Kirkfield, ON, to Carthew Bay, Lake Simcoe, ON: Back in the Big Water

After a pleasantly quiet night on the wall, we lined up for the first lockage with a fellow Looper. The Kirkfield Lock is a lift lock like Peterborough. It is really cool, but not quite as cool as Peterborough. On the positive side, Kirkfield has a steel lattice support structure, so you can see better. On the down side, it is a bit smaller and the view is not quite so spectacular. Part of the charm of the Peterborough Lock is the massive concrete structure and the expansive view of the countryside.

After a quick and really neat ride down, we went through the narrow channel. From Kirkfield to Lake Simcoe is mostly narrow channel with some shallow bits. We traveled the roughly eight miles to the next lock – Bolsover Lock. From Bolsover to Lake Simcoe there are five locks within five miles. We went through the first four locks – Bolsover, Talbot, Portage, and Thorah – with our fellow loopers without incident.

At the last lock, Gamebridge, we pulled over on the grey wall to park for a few hours for me to work. This lock has free wifi. Unfortunately, doe to a nationwide outage of Rogers, the wifi was down. The lock hands said that their cell phones were dead too. Oy. Fortunately, my cell phone still had pretty good data. I set up on a picnic table next to the lock with my hotspot and got some serious work done.

At the end of the day, we threw off the bow lines again, went through Gamebridge Lock, and took the short channel out to Lake Simcoe.

Lake Simcoe was a joy. It was nice to be back in some big water again and not have to watch the walls and depth quite as closely. We cruised the 14 miles to our chosen anchorage for the day on the west coast of Lake Simcoe, Carthew Bay.

Carthew Bay is a small bay lined by cottages on three sides. It has great wind protection from every direction except SSW. There were a couple of other boats in there already. We dropped our hook in about 12 feet to enjoy the evening.

Spying the signature Kawartha Ice Cream logo on a building on shore, we dropped the dinghy and made our way to shore for dinner and dairy at the cleverly named Carthew Bay Pub & Scoops. We sat outside next to some lively fellow patrons. As the only restaurant within miles, it seemed to be a fun local hangout for the locals.