Monday - July 15

 Day 1 on the Rideau went well......the locks open at 9 each morning but if  there is another boat coming thru, we must wait so that's what 3 of us going thru had to do till 10:20 as a work scow (canal maintenance boat) was coming thru.  

The maintenance boat we had to wait on - it took us 1 hour to do the first flight (4) of locks

which are all close together!

  Our boat buddies were Sean and Bridget from between Montreal and Quebec and didn't get the names of the other boaters but they keep their boat in Trenton where I got a haircut and manicure on July 4th.

The locks on the Rideau are all manually operated with young gals and guys (made my shoulder ache seeing them do all that cranking.)     We went thru 7 locks ( all going up 10')  and had 2 bridges open for us and our buddies.

Hand cranking to open and close locks

Mark checking out the manual device to open/close locks

It was very warm in the locks but nice 'n breezy when cruising - we could open Catrina wide open at 18 mph OR slow meandering thru some narrow channels and zig zag around the red and green buoys.

We arrived around 3 at the Morton Bay anchorage recommended by friends Bob and Carol K.   It is very pretty here with high cliffs and so many trees.    The Rock Dunder Nature Preserve is supposed to be good for hiking and we saw some hikers way up there - Mark and I decided that was not going to happen for us.  😀

So much history

Rock Dunder Nature Preserve

Another happy memory from yesterday after breakfast at Windows on the Bay

Paul and Kathy are back home in TX after an early morning flight out of Syracuse!

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