Tuesday July 31

Tuesday July 31
The night before we had heard that a railroad swing bridge that we needed to go through was stuck closed. They were working on it so we waited to hear that they had fixed it before we left Orillia Port Marina that morning. We got down there only to wait for about 20 minutes for it to finish letting the last of 3 trains go through before they could open. We were happy to see that they had fixed it. We had a nice day cruising even though the temperature was pretty warm.  We made it to Lock 43 by late afternoon  This lock is called Swift Rapids and is a 45 foot lift/drop.

This lock has double doors to hold back the water.

It is quite impressive as you come into the lock and see the huge doors in from of you.  We were able to get both of our boats plus another boat into the lock and as John looked at the wall behind him he was able to see all kinds of zebra mussels on the walls.

We decided to stop and stay at the bottom of Lock 43, Swift Rapids, for the night so we could get a good start to go to the infamous Big Chute Lock the next morning. The lock station and the restroom were at the top of the lock so if you wanted to use the facilities you had to walk up 78 steps to get there.

The control room for the lock is in tower to the left of the next picture and Tom and Colletta are up there waving.

We were on the wall with 3 other boats. The guys got in the water and floated while the girls visited and drank a beer.

Normally, when a lock is dumping water out of the chamber to lower boats – the water is dumped out by the lower doors. That causes a significant current at the lower end. When boats are tied up as we are below, we can experience substantial currents and rocking during this process. The lock designers knew that the 45 foot drop would cause a huge disturbance for boats tied to the Blue Line Wall. They decided to port all of the water from the chamber out to the pool on the water side of the lock. We could see the impact of the current flowing out the side every time the lock was lowered. That much water would have really impacted our boats…