The Lady J: Trenton to Frankford

On our way

Approaching a lock

Sunday morning in Trenton arrived with sunshine and humidity. By 8:00 a.m. we were ready to leave, only problem was the gas dock which is also where you pump out at wasn’t open until 9:00 a.m. so we wait. Pumping out was 1st on our list of things to do today. About 8:30 a.m. we decided to leave the dock and work our way over to the pump out. We had called for the deck hands for some assistance but after waiting for them for a while the gentleman next to us offered to help us with our lines and to get out of the dock. The wind was a little “active” shall we say by this time. We were able to get out of the slip fine, but as the gentleman went to pull on our spring line to pull us a little away from the boat next to us the line came loose and boom into the water he went line and all, along with his wallet, glasses and yes folks his phone. I was freaking out. Captain quickly stopped the boat, and the guy popped his head out of the water, by that time several folks were there to help the gentleman either that or morbid curiosity was getting the best of them. Luckily the guy on the other side put his swim ladder down and the guys was able to get out of the water. I felt so bad for him, but at that point there was nothing we could do but thank him profusely and get the heck out of the way.

We entered the Trent Severn Waterway around 9:15 after a good pump out. We had 6 locks right in a row. Luckily we were traveling up in the locks today. The wind seemed to be picking up as time went on. The locks on the Trent Severn are a lot smaller than on the Erie Canal. We locked through with another family on their big ole boat. It was a husband, wife, and two teenage kids. I will expound on a little thing that happened in the 2nd lock. The young teenage girl was at the stern of their boat which was in front of us in the lock. All the sudden I hear her say “Mom can you come here”, I heard her Mom say “what do you need dear” and the young girl in a small sheepish voice said it’s kind of important that you come NOW!. As I looked over to the young girl I noticed that she was holding the lines of the stern where it’s connected to the lock wall in one hand and holding the strings to her bathing suit top in the other. Some how her top had come untied. And bless her heart there were two lock guys and my hubby right in plain view. Once I noticed what was going on I told all of them to look the other way as the young girl by this time was mortified. Mom quickly came to the rescue and everything was fixed. I did notice though on the next lock the young girl had on a different bathing suit top.

We continued on with this family through 6 locks total. Lock 4 was a bit of a challenge. By this time the wind was blowing pretty hard. We entered the canal and were unable to get over to the lock wall to grab a line. The wind had other ideas as to what we were supposed to be doing. The lock master quickly came down and told Mike to just stay in the middle and when he closed the lock gates the flow of the water would push us to the wall, and darned if it didn’t. Needless to say we made quick note of this.

We had done 5 locks and it was already past noon. Several of the locks because they are so small we had to wait long periods of time to get through them. By the time we made it to the 6th lock we were hot, cranky and exhausted from fighting the wind. So after transitioning through Lock 6 we decided to pull up to the Lock wall and call it a day, they had electric and we knew that there were predicting some storms coming through.

The lock master told us of a Cantina that was across the canal so we decided to walk over there, grab a bite to eat and come back to an air conditioned boat. Well surprisingly enough the food from the cantina was pretty good. We finally worked up the nerve to try Putine. I had heard about this but we had never been brave enough to try the combination of french fries, cheese and gravy. Plus other versions have all kinds of stuff added to them. So we decided we would try an original. And to quote the Captain, “damn these are good”. We will definitely be having those again.

So here we are in Frankford, Ontario trying to cool off. We have gone a whole 7 miles. I know it doesn’t sound like much but it took 5 hours to get this far. So we are counting this one as Trent Severn “1”, Lady J “0”.

Tomorrow is another day we hope to make it to Campbellford.