The Trent-Severn Waterway is a bit of a different creature from the Rideau Waterway. It was built not for military purposes, but rather as a government-funded mercantilist commercial investment for the Canadian timber, dairy and agricultural sectors in the late 19th century. The purpose being to provide a mechanism to bring Canadian goods to the stream of commerce from the inner countryside and promote settlement of rural Ontario. By the time the Waterway was "finished" in the early 20th century after decades of fits and starts, the canal had already been displaced by the railroads and much of the timber industry has moved further west. One lock in the system (the Big Chute Lock 44) was never actually built and is not even a lock - it carries the boats by a rail mechanism over from one waterway to another to complete the marine loop.

Salty and crew leaving Trenton; Trenton Canal, at the beginning

The Trent-Severn has 45 locks, but a lot of locks are front loaded in the voyage up from Trenton ON. Our first day on the Trent-Severn we passed through seven locks to travel a mere 13.8 miles up the Trent River portion of the Waterway. We passed Trenton Lock 1 (up 18 feet), Sydney Lock 2 (up 20 feet), Glen Miller Lock 3 (up 27 feet), Batawa Lock 4 (up 18 feet), Trent Lock 5 (up 18 feet), Frankford Lock 6 (up 16 feet) and Glen Rose Lock 7 (up 10 feet). After so much lockage, we decided we didn't want to race to Campbellford (17 miles further) as the other boats we were locking with wanted to.

We really wanted to try our hand at anchoring and did so at the Blue Hole anchorage just before Lock 8. We found ourselves in splendid isolation in the Blue Hole, saw a woodchuck swimming around, heard cat birds and doves - but enjoyed the relative seclusion of the fields, trees and marshes on all sides. Horseflies and mosquitoes abound, however, as they do in all earthly paradises.

The only thing that was missing was the cry of the loon (scary - https://youtu.be/Hnlze_cIYZs). Nonetheless, we did learn something about anchoring for future reference - in the night you tend to move around the circumference of your rode particularly when the wind dies down or changes direction (which it did). According to our charts the next day we were skirting very close to the edge of the anchorage - luckily it was mud and weeds and not rocks.