Bobcaygeon, Ontario

Sunday July 30, 2017.  Today’s destination was the top of Lock 32 in Bobcaygeon, Ontario.  This is “THE” vacation destination for the Kawartha Lakes region of the Trent-Severn Waterway.  Oh, and here is the place where houseboat rentals are concentrated. Can you say “amateur boater”?  There were more boats on the water than we have ever seen!  Most of the boats were small dayboats, but there were kayakers, wave runners, ski boats and house boats in the mix.  It was a nice warm day and also apparently a Canadian holiday of some sort, so everyone was taking advantage of the stellar weather day!  So it stands to reason that we might have problems getting two spaces on the wall at Bobcaygeon.

                                     Kawartha Lakes Region - Beautiful Scenery

The day itself was okay, we passed through 4 locks and, fortunately, Captain Carey recovered his boat handling skills.  But every lock we passed through was full.  So it was pretty stressful heading towards Bobcaygeon and not knowing if the "Inn" would be full or not.  We found an anchorage to go to as a backup plan and forged on.  Once we locked through Lock 32, we found a space for Tug LeeLoo almost immediately.  Miracles do happen.  And then a boat pulled away and Catalina also had a space.  I guess our late arrival (5:00 pm) helped as many of the local boaters departed for home.

Bobcaygeon is a cute little town with several restaurants and stores.  It’s also walkable to the LCBO store.  Oh, and there’s ice cream.  So we decided to stay an extra day to relax and to let a storm pass.  If you have a place on the wall . . . keep it!  We also learned that spaces on the wall before 5:00 pm have a 2-hour time limit and one can only stay overnight one night.  Oh well.  No one came by to send us on our way, so our plan worked.

During the afternoon Nancy accidentally dropped her phone into the water.  We’ve been boating for over 10 years and this is the first drowned phone.  Not bad considering . . . .  We called the phone hoping that it might be on board Tug LeeLoo.  No joy.  Then we walked the park next to the wall hoping that maybe she dropped it on land.  No joy.  Even the Find iPhone app didn’t work, so by this time we were pretty sure the phone had gone for a swim.  So we looked carefully at the water between the boat and the wall, and sure enough, there it was, sitting proudly on the bottom with the screen turned on. 

Fortunately, the bottom right next to the wall is rocky, not weedy, and the water was amazingly clear.  It looked like you could just reach down and grab the phone, but it was just out of reach.  The water was actually deeper than it looked due to its clarity.  We tried using a small dip net but it was still out of reach.  So the only alternative was for Carey to go for a swim.  Nancy retrieved his dive mask while Carey changed into his bathing suit.  We moved the boat away from the wall a bit and down he went.  As it turned out, the water was just under five feet deep and Carey had to dive for the phone.  But he was able to grab it and give it to Nancy.

The next task was to get Carey out of the water, not an easy task since our new dinghy davit blocks access to the ladder built into the swim platform.  Can you say “Beached whale?”  Fortunately, there were no cameras recording his less than glamorous exit from the water.

Nancy dried off the phone as best she could.  It was still working, but there were signs that it might not work for long.   

The recovery treatment for a submerged phone is to place it in a bowl of rice for a day or so.  The rice absorbs the water and, hopefully, the phone will work again.  We don’t know what the success rate is for this exercise, maybe 60/40 against success, but it was worth a try.  But who has raw rice on the boat?  It’s all the pre-cooked stuff.  So off to the grocery store Carey went for rice.

We removed the SIM card and placed the phone in the rice and left it there for two full days.  We then pulled it out and reinstalled the SIM card and charged it up and . . . .  It worked!  Nancy was thrilled of course, since all of our recent photos documenting the Trent-Severn Waterway were on her phone.