Burntside Adventures: Ascending the Trent River

Tonight we are in Campbellsford. It's 30+ miles up the Trent River and have transited 12 locks to this point. It's been an interesting couple of days. We arrived at Trenton at the mouth of the river yesterday morning at 9 am in time for the first lock to open or so we thought. It turns out there was an issue with Lock 1 the past couple of days with the "drain plug" being plugged and it required divers to repair. We had no knowledge of this, so on arriving at the river mouth, began to go up river to the first lock and promptly got our asses chewed by the 4 boats waiting to go up and were told to get in line. "My Bad" I guess, I had no clue, and no info was put out on line or on the VHF. So we backed off and anchored for a couple of hours waiting our turn and saw a couple of paddlers that said they were training for a race this weekend. Observing them, they need more practice. I called the lockmaster and after no less than 20 attempts, got through and was told to start heading up the river at 1 PM. The four boats ahead of us had already headed up, but didn't bother relaying any information so we went up with another boat that was ahead of us but asked us to go first ifwe were willing. After waiting in current for 45 minutes more and another bunch of phone calls, finally entered the lock and started up river. We locked through with the one boat with us but had to stop at 3:30, lock hours are 10-3:30 so we pulled over at the top of Lock 4, maybe 2 miles from from where we started. In the mean time, we spent $600 on lock permits and docking fees that allow us to tie up at the locks and other Parks Canada location. Today went a bit better. Got a bike ride in and Cindy got a run in, then moved up river around 9:45 for the lock opening at 10, along with the other boat with us. We made pretty good progress, locking through 8 locks today. The lock attendants are uniformly nice people and very helpful, but clearly operate on "Island Time". The last lock we went through today was at 3:25 and the lockmaster was great and we thanked him profusely for getting us through before the end of his day. Then as we moved up the river to the base of the next lock, which will be the first one in the morning, we leap frogged the four boats that were a bit snarky yesterday. Anyway, things are going better and found a hole in the wall for a good beer tonight. Every day has been an adventure.