First let me say that I am no authority on the subject and my recommendations are based only on my own observations. That being said let me begin.
Parks Canada states that it is possible to travel the TSW with a 6’ draft. I strongly disagree with that assessment. We entered Lock #1 at Trenton the day after it opened in the spring, during one of the highest water level years on record. We draw 5’4” and have a bulb keel on our 42’ sailboat, and displace a little over 21,000 pounds dry. Needless to say, the mast was as well secured horizontally on the deck of the boat and yielded a minimum bridge height clearance of 15’.
The journey upbound to the highest lake at Rosedale had us travel through 35 locks. One of our biggest bounces was 50 m in front of the centre of the marked channel while entering the famous and most traveled Peterborough lock. I lost count of how many times we skipped along as we approached the Kirkfield lock, despite water breaching the top of Roseldale’s lock doors.
However, almost as nerve racking as feeling the ground beneath our keel, were the weeds, especially so early in the season. I have two major recommendations:
- If you have a large wing on your keel or draw more than 64”, consider journeying to Georgian Bay through the Welland Canal and Lake Erie! The weeds in the TSW will wrap around your keel and bring you to a grinding halt. You will have to stop and clear them every 100m if your keel edges exposed for the weeds to wrap around and drag you to a crawl.
- If; however, you do not mind plugging your way through, my biggest recommendation to save your sanity is to have either a traditional sonar transducer on board or at least a portable fish finder. If you rely on the single depth reading you see on a typical sailboat which just gives you a depth number, you cannot see the consistency of the bottom. A single frequency depth sounder signal will bounce off the top of the weeds giving you readings shallower than your draw. You will never know the true depth, and as a result will be biting your nails not knowing what your real depth is. Traditional sonar or a fish finder will graphically shows what the bottom looks like and the weed stalks growing up from the bottom can be seen. It provided relief when we saw negative depth readings and helped us to avoid some bumps through some very weedy sections (about 40% of the time). The biggest problems were not in the man-made canals, but rather the openings and exits to these canals. Oh, and by the way, get used to seeing only 6 inches under your keel for most of the way.
Here is a statement of the obvious. NEVER, NEVER leave the the marked channel, even by a few feet. That means no authohelm, even in the long straight sections. Don’t circle in front of a lock waiting for the doors to open, or run the chance of slightly crossing the imaginary line between the calm water sheltered by the breakwall of the lock entrance and the turbulent outflow of the adjacent dam. Although you would still be technically in the channel, your slow speed crossing into that raging current will throw you out of the channel and aground faster than you can say “Jack Robinson”. Thank God for our bow thrusters that pointed us in the right direction so we could drive right off.
Did I mention the raging current? At high water, the amount of water coming out of those dams looks like a great place for extreme kayakers to have the time of their lives. My experience with this was coming into Lock #4, heading to the breakwall separating the lock from the dam, I had to keep the boat at a 45 degree leeway (angle of the bow relative to the direction you wanted to go). So make sure your boat has enough horsepower to fight the current and if you only have a 9.9 outboard on the back that only sticks in the water 12”, then consider not doing the TSW.
No matter how many fenders you have, it is not enough, so prepare to scratch your hull. Not on the lock walls, but the concrete piers you pull up to and tie off to while waiting for the locks to drain and open. I have never experienced switching currents like this. The currents can flip 180 degrees several times during a 5 minute wait, and the speed is faster than you can react to and the power is stronger than anyone can fend off. Most of time we had only 3 mooring lines out while waiting, but when the current switches, the third line was likely in the wrong direction and the fenders popped out. Lots of gel work to do this winter.
Locking down the TSW truly is simple, but exiting the locks is still nail biting as you wait for the bump of silt that builds up at the exit of many of the locks. Even with record breaking water levels this season, Canal Lake was our nemesis. I swear the keel dredged through mud and weeds the entire 4 NM. A sailboat that draws 6 feet as per Parks Canada would never make it through.
Once we made it to Lake Simcoe, things started getting easier. Even at the narrows in Lake Couchiching which shows the chartered depth at 3’ over a stretch of 50m. It actually turned out to be more like 8’.
Was it worth it? Yes, it was as the scenery and cottages made it all worth while. Would I do it again? Not in a sailboat that draws over 5’.
Allen