June 29, 2024: I have my first serious mechanical issue while tying up on Lock 3 on the Trent-Severn.
Everything was going so well — things were bound to go wrong eventually.
The thing that went wrong was my stern thruster while I was trying to secure Do It Now to the chamber wall in Lock 3 on the Trent-Severn Waterway.
The Trent-Severn Waterway is an absolutely gorgeous canal/river/lake system that winds from Trenton to Georgian Bay in Ontario in Canada, passing through 44 locks along the way. If you know anything about locking in a boat — either from first hand experience, my video about solo locking, or some other resource — you know that the goal is to maneuver the boat into the lock chamber and secure it to the lock wall, utilizing ropes, cables, pipes, or bollards inside the chamber. On the Trent-Severn, the locks all have cables running down the side of the lock, secured at top and bottom. My job is to get at least one line from the boat around one of these cables to hold the boat to the wall.
My usual procedure is to drive very slowly into the lock as close to the wall as I can and bring the boat to a standstill with one of the cables abeam my window at the helm. If necessary, I then use my bow and stern thrusters to bring the boat closer to the wall so I can secure a line there. I then use my stern thruster as necessary to keep the back end of the boat close to the wall.
I had no trouble with Locks 1 and 2 on Thursday morning. But in Lock 3, the stern thruster stopped working as I was trying to get the boat against the wall. What made things even sketchier was that there was wind in the lock and it was trying to turn my boat around. Things got kind of ugly for a few minutes, but because the lock operators were watching from above, they didn’t close the lock door behind me right away. I was able to back partly out of the lock, make a new approach, and get the boat secured with lines at my window and at the swim platform on the stern.
When I’d locked up and the gates opened, I pulled over to the lock wall where lock a operator grabbed a line. to make it easier to park. I experimented with the button for the stern thruster. The thruster motor ran, but there was no thrust. I had a problem.
The Root of the Problem
This is where I make a long story shorter.
I made a bunch of phone calls. I eventually connected with a diver based in Hastings, ON. He agreed to meet me at the top of Lock 6. So I did the next three locks without a stern thruster.
It was not easy for me. Although I preach to folks that they shouldn’t rely on thrusters because you never know when they’ll fail, I hadn’t exactly practiced what I preached. I knew a few tricks from practicing docking maneuvers without thrusters, but I generally did rely on them for locking. Bad idea!
Mike the Diver met me at Lock 6. He was an older guy who had been diving for 30 years. He lowered an extension ladder into the water behind my boat. Then he asked the lock operators to fill the lock and leave the doors open. You see, the back of my boat was close to the valves for filling the lock. If they filled the lock while he was in the water, there was a real risk of him being sucked into the valves. While they did this, he changed into his wetsuit (or drysuit?) and other gear. He strapped on a tank and weight belt and climbed down the ladder. A moment later, he was out of sight under my boat’s swim platform.
Fortunately, I’d taken photos of the bottom of my boat, including the back end under the swim platform, the last time it was out of the water. This was very handy to be able to show the diver exactly where the thruster was in relation to the prop and rudder and other stuff under there.
We were hoping that the thruster was just clogged with weeds. Well, it might have been, but running the thruster with weeds or some other debris in it had basically sheared off all of the blades on the thruster’s prop. So although the motor ran fine (good news), the prop was toast (bad news).
We had to find a replacement prop.
Mike works with props all the time. The area is full of underwater obstacles and boats that wander out of the channel have prop strikes. Mike replaces props without having to have the boat pulled out of the water. So he has connections to find props.
I got him the part number for the Side Power brand thruster. (I called Fluid Motions Marine, the makers of the boat.) Mike worked the phones.
Unfortunately, Mike’s connections reported the next day that the part was not available in Canada. (I’m still having trouble believing that, but okay.) He told me in a voicemail message on Friday afternoon that there’s a local company that goes down to the US once a week to fetch parts. I could have the part in a week. That was not what I wanted to hear. I did not want to spend a week waiting around.
But that was moot anyway. He was waiting for me to call back and I didn’t call back right away. I was driving my boat all day yesterday. (I did six more locks and managed to keep things from getting ugly in four of them.) Because I didn’t call right back, I missed the one week window. When we continued our game of telephone tag Friday evening, he said it would be two weeks because he didn’t hear back from me right away.
That was not acceptable. I like it here in Canada, but I do need to keep moving. And I really did not want to do the entire canal — let alone the next six weeks of my trip — without a stern thruster.
Where Things Stand
15 minutes worth of Googling with the part number for my Side-Power Thruster yielded this result.
I started working the Web this morning. No matter how evil Google might be these days, if you search with the right phrase and ignore Sponsored (or AI) results, you can find what you need. I found the exact part I needed on three different boat part websites: one in Massachusetts, one in San Diego, and one in Seattle. Of course, they’re all closed today (Saturday). But they’ll be open on Monday, which is more than I can say about Canadian businesses. You see, Monday is Canada Day, which is like Independence Day in the US. Big holiday.
I could order online and cross my fingers that they’ll follow my instructions to overnight it. But I’m not a total idiot. I’ll wait until the one in Massachusetts opens on Monday morning and call. Then I’ll place my order, making sure they understand it needs to be sent overnight. It will arrive on Tuesday and I’ll be in Hastings waiting for Mike the Diver to make the repair.
Until then, I’m going to spend this rainy day in Campbellford and continue on to Hastings tomorrow. Just five more locks to go!
Wish me luck!
