut in the rock. Our 3.5 hp Tohatsu had just enough power to get us inside. We meandered through a maze of crevices and along even more powerful rapids rushing through rock formations dotted with wildflowers.
One night we found ourselves anchored in a gorgeous cove divided from the expanse of Georgian Bay by only a chain of low-lying rocks. After a peaceful night’s sleep, we awoke to the sound of the wind howling through our rigging - a forecasted low pressure system had arrived a day early. On the other side of our glassy cove were waves breaking against the rocks, sending spray into the air. With high winds expected to last for days and Meriah’s parents arriving for a visit soon, we had little choice but to head into the bay. We raised a reefed main and motored out between the rocks. Thankfully we were only 5 miles from safe harbor, so we crashed into the oncoming waves for an hour until we were perfectly lined up with the Killarney inlet, then turned hard and surfed the steep 3’ waves into the narrow rocky channel. Early in the Loop, our hearts would be racing, but we are growing accustomed to more and more challenging conditions.
Meriah’s parents arrived by car to the port of Little Current, Ontario with freshly minted passports and stayed four nights with us in Novella’s tight quarters: two nights in the marina and two at anchor. We sailed them to one of the top anchorages on the Loop known as “The Pool”. We showed them our shore tie process in arguably the best spot in the anchorage, with 360 degree views of red mountains on one side and dazzling white limestone on the other. We floated, swam, grilled out and played many games of Phase 10. We couldn’t leave without doing the mandatory hike up to Lake Topaz, an acidic blue lake cratered up the nearby mountain, surrounded by steep limestone cliffs perfect for picnics and diving.
Next we teamed up with some of our most treasured Looper friends, Brett and Susan aboard Tranquility II, a beautiful vintage trawler. We had met them way back in Titusville, FL and spent lots of time with them heading up the coast of the Carolinas before they rocketed back to their home port in Canada. It was thanks to them that we had the inside scoop on the best anchorages up here - they would watch our tracker and advise us daily on the best places near our position. Together we headed north to the most incredible anchorage in the North Channel. They showed us how to tie to metal anchors left by other boaters in the rocks and tucked us into an impossibly small pool surrounded by rocks jutting from the water. Pure magic. After nights on end spent laughing by the fire, stargazing and hiking the rocks with the crew of Tranquility II, cold winds ripping out of the north signaled it was sadly time to leave the stunning beauty of Canada. After one more hop to an isolated chain of islands to the west, we had reached the northernmost point of our journey.
Here we came to the realization that we had entered the final chapters of our adventure and would be back to our starting point of Tennessee in just a few months. We awoke early the next morning under a fog of melancholy. We hoisted our sails and pointed toward one of the most treacherous sections of the Loop- the Great Lakes.
