LOCK JAM

July 23, 2011  Dateline:  Fenelon Falls, Ontario Canada

Yesterday was a rest day for me.  Rich and Carol kept me in Bobcaygeon. In the morning they did some cleaning of and maintenance on me.  Rich wanted to give me a much needed bath but there was no water pressure.  In the afternoon they went to the town.  Carol found this neat shoe store, called Bigley’s.  It claims to have 40,000 pairs of shoes.  Rich left her alone in the store and would you believe that there were so many pairs of shoes that she got confused and bought nothing.  I bet their daughter Sandra would have had a good time there.

Today was another short day as Rich and Carol attempt to adjust my schedule to go through some real narrow sections of the canal tomorrow when there is limited traffic. We only went 15 miles today to Fenelon Falls.  This is the nicest town that we have stopped in so far.  The town is large, busy and right up against the lock.  This lock is one of the busiest on the system and nearly 2,400 boats pass through it in the month of July each year.  The lock is a 27 foot lift, which I will pass through in the morning.  There is going to be a Lock Jam Blues Festival at the lock tonight so almost all of the wall space was taken by the locals.   Lucky for me, Carol called the lockmaster; he found a spot that I could fit into.

Rich got a picture of the same house boats at Fenelon Falls. He thinks that they waited there for the lock as well.  Lockmasters have a lot of power.

This morning started out interesting.  There were two house boats that stayed on the Bobcaygeon lock wall last night.  In the middle of the night, they had a loud party and set off fireworks.  The lockmaster invited the boat from New Jersey, I knew that was me, into the lock first and said I could tie up where ever I wanted.  He then “invited” the houseboats in, next to each other.  He closed the lock doors behind them.  He inspected the way they were tied up and let them know in no uncertain terms they did a bad job and what they had to do to fix their tie up.  With that out of the way, he then let go with a verbal attack the likes of which Rich had not heard since his days in Army boot camp.  The only thing missing was the four letter words.  The lockmaster stood on the lock wall and yelled down at them.  There was nothing they could do but listen.  After a half hour delay he let us continue on.

Prior to the start of the Lock Jam three people called “The Tug Trent Troupe” performed a history of the Trent Severn Waterway.  They did a great job playing all of the individuals who were involved with the development of the system over the nearly 80 year period of its construction.

“People watching” is always fun, Rich told me about a lady who had a large dog at the festival.  Nothing of particular interest except that as she walked the dog would stick his head between her legs so his neck was right in-between them.  Needless to say she was having a difficult time walking.  However, this must have happened before as she dealt with it in stride, no pun intended.

The falls are Fenelon Falls are called the Little Niagara as they are horseshoe shaped.