July 24, 2011 Dateline Bolsover, Ontario Canada
What a day!!! I am on top of the world, at least my world anyway. Today I am at the highest point in the world that a boat can reach if it travels solely by water from the sea. Before the Kirkfield Lift Lock lowered me 49 feet, I was 840 feet above sea level. When entering the Kirkfield Lift Lock you get a strange feeling. You can see over the edge of the pan and you are looking down 49 feet. When going up in a lock you see the wall ahead of you in the lift lock there is no wall, just air. Rich took this picture looking over my bow, see what I mean.
The lift lock is not as pretty as the one at Peterborough Lift Lock as it is not in the center of a city and is more functional rather than artistic. You can compare the two, yourself. Peterborough, as you may remember, has a lift of 65 feet.
The trip to the lift lock was something else. The canal was dug out of solid rock and is very narrow. There is only one way transit for boats of my size; thank God I did not meet anyone. I followed Sweet Pea most of the day and that is that is her in the pictures. The canal was narrow but that was ok, Rich got me through it with ease. I did touch bottom 3 times and that was not good. They were not hard touches, but they were touches never the less. I did pass through two lakes, Mitchell and Canal. Both of the lakes were shallow and the channels were well marked. Shallow is made worse by the weeds that give false readings on my depth gauge at one point the gauge read less than 4.5 feet. That is not where I touched bottom, so it must have been the grass.
I pointed out to Carol a large bull dog that was on the side of the canal, she said thanks and took a picture of it so she could show it to Cindy and Matt.
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