The Big Chute

July 15, 2019 – And now for something completely different.

Your boat floats in all the other locks. But for this one, you drive onto a ‘rail cart’, and it takes you out and over a hill with a a road, and down the other side back into the water.

With you on it.

We docked the boat first, so we could get off and take a look at it up close.

Here comes the cart from the other side, after letting off the boats in the distance.

We will be on the back of the cart, so our props can hang off the edge while our keel sits on the bed. Lifting straps hold the boat steady…

We start the boat up and move to the ready line, and they give us directions over a loudspeaker to approach the cart. Once we are close, we can talk to the lock staff that are up on the cart, for final instructions. Once the boat is in place, we shut it down and just enjoy the ride.

Oh boy! Its slow and smooth, but definitely an E-Ticket ride…

I wish I had the picture this guy took of us going over the road

Feel like putting your arms up in the air to go down this ride? They’d get pretty tired by the time you’d reach the bottom.
(note the attendants chatting on the side of the cart)

Roll the footage-

The short leg from the Chute to the final lock at Port Severn seemed a bit anticlimactic, but even that lock had a little something in store, with stiff breeze at the top, and the fact that it is the smallest lock on the system. They squeezed us in with two smallish bowriders, and down we went.

Goodbye, Trent-Severn; we’re in the Georgian Bay!

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