July 14, 2007 – Saturday
We got underway at 09:00 after a great breakfast of eggs, ham & potatoes with toast and all the coffee you could stand, at the Backwoods Restaurant (aka “Choke & Puke” by some locals). About 45 minutes later we entered Morton Bay just to have a look. It is a 3-4 mile long fjord-like bay that is nearly land locked.
There is a very narrow but deep cut that you enter and once inside the water is deep and the shores are steep and rocky with only a few cottages. We heard and saw numerous loons as we cruised up and down the length of the bay. Polly was at the helm when we were approaching the cut to exit and commented there was something yellow bobbing up and down, directly ahead. I was a swimmer heading into the bay. People travel this waterway in all kinds of craft.
We had decided to make Westport our destination for the day, a neat tourist type town located 5 miles off the main Rideau route. We cruised on through lake after lake connected by narrow cuts and some locks (7 locks total for the day) and as we passed the last lock, we were hailed by our new Ottawa friends, Nancy and Greg who were tied to the wall. That last lock, Newboro, has the significance of being the final lifting lock we will encounter. All of the remaining locks on the way to Ottawa will lower us to the elevation of the Ottawa River. We arrived in Westport at 2:15 PM to find a spot at the town dock right in front of our Monk friends Gayle & John aboard Safe Return. We hadn’t seen them since Kingston. After getting the boat settled in we took a stroll around town and stopped at a pub for a half-pint (or 2 in my case-RCB). We chatted with some locals about working, taxes and social problems and after getting that all sorted out, headed back to the boat to grille the pork loin we had thawed for dinner. It began to sprinkle rain as the grill heated up but we did the loin in spite of it. After we cleaned up from dinner and the Wixs had finished their dinner, they came aboard for a drink and we caught up on one another’s recent days before turning in for the night. We are staying here until Monday and hope to unpack our bikes and pedal around for a bit. I must also go overboard and have a look at FLIGHT’s prop – I think we may have some grass wrapped around the shaft.