Welland Canal to the North Channel

The Welland Canal wasn’t as difficult as everyone said. The turbulence was stronger because the locks are bigger to fit the barges and they fill them faster so that it doesn’t take as long. Everyone talked about how horrible it was but we were well prepared and didn’t find it bad at all. Luckily, we went with another cruising boat so they filled the locks slower for us. We went through a set of flight locks where you go from one lock to the next. When the doors open for you to get out, you’re in the next one. I didn’t like that part because we didn’t get a rest in between locks and it’s very tiring to fight against the turbulence.

This is a barge coming out of one of the locks. We had to wait on the wall outside the lock for them to pass. They only have about 8 inches of clearance on each side of the boat so they go verrrrry slowly.

After the Welland Canal, we crossed Lake Erie. One of the days we got to put up our spinnaker sail. We call it the pizza sail because the one on our old boat was the colour of a pizza pizza box and had a 7 digit ”phone” number on it. It was our first time on the whole trip putting this one up.

On the Detroit River, Aunt Shelly, Uncle Dennis, Laura and David came for dinner and Laura and David slept over and stayed the next day. We put them to work! This is Laura putting up the sail in the Lake St. Clair.

We anchored in the St. Clair River and Uncle Dennis came to pick up Laura and David and we went swimming. The current was really strong so we had to wear life jackets and hold onto ropes and fenders so that we wouldn’t be carried away. It was lots of fun.

We did an overnight sail from the St. Clair River across Lake Huron to Tobemory. It was really nice with a full moon and an almost downwind sail. We stayed in Tobemory for 2 days and then went to Heywood, where this cormorant decided to park himself on our davits. It was neat for a while and we took a bunch of pictures and inspected it, but then Dad started worrying that he was going to start pooping all over the dinghy, so he started poking it with the boat hook. But he finally decided that he didn’t like being poked, and flew away.
This is the Manitoulin Island swing bridge in Little Current. As always, we took lots of pictures of it. Before this trip, it was the only bridge we had ever gone by/under on the boat. We made it here for the Haweater festival on the first weekend of August, which was what we were hoping for.

We filled up on diesel in Little Current and then headed off to the Benjamins for a few days before Haweater. The Benjamins are my favourite spot up here. The water is really warm and it’s lots of fun hanging out. One day, we hiked up to the top of the hill and the other side of the island. This is the anchorage from the top of the hill.
We were tied to shore in the Benjamins and Steve and I spent a few hours each day in the water and one of our favourite things to do was swinging and jumping off the rope that tied us to shore. Mom managed to get Steve trying to tight rope walking on the rope and end up flinging himself.

This is us at our camp fire. I know it’s not dark, but it’s 9:00 at night. It doesn’t get dark until ten up here. We left the Benjamins and went to Matheson Island for a day and then returned to Little Current for Haweater.