Burntside Adventures: Lake Simcoe

We are off this morning crossing Lake Simcoe. The night before we came through and stayed at a nice Parks Canada dock at Bobcaygeon, went out for pizza and hoped for a local brew, but they were out. The pizza was excellent but I opted for water rather than a bad beer. We came through a lake that absolutely could have been Burntside, rock outcroppings and deep water and reefs, but that was the only lake so far that looked like that, and I'm a biit surpised. The shorelines are sure lined with "home" though. We entered an extremely narrow section of the canal approaching the Kirkfield hydraulic lock where passing another boat the size of ours would not have been possible. The channel is only 30 feet wide in places, so before entering this section, we got on the radio and broadcasted our entrance. The Kirkfield Lock is a hydraulic lock similar to the one at Peterborough, except we are descending 60 feet rather than going up. Entering it feels like driving off a cliff. Below the lock, the water was extremely shallow with loonshit bottom. We draft 4' 3" and I know we were plowing mud for a couple hundred yards. The depth sounder quit reading. No issues however except we sucked up some weeds into the raw water intake and the boat ran a couple of degrees warm for the rest of the day. Last night stayed at a Parks Canada wall below the last lock into Lake Simcoe and this morning are crossing the lake in fairly flat conditions. People were fishing off the wall near us catching catfish. Today we only have 4 locks to go through to enter Georgian Bay if things go well.One of the locks is the rail portage at the Big Chute where they will load the boat on a rail carriage for the 600 foot trip across, just like Loon River.