Day 76 Lock 18 Hastings

It was a beautiful day on the Trent - Severn Canal. The scenery along this waterway is just incomparable. We want to live in all of these sweet cottages that line the canal. . . until October anyway. We went through 11 locks today. A couple of them were double locks where you leave one and go right into another climbing about 50 feet. Because of the intake valves in these old locks, you can only tie up to one particular side, so we had to keep switching the fenders and lines from starboard to port and back again. The second picture shows the two lock attendants opening the doors by hand.  Tired and chilly, we were really glad to tie up to a lock wall for the night. Unfortunately, I dropped the stern line in the water when we were docking and it got wrapped around the prop. John told me to go ask someone where the fire department was because they usually have divers. Well, God sent a guardian angel in the name of John, a kind of unkept looking fellow, who was sitting on a bench drinking a beer in front of the locked bathrooms. I told him our problem and amazingly enough, he was retired from the fire department. He made a call, then a couple fire department volunteers and a diver appeared. In five minutes, the problem was solved. A higher power was looking out for us today. Three things became abundantly clear - you can't judge a book by it's cover, there are still some really good, kind people in this world...oh yeah, and don't leave lines dangling. Making our way to Peterborough to pick up a chip for the Garmin. Our charts don't cover Canada. Surprise! Had a girl from Boater's World (not ours from the US of A) order the appropriate one so we can get to Lake Michigan. Today we navigated with a Blue Charts AP that we downloaded on the iPad. Worked great, but can't wait to have the chart plotters again. Should sleep well tonight listening to the waterfall from the dam next to the lock.