June 19 - 20  Thousand Islands to Canada

We cruised some more around the Thousand Islands just for fun and took in the incredible ‘summer homes’ of the very wealthy during the Islands’ heyday - the late 1800s into the early 1900s.  People with more money than they knew what to do with built elaborate, large homes, and some of them really are castles.  Today the castles are tourist attractions, with Canadian and US tour boats steadily toting people over to those islands.  

As we cruised, we crossed back and forth over the border - a somewhat  arbitrary line goes around some islands and not around others - and finally made the call to Canada Customs to formally enter.  They directed us to the Brockville Yacht Club and told us if someone was not there to greet us, we were officially entered.  No one but yacht club people met us at the dock.  They courteously let us leave the boat tied up there for a short walk in town and trip to the grocery store for some ice.  One of the members there has a Willard and we gave each other tours of our boats to compare and discuss.  He told us of a nearby anchorage for the night, where we met up with another American couple from Seattle on their s/v Jarana.

Jarana’s owners informed us of the closing of the Eisenhower Lock caused by a cruise ship accident.  As we cruised onward on Saturday, we passed by several large ships at anchor, waiting for transit.  We heard there were at least 22 ships waiting, and plans were underway to tow out the cruise ship and repair the damage.  In the meantime, we experienced our first Canadian lock - the Iriquois Lock, which lowered us four inches.  This lock and dam basically regulates water flow and the change is usually 1 to 6 feet, depending on the height of the river.  We didn’t even notice it had happened. 

By the time we dropped anchor in the Croil Islands, we’d heard the Eisenhower Lock had re-opened.  We’re hoping to get through it tomorrow;  it will be interesting to see if they get all the commercial ships through before we get there.