In search of the Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow

Our day was ugly. Too many hipcups happened. It was one thing after another. At the end of the day we are docked in Hastings with a damaged prop, overheated engine, a battery that keeps losing power and a generator that won't start. Other than that, things are just hunky dory.

First things first. This morning we left Campbellford at 9 am and headed up the Trent only to find that the currents over the dams and around the locks are still flowing quickly and we had to be careful when motoring through the water. If you had a small boat it would be difficult to manage and we were fortunate to have lots of power to get in and out of each lock with our boat.

The locks were not busy and there were very few boats travelling in either direction. We did enjoy the various flower gardens that each lock maintains and especially the one where they made a garden into a sailboat.

The canal system has a couple locks that are very big. Today we went through three locks at Healey Falls where the overall lift is 79 feet in the three locks. The locks have been rebuilt over the past 10 years and are impressive.

We boated all day with another boater from Lake Simcoe and locked together with the exception of the last lock of the day.

I took some pictures of the Healey Locks as we passed through.

Our day was going perfect up until we were about 5 miles from the the Hastings Locks. All of a sudden the port engine overheated and alarmed. We stopped, threw down the anchor and checked the problem. We let the engine cool down and eventually we went slow heading to Hastings.

As we were heading to Hastings we hit something and took out another prop. We were in 7.5 feet of water at the side of the main channel and don't understand what we hit but it was a big clunk. It even lifted the rear of the boat so we were concerned that we had major damage.

This is the area where we hit something

We managed to get through the Hastings lock and are now at the Hastings Town Marina, a place where we already stayed a few weeks ago as we traveled down the Trent. It is a very nice marina. We arranged for Mike, our Prop Guy to bring his divers and check out the damage. They arrived at 7 pm and immediately were worried about the fast currents under our boat. They tied themselves to the dock and proceeded to remove the prop and check out whether the drive shaft was damaged. Luckily enough, the prop had only one bent blade and minor damage to the other three blades so hopefully it won't take long to repair. The good news....... the drive shaft is ok.

We should know tomorrow when we will get the repaired prop back.

On the Generator issue, we were able to find a replacement controller at Kohler and it should arrive tomorrow morning, by courier, at the Hastings Marina so hopefully we can get that fixed as well.

As for the engine overheating........ we have spare engine impellers on board so we expect that installing new water impellers will solve our problems.

When we get further info on when we will get the prop back, we can get a path forward to complete our trip.

After we arrived at the Hastings Marina it poured rain and above us was a double rainbow. We are now Out To See trying to find out where the pot of gold is at the end of that rainbow. Let's hope tomorrow is better all around.

The Hallman Experience: Is there anything on a boat that is not pricey?

The Solution: What does BOAT stand for? Bring Out Another Thousand

We are now waiting to move on!