We cleaned up and headed out of the marina at 8:45... it took us a whole 5 minutes to get to the first lock. And they weren’t open, yet. They “open” at 9:00, but have their routine: pick up trash, open the bathrooms, etc... it was 9:20 by the time they opened the lock door to let us in.
We only have 25 miles to go today... BUT, there are 9 locks we have to transit... 6 of them are the historic, manually operated locks and they are slow, 2 are hydraulic locks (reasonably fast), and the Peterborough Lift Lock. Oh, and two swing bridges. And that all takes time.
We had to wait a few minutes at the Peterborough Lift Lock and visited with some Canadians who winter in South Texas. Our friend, John, was at the controls of the lock today and came down to the boat before we went up. When we got to the top, he came out and asked if we wanted him to take our photo on the boat. Sure!
The lift lock is just as impressive second time around as it was the first; and with the boat facing in, I got the view out the back.
The next lock is one of the manual ones... and there was no one at the lock when we got there. We tied the boat off and I walked up to the lock. No sign of the workers. I walked around the building... I could hear the radio playing in their office, but still no people. After a few minutes, three of them came roaring up in a car; they have two locks to run and they were at the other lock. We had to wait for a boat going down before we could enter.
The rest of the locks were ready for us when we got there, but it was still slow going. It took us over 4 hours to go about 11 miles.
It was a chilly day. I guess that’s to be expected, it was in the single digits for temperature last night. Oh, that’s Celcius, but it got down into the upper 30s... definitely time to head south. The chilly temps and shorter days are bringing out the color in the leaves. While certainly not at their peak here, we have had plenty of fall colors... something we haven’t seen in several years.
We finally got to Burleigh Falls around 2:45. It had been a long day. The locks today pretty much wore us out. We’ve enjoyed them, but last night Joan said, “I’m about done with locks.” I’m sure she is after today. However, there was still plenty of work to get done: Wild Blue needs to be made ready for the road.
I checked in with the lockmaster, Phil. He told us we could stay on the lock wall no charge tonight. It’s going to be another cold one, and it will be warmer on the water... it will also let us get unloaded at our leisure. We pulled the truck as close as we could get to the boat and started the process; it took a couple hours.
The ramp here isn’t great - lots of big rocks and holes. We will get Wild Blue loaded tomorrow, when we’re fresh.
As I carried the last of the loads to the truck, this leaf fell into the cockpit of the boat... seems appropriate.
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