Day 382 – at Peterborough Marina, Peterborough, Ontario - July 22, 2012

Our big adventure for the day was a walk to the Peterborough Lift Lock.  It was a bit longer walk than we had anticipated, but we arrived just in time to watch three boats make their way through the lock.  This lock is a real engineering marvel.  It was completed in 1904 and is the highest lift lock in the world, lifting and lowering boats 65 feet each time the lock goes through a cycle.

The lift lock raises and lowers boats in two water-filled steel chambers.  The 7½ foot diameter pistons under each chamber are connected hydraulically.  When the boats are secure in the pans, a valve is opened so the hydraulic fluid can move from one piston to the other.  The upper pan is filled with an additional foot of water, which makes the upper pan go down, and the lower pan rise – just like a teeter totter, one up, one down.  Really neat when you consider that each pan could hold four boats the size of Boreas.  Most of the Lift Lock (except the pans and the pistons) is constructed of concrete without any reinforcement. Not bad for 100 year old concrete.

After we got back to the boat (and got cooled off), Fred went to work changing the fuel filters on Boreas.  We have gauges on the fuel filters that give us an idea of how dirty they might be, but we also thought the boat felt like it was running a bit rough as we made our way to Peterborough yesterday (another indicator of dirty filters).  The filter change went fine and we spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing and trip planning for Georgian Bay.
 
            Miles: 0           Bridges: 0        Locks: 0

looking at the piston under the chamber that is currently in the "up" position

the chamber that is in the "up" position

watching boats load into the chamber that is down

the chambers are moving - the two chambers are just
about to pass each other



the chambers are almost next to each other now

the chamber is passing by the spot where we are taking photos

you can just begin to see the piston of the chamber
that is being raised

still going up - if you look carefully you can see
the chamber that is going down

almost all the way up - the transfer is about complete

at the top of the lock, the boats are waiting for the gate to lower
so they can exit the lock chamber

looking down at the chamber that was just lowered

at the top of the lock - the far chamber is in the "up" position

from the same point as the above photo, but looking at the chamber that is "down"