Thursday, August 6, 2009

Lower Brewers.

Tuesday, August 4

I commented earlier in the trip that the Environment Canada weather forecasts always predicted winds calm become 20km/hr (12 mph) or 20 become calm, never anything else. Well they apparently heard me; today’s forecast was 30 gusting 60km/hr.

Our day was to start by locking down thru the four chambers of Jones Falls, to be ready we moved to the blue line before 8:30. The word was that since they leave the chambers empty at night if there are boats waiting the first cycle of the day is up and we would go down about 9:30. There were no boats down below so they filled the chambers and were ready for us before 8:45. We were the only boat going down so it went quickly and we were done with the fourth chamber before 9:30, what a great start to the day.

When we exited the chamber there were five boats waiting to go up, it looked like it could be slow. We continued on through the smaller lakes we were now in, it was a nice day except for the wind, 20+ gusting 30 mph. The captain couldn’t relax the steering required constant attention.

We saw lots of loons today, some of them very close up. The young are just learning to dive; they try but only stay down 5 or 10 seconds while adults stay down many minutes. Because of this the adults don’t dive when we get close.

We soon reach Upper Brewers Lock, a flight of two. They check and we are assured that there is room for us to overnight at Lower Brewers two miles ahead. We continued through the three locks and because of the quick start at Jones Falls were tied up shortly after noon. Both the captain and the admiral were happy to be done for the day with the wind blowing; it continued to build all afternoon.

Jan and Loren went for a walk around the area; they found a metal sculpture studio in an old mill just across the river. Diana got a picture looking at the dam from the boat. We set up to have a picnic supper again on a table right beside the boat. Half way through dinner the rain chased us inside.

It was still a very nice day.

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