July 3
This canal was a little disappointing after the Erie; it doesn’t have the attractive grounds, partly because there isn’t as much space at the locks. This last lock is in Oswego, which is on Lake Ontario. It was interesting to see the water flowing on two levels. This was not a welcoming committee for us; we arrived on Thursday, party night here in the summer. We heard it long before we saw it. These two boats behind us locked through with us all day. There are 7 locks in this system, #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, & 8. There is no #4, but they didn’t decide it wasn’t needed until the locks were numbered and all the paperwork done, and it was too much trouble to change. We locked down to 245’ from the 363’ when we entered this system. We docked this night at the city marina at the mouth of the canal. This is where we made the decision to take the Lake Ontario/Lake Erie route to Lake Huron instead of the Trent-Severn/Georgian Bay route. We had been laboring over this decision for a while because of the negative feedback we had been getting from AGLCA Loopers about shallow water, out-of-place buoys, and damaging rocks in the Trent-Severn. It was a tough decision because the T-S was a waterway we were looking forward to since the beginning of our trip, and because we had paid $150 for all the charts that would remain sealed in plastic.