Fri Sept 9: Westport to Chaffeys Lock free wall

While you Yanks were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in middle school, I was in Australia where we sang God Save The Queen every morning at school. So I’m sad to see her go-but wasn’t she classy even in death.  No muss, no fuss-she just … left. Poor Charles had about given up that he would ever get a turn. Well, I wish him luck-but she will always be the monarch for me!  Not sure the world needs more old white guys with unearned privilege in charge of things.  (Oops - is my feminism showing?!)

We aren’t going very far today, only a two hour cruise with two locks, so we had a leisurely morning with Rick taking advantage of the hose to try to rinse off some of the accumulated bugs.  Every morning brings a new type of dead bug .  We have hosted spiders, gnats and mayflies, plus many unknown species.  Now the ladybugs are having their last hurrah. 

The leisure went out of the morning once Rick chatted with the 4 Le Boat charters in the marina and learned that they were planning the same journey to Chaffey’s Lock, which has limited docking space. All of a sudden we were in a tearing hurry and we sprinted outta there. In Sept the weekday water is empty, but on the weekends there are still many little boats on the water.  And we needed a spot at Chaffey’s Lock because we had a hard-to-come-by dinner reservation at the Opinicon restaurant, to celebrate our 30th anniversary!

The flags in the locks are all flying at half mast in remembrance of the Queen.

Up to this point all the locks have been lifting us up on the Rideau Canal.  We started in Ottawa and have now traversed 33 locks to the high point here at Westport.   Starting with our next lock, Newboro, we will come into the lock and they will lower us down towards Kingston and Lake Ontario.   According to our guide book at Newboro lock we are 407.5 feet above Lake Ontario.  Strange to think we’re up so high in the boat!

Newboro Lock #36 (only the 32 lock - the numbering is a bit screwy)

We saw this strange craft passing in the opposite direction.
It looks like a solar powered canoe.

As we approached Chaffey’s Lock (named for the original settlers in the area back in the early 1800’s) we came to Brown’s “Marina”.  This marina is basically a bunch of small docks that run along the banks of the canal.  This would be a nice place to keep a small boat as it has access to the canal system and the multiple lakes.  It is really surprising how many lakes are in the area. When you look at a map, it’s almost like a delta:

Swing bridge over the top of Chaffey’s lock.  Yikes - sure seems close to our upper bridge.

After all that fuss we had no trouble finding space on the wall. We tied up on the lower side of the lock and were happy to find a power plug right next to the boat.  We plugged in, paid the $20 fee to the lock attendants and had power! 

Rick here with some boat operation notes:

You might ask why we need shore power and it is a good question.  We actually are completely self contained for power, water and waste water.  The boat has two power systems - a 12 volt DC system that runs off our house batteries and a 120 volt AC system that runs off our generator or from shore power if we are plugged in.  Most things onboard run on the 12 volt system - lights, refrigerator, instruments, TV,  USB charging ports for iPhones, water and toilet.  There are a few things that run only on 120 volt the main one being the air conditioning system.  If it is very hot and we want to run the air conditioning we need 120 volt power - so either we are plugged in to shore power or we run the generator.  Also, if we are using the 12 volt system we need to charge the batteries every so often and this can be done with 120 volt AC or also by running our main engine.  We have a single solar panel that does charge the batteries but not enough to replace all the power we use so we need the 120 volt battery charger.   So, we don’t really need shore power, but we do hook up once in awhile to charge the batteries. 

Our faithful readers will remember that we celebrated our 30th anniversary on Sept 6.  Melanie made a reservation for us the Opinicon restaurant.  It had been recommended to us by multiple people so we thought it would be a great place for a celebratory dinner. 

The restaurant has been here for a long time and was purchased by an internet (Shopify)
millionaire about 5 years ago and completely renovated. 

Beautiful gardens surround the renovated main building and long lawns lead down to the lake.

30 years and still going strong! Thank you, Betty Mom, for the lovely dinner!!