Rideau Canal & Lakes July 9 - 12

We got out of narrow and winding canals into open lakes. The is a series of connected lakes in this part of the canal. We had a pretty day (as the picture shows) and decided to stop early at an area called Big Island on Big Rideau Lake. It was really just a cove of the lake.

It was warm enough and the water clear enough that Kaye decided to go swimming. She agreed to clean the white boot stripe with a brush. It was still stained from the Tar River. This was the first time she had been able to swim this trip. I installed a new swim ladder at the haul out in April, and it seemed to work well. The yellow line in the picture is a polypropylene line that floats and can be used to keep from floating away from the boat.

I decided to take the opportunity to check the prop. We had hit something in the New York canal and again just a couple days earlier. We had heard terrible grinding noises both times but I wasn't sure what damage we had done since the skeg does a good job of protecting the prop. I donned my swim mask, snorkel and fins and dived down to the prop. It indeed had edge damage including a 1/2" split in the end of one blade. We had a slight vibration but not bad.

The lockmasters get pretty good at fitting in as many boats a possible into the lock. We were in with a Yacht Club that all knew each other. The leader seemed to be the guy in the Trawler Cat ahead of us.

This lock gate had the water release gates in the lock door.

A flight of two locks.

Morton Lake was one of the prettiest spots to anchor that we have had on this trip. The narrow entrance into the lake diverts off the canal into a long narrow lake with high rock hills on each side. A pretty tranquil spot with only one other boat near by.

The only problem with Morton Lake and actually with most of the lakes in this part of the Rideau is plant growth. The water is fairly clear and plants grow from the bottom. The species is an invasion of Eurasian Water Milfoil. It doesn't need seeds. It can propagate by pieces that get cut off and float away. It's very thick in shallow areas and since 1998 the Canal has used a mechanical harvester boat to cut the weeds in the main channel. Anyway the picture shows the weeds we brought up with our anchor. It was so thick that a neighboring boater, out fishing in his dinghy, had to come help pull the plant growth off so we could raise the anchor. Usually deep water doesn't have much weeds and we were in about 20 feet and it was not visible on the surface.

This is a picture of the weeds in our next night's anchorage in Cranberry Lake. We picked a nice spot and had to move to deeper water to get away from the thickest growth. The weeds kept getting sucked into our raw water strainer for the generator. I had to clean the screen three times that night after the first time it plugged and the overheating shut down the motor. Once I had to pull the intake hose off and blow and pull the weeks out that were stuck in it. This picture shows weeds in water about 10 feet deep. The tops are actually 2-3 feet below the surface but they can been seen clearly.