The first lock is eleven miles beyond Port Colborne. By the time they arrive, Taylor is nearly sick with anticipation. With no frame of reference, her imagination has spun up images of their boat being smashed to pieces against the lock wall. Pleasure boats travel through the Welland Canal all the time, so Taylor knows she’s worrying too much. She just doesn’t know how to turn off her brain.

Willa eases Whiskey Tango Foxtrot toward the wall of the lock, and a shoreman hands Taylor a long coil of rope.

“Most people run it around the cleat and pay it out slowly as the boat goes down,” he instructs. “Do you have gloves? Might come in handy.”

The Captain Norm book recommended boaters protect their hands while traveling through locks, so one of their last purchases before Taylor and Willa left Sandusky was a four-pack of heavy-duty gardening gloves. Taylor pulls a pair from the back pocket of her shorts and slides her hands inside.

“All set,” she says, but she’s not ready. Not really.

Ahead of them in the lock is a large white trawler called Nauti-Gal and an unnamed sleek red go-fast powerboat with a bank of outboard motors stretched across the back. Both boats are loaded with fenders to protect their shiny hulls, and Taylor is glad she bought a few more. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a small boat and they still have so far to go.

The steel doors close slowly and then the water begins its descent. From her place on the bow, Taylor eases out the rope, keeping pace with the water level, while Willa does the same at the back of the boat. It’s less scary than Taylor imagined, but as the lock wall rises up beside them, the boat feels smaller than ever.

It takes about fifteen minutes for the water to drain to the correct level. The doors open at the opposite end of the lock, and Nauti-Gal peels away from the wall first and motors away, followed by the go-fast boat. Taylor releases the rope as Willa steers toward the middle of the channel.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Taylor says.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Willa says. “But this was just the beginning. Next are the flight locks, and that’s not going to be fun.”

“Is there any good news?”

“Not unless you want me to make something up.”

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

It takes Willa and Taylor two hours to reach the first of the flight locks. The sun is higher in the sky and the other two boats have been waiting for their arrival. The owner of the trawler—a man who reminds Taylor of a grumpy version of her granddad—glares at her from his back deck as though she could have made their little outboard motor chug along any faster than it did.