Wayne.B wrote:

Exactly right. At the discretion of the canal operators, they may
allow you to proceed with a bit more than 5 ft if you sign waivers.

Several years ago, there was a PBS special of a DeFever 50, a wooden
trawler, transiting many of the inland waters of North America.

They transited the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers as well as
many parts of the Great Lakes & St Lawrence rivers.

They wanted to traverse the Trent-Severn, which is certainly
understandable, if for no other reasons the scenery and the railway.

The Defever's master had to sign a waver that basically said, if they
got stuck, the canal operators could blow up the boat to clear the canal.

The Defever is too large to be able to turn around in the canal.

IMHO, that is one hell of a roll of the dice. Glad I didn't have to
make that decision.


Lew

My guess is that the waterway managers would also tell you that the water
was in fact at a certain level and that you would be fine, if you stayed in
the channel, and didn't have engine trouble (...) - otherwise they would
just say "no".

How much does that DeFever draw?

We haven't heard back from the original poster. We need to know what he
means by a "small boat". Why does he want to avoid Lake Erie (which can get
veyr rough - but so can the other lakes, although Erie is different...)

====

Charles T. Low
www.boatdocking.com

====

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
nk.net...
Wayne.B wrote:

Exactly right. At the discretion of the canal operators, they may
allow you to proceed with a bit more than 5 ft if you sign waivers.

Several years ago, there was a PBS special of a DeFever 50, a wooden
trawler, transiting many of the inland waters of North America.

They transited the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers as well as many
parts of the Great Lakes & St Lawrence rivers.

They wanted to traverse the Trent-Severn, which is certainly
understandable, if for no other reasons the scenery and the railway.

The Defever's master had to sign a waver that basically said, if they got
stuck, the canal operators could blow up the boat to clear the canal.

The Defever is too large to be able to turn around in the canal.

IMHO, that is one hell of a roll of the dice. Glad I didn't have to make
that decision.


Lew

On Sun, 5 Nov 2006 09:03:58 -0500, "Charles T. Low"
[withoutUN] wrote:

We haven't heard back from the original poster. We need to know what he
means by a "small boat". Why does he want to avoid Lake Erie (which can get
veyr rough - but so can the other lakes, although Erie is different...)

Trent-Severn is a *much* more interesting route than Lake Erie in my
opinion.

On Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:04:19 -0500, in message

Wayne.B wrote:

On Sun, 5 Nov 2006 09:03:58 -0500, "Charles T. Low"
[withoutUN] wrote:

We haven't heard back from the original poster. We need to know what he
means by a "small boat". Why does he want to avoid Lake Erie (which can get
veyr rough - but so can the other lakes, although Erie is different...)

Trent-Severn is a *much* more interesting route than Lake Erie in my
opinion.

True, but Erie is faster unless your target area is Southern Georgian
Bay. Even if you have to wait for a weather window. (I spent a couple
of days behind Pelee Island last summer waiting for a west wind. Going
the other direction we had lucked into a lull in the prevailing
westerly and motored most of the way up the lake before the wind
switched back on.) The bigger problem is that it's 50 miles between
harbours on the north shore, so if the weather kicks up it could be a
long slog to shelter.

Ryk