The Soo Locks, Monday/Tuesday, June 17/18, Day 16 traveled 43 miles for a cum of 426 miles

Round Light house on St. Mary's River

Left Drummond Island Monday morning in the clouds @ 8:00 AM.  Air temp 56, water 59 degrees because we are in a shallower bay.  Winds NE @ 10 knots, but waves under a foot, as we are protected by this group of islands.  I believe all of you @ home are experiencing much warmer temperatures; dare I say mostly in the 70's? Oh well, I knew I wouldn't be wearing my bathing suit much this trip & I packed a lot of warm clothes. 

Just passed the 400 mile mark @ 10:40 AM, if all goes as planned, we will pass the 1,000 +miles mark.  Wow, that seems like a long way.  We've been enjoying a pretty ride along the St Mary's River, it reminds Garry & Jacque of their times growing up on the Mississippi.  The river is very easy to navigate because it is well marked with buoy cans and range lights.  It is shallow if you get out of the freighter channel.  We've seen some freighters but not too many.  

The AIS system is working great and we found a website that you all may access and to find us, if you wish to track us; the address is: AIS.boatnerd.com.  You can filter out all the freighters & ferries and just track pleasure boats.  You will see Waterford & DayDreams listed and then see where we are @ any given time.  Waterford may show up, with Day Dreams underneath.  Wherever Waterford is, we are close by.  

2 more items: some friends are still having difficulty commenting on the blog, use anonymous and then just sign your name at the bottom of the comment.  If you use my gmail email address, don't worry if it comes up as Jo Grow.  I changed it to that sometime back because I attempted to get out of it and it would not let me.
  

While on the river, getting close to the Soo and our Marina destination, a big inflatable Coast Guard vessel approaches us from the opposite direction.  They turn around right behind us, put their lights on & give one wail of their siren. Drat!!  We haven't been inspected in years!  Doug slows down & they pull along side.  They say they want to board us, can we say no? I don't think so!  So I ask them how they plan on doing this and they say for Doug to just stay on course but go very slow.  Two of them board, as the inflatable pulls up close to our port beam.  I was very nice helping them on, telling them to be careful and not hit their heads.  They get on the back deck and have these big, glunky black army boots on, I say "I suppose it would be rude of me to ask you to take your boots off".  They just smiled at me and proceeded to tell me, first after asking if I have any weapons on board, that they wanted to check all our bilges.  At that point, I wimp out & tell them I will take over for Doug @ the wheel and he can help them.  One thing we have been running into often is new trainees, like at the marinas.  Well, these 2 were also new & gung-ho.  They had to use their manuals to know what to check, but they weren't going to miss anything.  They were in our midship and engine room 3 different times, looking @ different things. They had their guns strapped to their waists, so we were very patient with them.  They were very polite and nice and complimented us regarding the boat, but..... what a pain! Doug had to take most of his "stuff" out of the lazarette, but Doug did put his foot down & told him he wasn't going to show him the bilge under our bed.  We passed the inspection and now have an official document proving it, but not a sticker.  They were on board about a half an hour.  


We pulled into Kemp Marina located directly adjacent to the Soo locks, around 3:00 PM. This is a really nice Marina, the 2 young men working weren't new this year, actually have been working here 4 or more years.  Floating docks, well cared for, clean bathrooms, easy walk to watch the locks/freighters and to shops & restaurants. 

a small training ship going through

The first tourist event was to walk to the locks and watch a freighter lock through.  Doug loves this stuff. There is a great visitor's center, where we learned about that AIS website.  It had a informative topographical map of the all the great lakes and showed the deep troughs in Lake Superior of 1300 feet depth and how stinkin shallow poor Lake Erie is. No wonder we have such issues, but did you know there is a section of Lake Erie that is over 200 feet deep near Buffalo? 

The next morning Tuesday, we took it slow, the gals washed some clothes, while the guys did boat chores.  One of the great dock hands drove us out to the Super Walmart, we took advantage of the car, so we stocked up. We headed to the Antlers Bar/Restaurant for lunch.  Our friend Kevin has told us about this place & we had to see it for ourselves.  It's like eating/drinking @ Cabbela's. They have animals & antlers every where.  I think they have at least one of every animal & fish you could name.  The duck has had such great opportunities to make friends so far on this trip. 

crew members from Edmund Fitzgerald

Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial; Capt McSorley from Toledo

Valley Camp Museum Freighter

We then did more tourist type events: a freighter on land, The Valley Camp, that has been turned into a museum of sorts. The Freighter museum had a section honoring the Edmund Fitzgerald crew, did you know there were quite a few from the Toledo area that perished that day in November, 1975? If you can enlarge the above picture, you will see that the Captain was from Toledo, then 2 from Milbury & Oregon, OH.  I think Toledo should do tribute to these men. 

Sault Ste Marie, The Soo

our view from our dock

more Toledo history

The second place is called the Tower of History.  The tower was very interesting.  It was built originally as a bell tower, standing 210 feet tall, for a Catholic Church.  Supposedly the priest @ the time, had a vision of what he wanted but he didn't have the funds to even pay for this very expensive bell tower, much less the elaborate church he wanted to build. The church never was started, the Bishop put a stop to it.  So now the historical society owns it.  It does give one a great view of the area and locks. 

view of our Marina from the tower

Doug was having a great time watching all the freighters and learning all about the history of the locks.  When you see him, he will be glad to fill you in on all that he has learned. He just can't get enough pictures of these big ships, we watched a 1000+ footer, one of the biggest on the Great Lakes go through the locks, my they can really move slow when needed.  

Duck gets snubbed

Last night when I published this post, I had lost all the pics from these 2 days, from my computer, but with a lot of persistence & help from expert Kathy, they have been recovered and all is well with the world.  Thank you.

Duck bums a ride