Miles Traveled 8.18
Total Miles Traveled 5453
Day 319
A storm blew through last night and dumping a lot of rain
so being tied to a concrete wall felt pretty good. “Gracie”, the loopers we met before entering
Lake Simcoe, and “Lazy W”, gold loopers we met in lock 42 were also with us
last night.
We locked through first thing this morning and entered
the waterway with a light mist in the air.
We only traveled a few miles before arriving at the Big
Chute. The Big Chute Marine Railway is a
boat lift at lock 44 of the Trent-Severn Watereway. It works on an inclined plane to carry boats
in individual cradles over a change of height of about 60 feet.
The specially designed railway carriage is lowered into
the water on a submerged track. The boat
is then floated onto the deck of the carriage and cradled by slings. The carriage is slowly raised out of the
water, and the boat “settles” into the slings for support.
The carriage is hoisted up the slope by wire ropes
attached to winches inside the control building. It stays almost level due to a unique double
track, which allows the front legs of the carriage to follow one set of tracks
and the back legs another.
Once past the summit, the carriage is lowered into the water
by wire ropes. The boat is floated off
the slings and resumes its journey.
The carriage is now ready to accept a new load of boats traveling in the
other direction.
We stopped upstream of the lock so we could observe the operation
and when we were pulling up to the dock, our looper friends “2 Infinity” were
on the dock to help with our lines. They
had locked through this morning and stopped at the bottom of the lock. While talking to them, “Gracie” pulled up to
the dock, then “Miss My Money”.
Water being released around the Big Chute Railway.
"2 Infinity"
The rails to the retired "Little Chute"
We had planned to continue on to Midland, ON on the Georgian Bay but a wind advisory was issued for the bay and we decided to try the Big Chute first thing in the morning…..can’t wait!
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