6/17/18: The St. Lawrence River runs northeast from Lake Ontario, up past Montreal and Quebec City, and into the Atlantic Ocean up by New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Here at the beginning ‘headwaters’ of the river, it is the boundary between New York USA, and Ontario Canada. The river flows down, but up to the northeast. I keep saying it wrong, because my brain thinks directionally based on north is up. So I keep saying we’re going up the river, but we’re really going down the river, even though we’re going north. So the river flows up to the north on the map, but it’s really downstream to the north. HUH?! Read more
Month: June 2018
Day 96: The Great Lake crossing – Lake Ontario!
6/16/18: The last lock on the Oswego canal is #8, and it was just ahead of where we spent the night. We could see the red light/green light from where we were, which indicates when it is OK to enter the lock. I was up at 7, and saw Elixer and Dragonfly were already waiting for the green light. They arrived in the evening and stayed here on this wall along with us and Salty Dog. We decided that we weren’t going to try to hurry up and get in the first opening of the day. The weather was supposed to be great all day, which would make for a good day to cross the big water of Lake Ontario. It was about 50 miles across to our destination, or about 5.5 hours at our nearly 10mph cruising speed. No big giant hurry, so we got up and had some coffee and called the lock around 8:00. He reset the lock, flicked on the green light, and we cast off our lines. This lock was only about a ten foot drop, and we were on our way! It was our 30th lock in the last 10 days. We’ll get a little break now before we start into another locked canal system in Canada. Read more
Day 95: Good-bye Erie Canal, hello Oswego
6/15/18 Friday: The sun was out, but it was a jeans and sweatshirts kind of day with a little bit of a breeze from the north. We were up before 7:00. REALLY! Everybody was headed to Oswego today, and our goal was to get there and stay on a free wall and save some bucks. We need to work on our “free nights” average! I wanted to make sure that we weren’t that last boat to get there, so that we could get a spot on the wall. I don’t know how many spots there really are, but I wanted one. We figured that the weather was supposed to be mild, so we wouldn’t need heat or air conditioning, so no super duper need to be plugged in for power. But first… we needed to get our holding tank pumped out. When we first got here to Winter Harbor Marina 3 days ago, we got fuel because it was the best price we’ve seen for a long time: $2.98/gal for diesel. And we tried to get our holding tank pumped out. It didn’t really get pumped all the way out, so we’ve been living cautiously “with the red light on” for a few days. Read more
Day 94: Cloudy, windy, and cool in Brewerton
6/14/18: We woke up to bounding and bouncing against the dock. Yep – the wind was blowing today! Not a good day to travel, especially through locks! I can just imagine bouncing from wall to wall – not a good image!! It was another good day to stay put. Nobody was moving today. Tomorrow looks great and there surely will be a mass exodus. We have the last one of the Eastern Erie Canal locks, #23 which is just a 7′ drop, to go through. Then we will find ourselves at the canal junction with the Oswego Canal, which turns north and will take us up to Lake Ontario.
Days 92,93: Across Oneida Lake to Brewerton
6/12/18: We slept on the wall at the top of Lock 21, remember? We slept with the windows open, (with screens to keep the cooties out). The hatch over our bed was open just a little bit to let the cool night air in, but hopefully not enough that any dew would soak us in the morning. It was down in the 50’s at night, and we slept SO good!
The locks open at 7:00, but our eyeballs didn’t want to open. The night was so very calm – not a ripple in the water all night. At about 7:00, we heard one of the fenders rub on the wall. Hmmmm – why was that? What moved in the water to make us move? I got out of bed and looked down the channel behind us. Yep – there was a boat sitting in the middle of the channel, waiting for the lock to open. He was not moving – just sitting there. Kind of like a vulture, waiting for it’s prey. Sitting and watching. Not moving. There were no waves, the water was splat flat. But his arrival must have pushed the water just enough to move us.
Day 91: Cruising along the Erie Canal
6/11/18: Yep – plans change sometimes. I had originally planned to stop in Little Falls and Rome, and maybe Ilion and Utica, and Sylvan Beach. But – there is some nasty rain coming on Wednesday, and big giant wind on Thursday. We need to cross Oneida Lake, which is 20 miles across, and that should not be done in the wind (at least not for this fair weather boater!) A couple of days after that, we need to go 50 miles across the east end of Lake Ontario, which also requires really good weather. So once again, we ask ourselves…. Should we stay or should we go now? We could stay on this side of the lake and wait for the nasty weather to get over itself. But from what we’ve seen of these canal towns is that “town” is not always easily accessible from the Canal. Or we go now while the weather is good which puts us in position to go across Lake Ontario when the weather shapes back up. I don’t know! It would be cool to do lunch in one place, and adventure in another. But not in the rain when town might be a mile walk away. So, we decided to go. At least today was another very beautiful day in the Erie Canal wilderness.
Day 90: Canajoharie and St. Johnsville
6/10/18 Sunday: This was a busy day for us! We set off from Amsterdam in the morning on GLASS for water! Absolutely peaceful and still. Our plan for the day has changed. I originally wanted to stop and spend the night at Canajoharie. But it is only about 20 miles from Amsterdam. If we stop and spend the night at every little town, it will take us two weeks to get through the Canal. So my new idea was to just stop for lunch in Canajoharie, then continue on another 10 miles and stay in St. Johnsville. That way we get two towns in one day. We’ll see how this works. It was only 1.5 miles to the first lock: #11, with a 12’ Lift. There was an eastbound boat in the lock, so we had to wait a bit. By the time we got into the lock, we had two other west bound boats with us. One of them was Green Eyes, a looper who we originally met way back in Southport NC, and have seen several times. We didn’t know the other boat. No problem in the lock – plenty of room.
Day 89: Easy day in Amsterdam
6/9/18: No, this is not the Amsterdam with red light districts and funny smoke for sale. It’s just a little town along the Erie Canal in New York. Along the Canal seems to be where the railroad tycoons thought rail should travel, so we’ve listened to trains go by all night and day. My goodness, the railways in New York are BUSY! There is a very tall pedestrian bridge to cross over the railroad tracks from town to the Riverlink Park. This is a panoramic picture from up there. Just Island Girl at the dock now- everyone else left pretty early this morning.
Day 88: 9 locks, 37 miles, 7 hours.
6/8/18: The Waterford Wall where we spent the night, is right at the base of Lock 2 and the beginning of the Waterford Flight. It is a series of 5 locks (2,3,4,5,6), which lifts boats from 15 to 184 feet above sea level. Each lock is about a 34’ lift. Here is the view from the wall of Lock 2, as it releases water to open for us. We just waited at the wall until the green light came on and the lock chamber was opening for us. (Isn’t that a good name on that boat? Pub Trawler is looping – we met them at docktails last night.)
Day 87: We found the ERIE CANAL!
6/7/18: Believe it or not, there is still current that we can ride up-river here! Our plan was to leave around 9:00 to get some benefit from it. We only had about 25 miles to travel today, to Waterford, which is at the eastern entrance to the Erie Canal. As we left Shady Harbor, several people stepped out of their boats to wave good-bye to us. Awe! Such nice peeps. Adios Shady Harbor!
