The last week has been quieter, as were are basically just marking time before our last work days. Our checklists are getting shorter, and we are now mostly in a holding-pattern waiting out the last few days of work. Our week has been split between Hartwell’s lock station, Dow’s lake pavilion, and the downtown Ottawa lockstation.
Our first night was at the Ottawa locks. I went downtown by myself and the long grey line was completely empty. Wow. End of June and nobody is staying downtown. Got myself parked in the middle of the dock, and hooked up shore power. Just a quick note, normally when we tie up to a Parks Canada dock we try to park at either far end of the dock in order to leave lots of space for other people. In downtown Ottawa we park as close to the middle as possible. The Ottawa grey line dock runs from the Laurier bridge to the Mackenzie-King bridge. The city's crackheads tend to hang out in the shade under these bridges, so we have learned to avoid the ends of the docks. There has been a noticeable increase in the homeless population since COVID, and also a noticeable increase in ambulance runs downtown. In the three days I was there it seemed like there was an ambulance at Rideau and Sussex every two hours or so. Anyways, I plugged in to shore power and went on board to switch on the breaker. mmm. Electricity no worky. Called the lockmaster, and was told that the shore power was not working properly and the city was sending someone to fix it. Needless to say, we had to run the generator that night to cool off the boat, right near the peak of the late-June heat wave.
Our second day one of the boats parked near the NAC left so I moved the boat up beside the NAC (parallel parked it by myself), where the power outlets were working. SCORE! Then grabbed a cold shower (we ordered our new water heater several weeks ago and the supplier screwed up, more on this in a later post) and walked to work for a meeting and to have lunch with Louis. Later I brought Louis back to the boat and showed him around.
During the day they drained the locks to remove debris from the valves. You don't get to see the lock mechanisms everyday. Fun to watch.
I also did some work on the front canvas. One of our zippers was not closing properly, and I hade done a temporary fix using zip-ties (boater's duct tape). Caroline from Irish Seams gave me some template material to show where to extend the canvas, so I made a template and we dropped off the piece to her. That night, we were able to pick it up, and our front canvas is now fully operational.
During the day, the canal weed whacker came by. With the reduced boat traffic on the canal, the weeds are really taking off. The water looks more like August than June. It's green!
That night we enjoyed a jazz-fest concert at City hall, then returned to the boat to watch game 6. Oilers managed to win and force game 7. Freakin awesome.
Taylor came down from Toronto for our retirement party and stayed on the boat with us. Turned out to be easier for her to take the train downtown than for us to pick her up at the VIA station. The interior of the boat is still pretty cluttered as we are still trying to find storage locations for everything, but we managed to fit her in. We took her out to Lone Star for dinner, then retired for the evening with some more Jazz Fest music. Saturday morning, we moved the boat to Hartwell’s before driving to Dow’s lake to shower in preparation for the family retirement party.
The afternoon was spent at the Navan curling club, which Micheline and Rachel had booked for our retirement bash. Thanks to everyone who stopped by.
We then returned to the boat for the night.
Next morning, dropped Taylor at the train, after having a huge laugh at McDonalds drive through. The guy at the window was wearing a minion hat (part of a McD's promotion), so when he comes to the window I said "banana". We got a good laugh out of it. He said it was part of a children's promotion, then asked us if we had any children with us. We said yes, then pointed to Taylor (who is 28), so he gave her a minion hat. When he returned with our food, he gave each of our own minion hat to wear. I drove around with my minion hat on. Made our morning!
After dropping Taylor at the train, we then went to Shelly's to drop stuff off and pick up more stuff. We visited for a bit then back to the boat before the rain hit and spent the rest of the day putting more stuff away. The boat is small, and we brought too much stuff. We are slowly saying good-by to things we don't need, but each time we clean out the salon, it gets filled up with more. In a few weeks we should have it sorted, but always nervous to throw some things out in case we need it later. This has already happened a few times.
The rest of the week was pretty quiet. Louise went in to work, went to some end-of-school dinners, while I did chores and maintenance on the boat. One highlight was watching game 7. Sad to see the Oilers lose, but they had a great run. The game could have gone either way. Hopefully next year a Canadian team can go all the way.
The morning after the hockey game, I was sitting in the boat after Louise left for work, when this guy wearing a work-vest stops at the boat and knocks. At first I thought it was a random guy snooping, but when I got a good look, recognized Russ.
We has some coffee and I gave him a tour of the boat. That day I was planning to take the boat down the locks by myself, and since he is an experienced boater, I asked if he would be interested to help. Of course he would!
We locked down and got set at the bottom grey line. Russ had this huge grin the whole time, I think his cheeks will hurt for a week.
We had a few other visitors drop by. Joe stopped in one morning to get some papers signed. I gave him a short tour and we visited for a bit. The next morning we got a visit from Pierre and Sam, and had coffee with them before they (and Louise) headed in to work.
On Thursday Christiane stopped by the boat to sign some paperwork, and we had a short visit. Ended up having to run around a bit that day to take care of some last minute legal issues - the lawyer's secretary refused to help us, and we ended up getting Christiane's help to get things done. Helps to have connections.
One chore I tackled was replacing the anodes on the engine. The hull anodes were done by Hurst over the winter, so all I needed to do was the engine and genny. Some of the anodes were still good, some were finished and two broke off when I tried to remove them. The engine anodes are all pencil-style, which is a short zinc rod threaded onto a brass or stainless steel plug. Half of the engine anodes come with the plug already attached, but the other half are just rods. You have to remove the old ones from the plug and re-install a new one. Zinc is a soft metal, and when you unscrew the rod from the plug, about half the time the rod breaks off, leaving the threaded part in the plug. Nice.
I had to drill out three of these to replace the zinc rods. After drilling out most of the threads, I was left with a plug with clogged threads. I do not have a tap set to clean the threads, so I soaked the plugs in some toilet bowl cleaner for about a half hour. Most toilet bowl cleaners are just 10% hydrochloric acid with some fragrance, an antibacterial (it's blue so you know its good), and additives to make it sticky. The acid dissolved the zinc, leaving the stainless steel nice and shiny. Science!
Nice and Shiny!
Last day of work was Friday, we both finished around noon, and were officially retired. While I was waiting for Louise, they did an interview on the dock beside me. As soon as we both got back to the boat, we got underway to start our retirement journey!
We are now officially loopy!
