Orillia ON to Severn Falls ON

We are within sight of the last lock of our trip!   

Today we left Orillia early under grey skies and wind. At least it wasn't raining. 

We made our way to the north end of Lake Couchiching (Water with Many Winds in the native language) and into the narrows of the canal.  

We soon came up on a railroad bridge. 

And the sign (which is a new thing for us) said the next opening would be between 11am and 11:30am.   But it was just a little after 10am.   Ouch.  Trying to keep the boat in the middle of the channel for an hour with 20mph winds.... Not easy.  Fortunately there were trees and the trains blocked more while we waited.  

We dropped anchor and used the engines to keep the boat reasonably straight in the channel (and off the huge rocks lining both sides). 

Eventually the long trains stopped and they opened the bridge for us.   We've had it with locks and bridges ...  (We likely have at least one more bridge to wait for, but that story is for another day).

We soon reached our first lock.  Since the railroad held up traffic there were a bunch of us.   So they stuffed five boats in a single lock.  It was a tight squeeze and a Jenga puzzle.  

Five boats is perhaps too many in a lock.  

It could be worse.  Once a year they do an event called Paddle Peterborough where people from all over bring their kayaks and transit the Peterborough lift lock together.  It looks like this....

Now that's just silly.  

Anyway, back to our trip.  Did I mention how stunning the scenery is on the Severn end of this chain/canal?   

This area is breathtaking.  I'm glad we took it, once...  

Sometimes we were driving in rapids and being pushed so fast it was almost like whitewater rafting.   That's fun in a soft raft.  Not so much in a boat that cost more than your house...  Lol. 

No pics of rapids.  Too busy keeping the boat off the rocks...

So beautiful .

There are serious rocks.  

Anyway, after a couple of locks we meandered through some rock Island filled lakes and then the event of the trip appeared in the distance. 

The Big Chute Marine Railroad.   This is a railroad that literally drives down into the water, scoops up your boat (with you in it) and lifts it up over the rock hill and brings it down the back side.   It's as crazy as it sounds....

Yes that's our boat with almost half it's length hanging off the back as it rides up over a road.   

First they put another boat in front of us.   

Then we pull in behind them and they adjust straps until we don't fall off the back.  It tilted our front down a bit just to be sure.  

Then people come over to check that things are as they planned and the cables start to pull the rail car up a steep hill out of the water.   

Yup.  Up we go hanging off the back of the rail car.   

And not just a little bit....

Then we start down the very steep drop on the other side of the hill.  

And down we go....

The view from the top is cool....

And a little scary. 

Eventually the railroad drops us back in the water and they tell us we can start the motors and drive off...  

Even scarier is when they release you and the boat in front of you has engine trouble and it kills on them.   I had to hit reverse and back the boat into place again to keep from hitting them....

We then parked our boat at the bottom and climbed back over the hill to take pictures of our friends' boat following us...

Since the boat was out of the water I took some shots of their power pods that push their boat.   Very different than the straight shafts in our 20 year old boat....

This is definitely a great memory for the loop trip.   

The Big Chute Railway was built back in the 1960s.  Before that the little Chute existed 

That version has two tracks (not four) and manually hand cranks to lift the boats up with straps.   It has a single cable to pull things up the hill and as you went up it tilted the front of the boat up... And as you went down, you tilted downhill.   

It only took smaller boats....

Once we were all back in the water we continued through the gorgeous country that is the Canadian Shield.   

Suddenly we are not in the little cottage country and we started seeing some Toronto worthy pads...

Rough neighborhood..

Eventually we ended our day at the Starport marina in Severn Falls and had a nice dinner at The Grill.   Good stuff ..

Tomorrow we pass through our last lock and onto Georgian Bay.    Once we reach the bay we will be on the same body of water that is Lake Michigan.   No more locks.  But still hundreds of miles away.  (We are still almost 300 miles from Mackinac City...)

It looks like the weather is going to be uncooperative so we are going to make a short run to Midland and spend a couple nights in a marina there until the weather breaks.  

Tuesday appears to be the only decent travel day for open water in the next ten days.   That's a problem.  We need at least two days to get across Lake Huron.  

Rather than two days, we are likely to cruise from Midland to Killarney in the North Channel and stay on this side of Lake Huron.  Once north of Manitoulin Island we are pretty sure we will have enough protection to be able to continue to move later this week.  If we were to go to Tobermory and try to cross it is almost guaranteed we will be stuck there for a while... (And there isn't much in Tobermory..)

I say all that ---  but I've been weathered into Manitoulin Island before....  It's been decades (and in a much smaller boat) but.....  We are still choosing our best option given the weather.   

40.6 miles today.  Slow miles but very eventful.  8am til 5pm pretty much continuously busy...

Our friend Michael (aboard Far Niente) who has been with us the past couple of days (but we first met way back in Paducah KY) is finishing his loop here tomorrow about 5 miles from here!  His cottage is just below Port Severn ..

Until tomorrow....  Our journey tomorrow is supposed to be about 10 miles...  Big travel plans.  The wind is very unfriendly.