July 11, 2010 Orillia, Ontario

July 11, 2010 Lake Simcoe, Ontario

Marc- It has been a few days without a log entry. The Lucy III remains in Hastings awaiting its new engine while its crew has been traveling on Windsong toward Port Severn. The engine from Moyer Marine has arrived in Clayton. It was delivered to the wrong marina, French Creek rather than French Bay. The French Bay mechanic went over to French Creek, put it in his pickup truck and then drove home without telling anyone. The engine mystery ended when he came to work with it the next day. We plan on going to pick up the engine Monday and bring it to Hastings for installation.

Sara- Talking to my Mom about Alzheimer's, I swatted at a fly and simultaneously swatted Jonathan Safran Foer's brilliantly compelling and disillusioning Eating Animals into the lake. Shocked to speechlessness, I watched as my book floated away, the boat motoring slowly and unflinchingly onward. “What? What is it,” Jay demanded of my horror-stricken gasp. “It's ok, It's ok. Just a book. Not a person,” my mom replied placatingly. Just a book? My colossal, charismatic despair seemed to indicate otherwise. There are other copies of that book, I attempted to reassure myself, but in vain (that was my book, with my annotations and squiggles and stars to mark especially important parts). “Oh, I knew it wasn't a person,” Jay boomed, “but we can go back. Don't worry.” Eyes wide with mad joy, I reached for my book, grass green cover approaching with painstaking torpor as Jay reversed the engines. “Now don't you jump in!” my mom called, passing me a hook that I promptly and eagerly used to retrieve my book. And it was in my arms again! All blubbering nerves, I plopped my regained treasure on a table where a much more sane Joan flipped through the pages, concluding, to my ecstatic exultation, that the pages were, excepting the index, mostly dry. After much paper-toweling and flipping and jumping and ear-to-ear grinning, the book's totally fine. (And even my pen, which I'd left in the book, was still there.)

So now that we've established that I'm crazy, perhaps we should return to July 4th when we stopped in Paradise. It was lock #6 and two great weeping willows whisped tenderly around in the warm breeze. We had power, a rarity in these locks, but I didn't touch my computer, not even to check Facebook. Instead I sat in the shade of the willow nearest our boat (which we'd nicknamed “Whomping Willow” after J.K. Rowling's imaginative, and occasionally extremely destructive, creation) and basked in the lovely atmosphere as I read On the Road, a book which, had it plopped into the water, I would probably have jumped right in after. Had it fallen by that lock, it wouldn't even have been such an insane move as the water there, though tinted green and weedy, was the purest I've experienced since Lake Champlain. Swimming in it, especially after having gone running with my dad, was a heavenly relief, a watery catharsis.

Marc- We seen some very interesting islands in the Kawartha lakes region. One island was home to a distinctive church. The area is also home to an assortment of summer camps. We've also seen many Blue Heron's on this trip.

Marc- The trip to to Port Severn aboard Windsong was significant for the several sections of standing rapids we passed increasing our boat speed by 2 to 3 knots each time. The "rough" water had more to do with a rapid change in depth than speed of the current. The Lockmasters all indicated that the hydro dams were releasing lots of water due to recent heavy rainfall. The Kirkfield Lift Lock as well as the Big Chute Railway demonstrated some very interesting engineering to bypass significant changes in elevation. At Balsam Lake we traversed the highest navigable waterway in the world at 256. 3 meters above sea level (the highest waterway connected to the sea). We all had to jump in for a swim here. The water was a very pleasant 85 degrees and crystal clear.