Salty has had some engine problems intermittently for the last couple of months. Now it seems on a fairly regular basis that she slips out of gear on the port engine. After spending nearly 2 weeks at Hurst Marina in Manotick, we had thought that perhaps the problem was solved, but now while arriving at Orillia it has reoccurred. We called around as the verdict was from our last investigation and switching around the Mercury parts, that if the port engine continued to have problems it was related to the Cummins engine. We called the Cummins people but they didn't have time to send someone to Orillia for at least 10 days.

Salty is able to go at slow speeds and doesn't seem to fall out of gear when not stressed, and if she does, putting her back in neutral and reaccelerating a bit seems to fix it. We decided that rather than just wait in place, we would simply make our way slowly to Midland ON, which is a bigger town where we can put up at an authorized Cummins engine shop to await a technician.

We made our way slowly up Lake Couchiching to the Trent Canal in the north. We tried to test the port engine and it predictably fell out of gear at about 1500 rpms or so, but the going was predictable enough at slow speeds - so we continued. We passed through Couchiching Lock 42 (down 20 feet) without event. The Trent Canal joins the Severn River shortly thereafter and then joined the small but picturesque Sparrow Lake, which we traversed to rejoin the Severn River.

The change in scenery became more evident as the hard red and gray bedrock of the Canadian shield formed most of the sides of the river - and the river isn't shallow like the other parts of the Trent, it runs 50 feet or more in depth cut by glaciers millennia ago. At the McDonald Cut, a half-mile stretch of the canal that was hewn by human hands straight through the rock - it was spookily narrow, and we hoped no one would come in the opposite direction.

After a couple of hours of following the river, past rocks, forest and fairly frequently, small communities of cottages close by the river, we arrived at Swift Rapids Lock 43 (down 47 feet). Swift Rapids Lock is an hydraulic lock and descends with breath-taking but welcome rapidity.

We had contemplated spending the night at the lower wall, but quickly decided to head on to the Big Chute Marine Railway ("Lock" 44, 54 feet down) and secured a spot at the marina there, so that we could have some time to take a look at the Big Chute Railway before we actually have to put Salty aboard it.

The Railway is as impressive as the reading and videos we had seen of it. The boats just glide up to the platform with walls on port and starboard sides, the operators tighten up various slings that lift the boat so that the props don't rest on the platform, and then the whole mechanism rides on a rail over the granite hill and down to the northern end of the Gloucester Pool on the other side. An extraordinarily impressive sight - check out the video!