We arose early in anticipation of bringing Salty over the marine railway - the Big Chute down over 50 feet into the Gloucester Pool below. One boat from the marina headed over there just before 9am when the lock opened and went before us - then we were next.

It was all over in a matter of about 6 minutes - but a fascinating 6 minutes. One of the alleged reasons they have kept a marine railway in place instead of building a lower-maintenance, more cost-effective lock is that this land barrier prevents an invasive species of lamprey from entering the canal system from the Great Lakes. Lamprey latch onto fish and live off of their blood - clearly that would cause unwelcome change for the fish (and the tourist game-fishing industry) that abound in the Ontario Lakes if it were to make its way over.

The Gloucester Pool, hardly a lake, but a several mile winding trail of water through some of what looks to be the most expensive real estate on the canals. Evidently a lot of wealthy Torontonians and others have made this waterway part of their very lush backyards. We also passed by the unfortunate burned wreckage of a pleasure boat - the family aboard got off safely the day before after their boat caught fire - but the remains were awaiting clearance by the authorities.

We then arrived at the end of our Trent-Severn journey at Port Severn Lock 45 (down 12 feet). This completes the journey of 240 miles from Trenton, ON!

After Lock 45, we followed the very narrow and fairly shallow Potato Channel around Potato Island to the deeper part of the southern Georgian Bay. Then we followed a course WSW in the direction of Midland, ON towards the Bay Port Yachting Center, where we hoped to get Salty some overdue repairs and a 3-month maintenance checkup.

The last two days Salty was able to do everything we asked of her, but only at low speed (<10mph) - which was fine as we were in narrow channels and shallow lakes. Now that we were on open water, her port engine consistently failed to get beyond 2000 RPMs before falling back into neutral - something we had to get fixed for the Great Lakes journeys.