We ended up spending almost a week under the covered slip.  While there we met most of the boaters in that part of the marina.  On Tuesday, May 31^st, we went to Bobcaygeon to do some laundry.  It was a warm day so we also made a stop at Kawartha Dairies, and I tried the new flavour- Coconut.   Ice cream has really increased in price, for two double cones, it was almost $14.  However, they did give us a small carton of Black Raspberry Thunder, when we went into the store for some milk—as we had spent over $20. So more ice cream for later…..

On June 1^{st it} rained most of the day, so I spent the day washing, waxing and buffing the outside of the cabin and gunnels.  We had planned on leaving Thursday, however when Andy went to the marina office, he learned that the parts for our generator were in Orillia, and would likely be delivered later in the day.  On Friday afternoon the generator impeller was installed, however it was determined that while the generator is running, it does not re-charge the generator starter battery.  The marina technicians, figured it was an electronic issue, not mechanical so suggested that we called ONAN. 

This would be an expensive fix, as they would have to send someone out from Toronto, a more reasonable solution would be to find an alternate source for charging the battery, and it was suggested that we buy a small solar panel and hook it up only to this battery. Andy mentioned this to our dock-mate, Ken, who said he had one of these small panels, and said he would let us try it out.

We think that it should work, as we only need to charge this battery when we use the generator, and will try it out later in the summer.

Finally on June 6^th, we had no more excuses for staying at Buckhorn Yacht Harbour, so we left the covered slip, it was overcast.  We motored over to the Buckhorn lock, and tied up on the blue line to go through.  We were told there would be a short delay as they were repairing one of the motors used to empty the lock.  We were through by 10:45, and then it was on to Lovesick an hour later at 11:45, Burleigh falls at 12:20 and Young’s Point at 13:30. As we were going through one of the locks, the lock staff commented on how many passes we had stuck on our windshield.  This is the 7 year that we have spent time on the Ontario waterways. 

  We arrived at Lakefield Lock #26 at 14:15.  So we had gone through 4 locks and about 22 miles.

We tied up and hooked up to power.  Three power pedestals had been added to this lock over the winter.  

We decided to stay here for two nights as it was predicted to rain all day Tuesday.    We met some loopers coming through from the states, as well as other Canadians travelling along the TSW.  I loved the look of the boat that this looper had on the back of his catamaran.

    Here’s a pair of ducks on a dock Tuesday morning, trying to get out of the rain.

During the day I prepared some pasta sauce, we used some for supper, and I froze a container for another easy supper in the future.  I have also had plenty of time to read, so have been breezing through the box of books that Helen gave me while in Bancroft.  To date I have read: the maid, 5 little words, where the crawdads sing, and tough customer and fair warning—all very good reads.

 On Wednesday morning we walked into Lakefield and stopped at the drug store and Foodland for a few things. Around lunch time, we locked down with one other boat- Best Day Ever and followed them through Sawyer Creek and then on to Douro lock #24 where we tied up.

So two locks and 2.3 miles- Big day!

On Thursday morning, we had planned to move on, but when Andy went to start up the engines, the starboard would not start.  He spent the afternoon talking to Alex at PKI distribution in Toronto.  Andy suspected that the starter on the starboard engine may be defective, as he checked the batteries and they were at 12.8 Volts.  Alex found us a tech- Josh Savage, that could drive out to our boat the next morning and do an assessment of our issue, if it was the starter the bill could be up to $1800 and it may 5 – 7 days to get the part.  Most of the remainder of Thursday was cloudy with intermittent rain showers.  We ran the generator for almost two hours in order to replenish our house batteries.   I walked around the lock station, and checked out their flower beds and garden.  

 We went to bed early and didn’t sleep well, worrying about yet another boat issue.  In the morning Josh called to say he was on the way and would arrive around 9 am. 

He assessed the engine as Andy started the boat and figured we had a bad battery, that didn’t have enough voltage to turn over the starter.  He also noticed that a couple of battery connections to the house bank were loose or not connected at all.  Rather than us limping to Peterborough on one engine, and fighting the current, we asked Josh to go into Peterborough and buy us a new starter battery.   If anyone is keeping track of our battery issues- we last changed out both starter batteries in September of 2021. I would have thought they would last longer than that.  It’s likely on warranty and we will try to return it in Campbellford, where we know the Canadian Tire is near the marina. 

Once Josh returned and the battery was switched out, we were good to go. Here’s the customer and service person both smiling Andy because our bill will be a lot less than anticipated, and Josh because he didn’t have to crawl behind the starboard engine to extract the starter. 

Our friends, Brian and Helen arrived shortly thereafter with Andy’s amazon order, which are cooling, sun protection arm sleeves.  Andy has been wearing long sleeve shirts or sweatshirts to keep the sun off his arms, as directed by his doctor. These sleeves should give him protection and allow him to now wear t-shirts.    Soon after Brian and Helen arrived, two other boats arrived at the lock, so we decided to lock through with them.   Helen took some pictures as we were leaving the lock wall and entering the lock. 

  We were though Douro at 11:30, Otonabee at noon, Nassau Mills at 12:20, Peterborough lift lock at 13:15 and Ashburnham at 13:50.  Saw some trees down along the shore from the wind storm that had blown through here on the May long weekend.

We arrived at Peterborough marina at 14:10 and tied up with help from 3 deck hands and 3 boaters.  The wind and current were pushing us all over the place.  Once we were settled, I went in search of the laundry, as I wanted to wash a couple loads.  I was finished that task by 5:00.  Andy had invited a couple of the boaters who had helped us dock, over for drinks on the sundeck. They were loopers from Charlevoix Michigan, headed north.  As it turned out, Glenn the captain of the boat- Saunter, had worked with corrugated cardboard, similar to Andy had when he worked for Domtar in the 1980’s- so they had lots to talk about.  His deckhand Mike, was from Sault Ste. Marie.  We had a good chat with the two of them.  We barbecued for supper, and then watched some past episodes of Coronation.  There was a blues singer at the nearby Holiday Inn, so there was loud music until at least 10:00.

 On Saturday morning, we walked to Boater’s World to pick up a replacement fender rope holder, for the one I had damaged getting into the lift lock.  We then continued on to the grocery store to pick up some perishables.   Here’s the boat parked at the marina, near the lift lock cruise boat.

The park near the marina was busy most of the morning, as dragon boat relays were taking place.  In the early afternoon we walked across the street to the UK store, and browsed through their wares.  The person working at the store, had been a boater, and kept his boat at Buckhorn Yacht Harbour—small world! We returned to the boat and had intermittent rain and thundershowers most of the afternoon.  For dinner we walked across the street to Jack’s for fish and chips, I also had deep fried pickles. 

In the morning we met a couple from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with a boat that is trailerable.  They hope to  traverse the entire Trent Severn Waterway and then will pick up their car from Trenton and take their boat back to the states. 

It continued to rain on Sunday, so rather than getting wet while locking, we decided to stay at the marina another night.   In a break from the rain, we moved the boat from tying up port side to starboard side.  This should help us pull out of the slip in the morning, as the current is quite strong at this dock. 

We spent the afternoon playing cards and reading.  At about 4:00 we went for a short walk and ended up having drinks with the boaters on Dock C.  There is even a cat on Chief Scalliwag, named Docker that made it’s presence known.

The late afternoon turned out to be quite pleasant, we were glad that we stayed at the marina for the extra day. Andy BBQ’D for supper. 

Tomorrow, we plan to be at Scott Mills at 10:00 when the locks open and then make the 20 mile trek to Rice Lake followed by the 6 mile crossing of it to the Hastings lock wall.  We’ll stay there for a couple of days provided the weather is good.  Then we will continue down the TSW. We’ve booked to be in Campbellford for the weekend of June 17-20^th, we are hoping that David can come back to finish our Grmin electronics setup.

We are creatures of habit.  We left the house at 6:00 AM on May 24 headed east to Ontario.     Our typical first stop is for gas in Dryden, however we had to stop once before that because of water over the road near Eagle River.  We got to see if our fully loaded car could float.  The water was fairly deep, we slowly followed another vehicle through this location.

 After our fill up in Dryden at 10:40, our next stop was Nipigon at 3:40 where we had our first fill-up with gas over $2.  It was $2.089 here.    There was fairly light traffic for most of the day. We arrived at the White Fang motel in Wawa at 7:45. A long day of driving for Andy.

On Wednesday we left Wawa at 7:00 AM and headed to the Sault where we filled up at $2.053.  Then it was on to Parry Sound, we arrived there at about 3:00.  In the afternoon Andy talked to Jaimie and Hussam, two engineers that he had worked with in 2011.  Hopefully we can meet up with both of  them sometime over the summer. 

We arrived at Brian and Helen’s in Bancroft around 6:30, another long day.  In total we had gone 2,075 Km since leaving home.

After a good night’s sleep, Andy wanted to let Buckhorn Yacht Harbour know of our arrival.  However, he couldn’t get through over the phone, nor were his emails/texts answered.   We decided to drive the hour to Buckhorn to find out what was happening and to empty the car.  Upon arrival we learned that the wind storm of May 21^st had knocked out the power and phone service to the marina. On our way to the marina, we had seen several trees down on power lines.  The town of Buckhorn had its power restored on May 25, and the lock was operating.  However next lock at Lovesick did not have power, so many of the boaters were stranded waiting for power to be restored there.  One of the boats was Chip Monk, owned by Steve and Dodie who we had met last fall in Campbellford.   Steve’s plan was to take the boat solo down to Hastings once the locks were operational.

Once at the marina, we unloaded the stuff from the car onto the boat, around noon the big trailer came to splash the boat into the water.

We tied up at the boat launch, a place we’ve been several times before.  Once we had put some of our stuff away, we  took a side trip to Peterborough for propane parts, on this little jaunt we encountered 3 detours due to trees being down and hydro crews working to restore power.

  We were told that Peterborough had declared a state of emergency as large parts of the city were without power.  Once we got our parts we headed back to Bancroft.

That evening along with Brian and Helen we went to visit our other friends Brian and Muriel, we brought pizza and Helen brought a salad.  Muriel supplied Rhubarb custard pie, which was a treat.  We had a great visit.

On Friday morning we did some grocery shopping in Bancroft, and headed back to the boat after lunch.  The power was still out at the marina, however our two newly installed 200-watt solar panels and MPPT (maximum power point tracking) controller were supplying us enough power to run our fridge and other devices, even though it was clouding over and raining.

We had an early night on the boat, which will be home for the better part of the next 4 months.

Saturday was spent looking for stuff that had been stored away from the previous year, as well as putting things into their places.  Around noon David Najda arrived, he is an electrical engineer, who had come highly recommended by another boater that we met in 2021.  David did an assessment of our boat and issues and set to work immediately.  He transformed the rat’s nest of wires on the lower helm from this

 To this when he left on Sunday, where all the wires had been traced, bundled and labelled.  A huge improvement!

The power was restored to the marina at about 4:30 Saturday, after being out for a full 7 days. We feel sorry for people who had lost power for that long, we heard that there are some rural places in Ontario that may not have their power restored for another week. Having shore power available, we plugged in to ensure that all our batteries were fully charged.

 David worked most of the afternoon and into the evening, only taking a break when we went to the Cody Inn for dinner.  He returned on Sunday continuing with the wire cleanup. He then moved onto setting up the Garmin instruments including the displays and the compass.  Mid-afternoon we took the boat out onto Buckhorn Lake so that he could begin to setup the autopilot. We will be meeting up with David again in a few weeks, so he can program the analog outputs to digital for the new displays, and upload Garmin instrument updates.

 In the afternoon, I kept busy outside changing the fender covers, which I had sewn over the winter.  A huge improvement from the ones that had we had only used for one season, but were filthy and torn.

  I guess I will be sewing new ones annually, and that beats all the elbow grease required to remove the blue rubber marks on the hull that occurs when the fenders are squeezed against the boat in a lock or dock.

After dinner we filled up our water tank, and then caught up on missed episodes of Coronation Street. We have remained at the loading ramp, as there is no place on the gas dock to park, and we would like to get fuel before starting our summer adventures.   I have continued to clean and put away stuff, I’ve also planted a few things (radishes, lettuce and cucumbers) in containers on the sun deck to go with the two tomato plants and onions which I brought from home: my boat garden.

Andy put our Canadian flag and burgees.  In the afternoon we moved over to the gas dock and put in $500 worth of diesel, while there I washed the sundeck off, as I had easy access to a hose.  We thought we would be returning to the launch dock, but instead we moved into Peter’s covered slip.  Andy spent time putting up some new re-chargeable light fixtures.

We received news from our neighbor that we had gotten another inch of rain in the past couple of days, and much more was in the forecast. Yikes, we don’t need any more! Dave did send me a lovely picture of the tulips finally blooming in my front flowerbed.

We will likely leave the marina tomorrow, but may only go about 2 miles to the Buckhorn lock and spend a day or two there. We are going to hang out between here and Peterborough for the next week or two, checking out locks like Lovesick where we have never stayed. We need to return to the marina to get our generator impeller replaced and the parts won’t arrive for a week or more.