Our stay at Peterborough Marina was just wonderful, but we wanted to get underway earlier on Thursday morning so we were up around and ready to go by 8:30 a.m. Knowing that the locks were not going to be open and ready to go until 9:00 a.m. we did stretch our morning out just a bit. About the time we were getting ready to leave we saw that about 6 boats were leaving all at the same time before we did and assuming they too were on their way to the lock we waited. Crazy thing is when we got to the first lock of the day there were about 4 boats near the blue line waiting, but they weren’t the ones we saw that morning and only 2 of them were actually transiting through so we actually go through the 1st locking of the day. We were joined in the lock with 4 other boats. We would continue on through the next 7 locks with these folks as the locks were so very close together. By the time we went through the 2nd lock of the day everyone had a rhythm as to how we entered and exited the lock. It was a tight squeeze but everything went extremely smoothly. So thankful I was for the young man in the boat next to us as we entered the lock as we were coming in beside him he would hold his boat hook out to give us a little tap to get us up against the wall. Later in the day Mike and I discussed how most boaters were just wonderful like this young man was and then every now and then you get a cranky one that is always in a hurry, which we had one of these with our group of 5, he and his wife and son were on a pontoon boat and was complaining about how slow we were getting out of the lock. Really, moving a 15 ton boat around takes a bit longer than moving a little pontoon boat, and realistically you can’t be in a hurry while transiting the locks, you are at their mercy. Oh well, we tried not to let his rudeness ruin our whole day.
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| We were packed in tight |
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| Standing at the bow of the boat in the lock holding the lines, right where the water comes in. |
Our second lock of the day was the Peterborough lift lock. I think I will have Mike do a separate blog about that one as it was a magnificent marvel of engineering. Basically the Lady J went for a ride in the sky.
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| Yes our boats were lifted up in this bathtub like machine. |
The cruising was perfect the houses we saw along the way were, well I am running out of adjectives to describe them. We came through an area called Hell’s Gate, which as they say sounds scarier than it was. There was some maneuvering on the Captains part but the area was breath taking, a lot more rocks and when I say rocks I mean huge boulders of granite, lots of small islands. To say the least this is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L country.
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| Solitude |
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| Came across lots of these, thank God we didn't run into one. |
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| Gorgeous rock formations |
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| House boat rentals |
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| This guy was actually surfing on the wake of the boat. |
It was a long day of cruising, 10 locks, 8-1/2 hours and 24 miles. We end up anchoring out in Deer Bay. It was a beautiful evening which helped because after this long of a day ones nerves can get a bit frazzled. I could tell too that the Captain was just as tired as I was because he went to bed before 10:00 p.m. Tomorrow we hope to get to Bobcaygen and spend the weekend there. As we have said in the past we try not to cruise on the weekends, it’s crazy out there. Besides we have a list of boat chores to attend to and maybe a little site seeing. Who knows what will happen.
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| Anchoring in Deer Bay |
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| Anchoring out has become one of our favorite things to do |
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| The moon even came out for us. |
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| Sunrises aren't too bad their either. |
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| It was going to be a gorgeous day! |
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