Thursday July 1, 2021.
Temp: 77/65, Humidity: 64/94%, Top Wind: N9 mph, Precip- none, Miles Traveled: 22, #of Locks: 2
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SORRY for leaving y’all hangin and waiting for the haul out findings! Sorta like a bad suspense novel? 😁
It was an early get up since the haul out guys would be ready at 7:00! Sheesh! But this was actually good, because if everything checked out good under the Girl’s belly, we’d be back in the water and on our way by mid-morning. They were on the job and ready, and here she goes out of the water by 7:30.
First look showed nothing hanging there that shouldn’t be. GOOD! The yard guys said that it very well could have been a piece of white paper tarp kind of stuff, like Tyvek, since a grocery bag would shred up pretty fast. We noticed that the zincs are turning gold and yellow in the fresh water. They don’t work as well as in salt water, and can get kind of a slime coating on them if they sit in fresh water …. which these did for a couple of weeks at Shady Harbor.
There are a couple of shiney spots on the port prop, but not neccessarily on the leading blade edge. 🤔. John (the yard guy) said this looks like where there have been welds/repairs that are starting to show. Ooooh. He asked if we had spares, and when we said no, he said that we might should just start keeping an eye out for some. These may not tolerate any more repairs – which is something that Kenny has already pondered in his giant mechanical warehouse of a boat maintenance brain.
This is the side that is missing a shaft zinc…. about half way up the shaft there is a light spot where it belongs.
We gave a gander to the throw-buster, and it looks good.
Mechanic Kenny had two shaft zincs and a house zinc on board, but no trim tab zincs. The house zinc on the Girl was a bit scruffy, but still had lots of metal thickness and fight left in it. The trim tabs were wearing out, especially on the side where the shaft zinc was missing, so we purchased a couple of those and had the shaft zincs put on. The yard requires that all work must be done by their people, which is probably an insurance thing.
The bottom paint looked amazingly good, and everything else checked out splendid. WHEW! That is a relief for the Captain. We’ve gone about 2300 miles on the Loop so far, so that gives him piece of mind that nothing is amiss. I teased that Island Girl just wanted a belly rub. We actually were only out of the water for less than an hour. We were gently lowered back into the water, tootled back out to the fuel dock, filled up our tanks at $2.99/gal, got our pooper pumped, and moseyed off on our way!
By 9:30 we were going into Lock 23. This is the last one on what is considered to be the “Eastern Erie Canal”. It was another ‘down’ lock of about 7’. This is looking backwards, saying adios to the Eastern section.
About six miles later, we came to the “Three Rivers Junction”. This is where the Oswego Canal intersects with the Erie Canal. If you want to go to Lake Ontario, you hang a right here. If you want to continue on the Erie and go to Buffalo, left turn Clyde. 🤛
It was slow going for much of the day since there are a lot of homes and docks and boats along the canal here. We were puzzled why anyone would want to have a speedy boat here since the speed limit is 10mph.🤷♀️
I saw two pairs of big white swans, but they were not nearly close enough for my dinky phone camera to clearly show their cute faces.
This is today’s weather and typical scenery. It was cloudy and humid and warm, but not hot, so that was a nice change.
Our second lock was another twelve miles down the road, and that was it for today! Our plan was to stay here in Baldwinsville on the other side of this lock. We are going UP again, starting the climb up to the elevation of Lake Erie. This one was only eleven feet up. I do like these little short lift locks – they are really easy to manage!
Welcome to Baldwinsville!
It sort of looks ominous to exit the lock through the doors and under the guard gate guillotine.
My research indicated that there would a big wall on the port side with 30 and 50 amp power, and 15 and 30 amp power after that on a floating dock. Tie up is free, and power is $5 or $10/night depending on how many amps you plug into. It all turned out to be true and there were maybe eight boats already here, mostly on the floating dock. We bellied up to the wall and got all tied off and plugged in to a 50 amp, right next to the little visitors center. Easy schmeazy.
We relaxed a bit after our big 22 mile day, but soon realized that we were hungry and it was 12:30. Hey! Let’s go have some lunch! Or breakfast! There’s a diner nearby that folks say is good. So we went for a walk. Here’s looking back at the swimming pool of lock 24, with Island Girl off in the distance.
We found the B’ville Diner without much trouble. This is not a very big town.
It was so cute inside! The Diner began its operations at its current location in 1934. The original Diner was a Diner car until 1950, and this building is awesome.
The booths, colors, neon light decor and tableside jukeboxes made it complete. They serve breakfast all day, and good ol’ fashioned comfort food. There were several meatloaf menu items, and Kenny had a meatloaf benedict that was eggcelent.
After brunch, we took a walk up the main street of town. I had picked up a historical homes walking tour deal from the visitors center. Along the way, I couldn’t pass up a historic church building without a photo. 1865 for the present brick church building.
The Allen house was built in 1840 by Judge Bigelow for his daughter Marie. She added this yellow section as an office for her son who was a doctor. It was a neat looking place.
Next door was this different style home built in 1852 by the same Judge Bigelow for his other daughter Mary. What a nice dad he was!
Across the street was this colorful brick box of a house built in 1870. We laughed because it was built by Mr Fuller, the owner of a lumber yard. The one to the right of it is in the middle of refurbishment. What a project!
I really liked this one. I don’t know if it was the yellow that just made it look cheerful or what, because it really is just a box. It was built in 1866 in the Italianate style. Who knew that was a style?
Another box with a nice garden. It was fun looking at the homes. There was a lady out mowing her yard and she stopped to talk with us for quite awhile. New Yorkers really can be friendly. 😏
We saw lots of flowers, so I just selected these for a portrait. Suspended in thin air again!
The United Methodist Church, built in 1869, had a big tall white steeple atop it’s brick building.
On our walk back to the boat, we stopped in at JessieCakes. Neither of us are big on cakes or cupcakes, but they had scoop ice cream, so I had some. It wasn’t bad, but they didn’t have any with caramel. WHAT?!😳. Why not?!
Another flower portrait for today.
I was texting with my penpal Jenny on Nauti Jenny. They are the ones that have been one day behind us and loving all of our free wall and power and brewery suggestions. They decided to step it up and come all the way to Baldwinsville today. YAY! I told them that we’d hold off going to the brewery until they got here. I was getting nervous that there wouldn’t be a spot for them because boats just kept coming! Yikes! Several of the boats seemed to be locals, which reminded us that this is the beginning of a holiday weekend. Uh oh. We better think about that! We always forget what day it is. 🤔
Nauti Jenny showed up around 4:30, got all tied up, and we immediately went for a walk with a mission. 🍻. We found WT Brews in an obscure almost unmarked building – in the back of the Dollar Tree building.
We were laughing so hard because Jenny doesn’t like beer, and only likes really sweet wines, and can never decide what to have. My soul sister! Rick and Kenny ordered their beers before we girls even got done reading the menu. We tasted a couple of things and finally ordered something.
There was no food available and I figured it was just because Kenny and I were here that it was NOT food truck night. Jeeze. Why does this happen to us? Did I tell you that when Rick & Jenny followed our suggestion and went to the brewery in Rome, they had live music and a food truck that served amazing butter lobster rolls? Yea. The night AFTER we were there.
We took one more selfie with Rick’s long arms, and headed out to find some food.
WT Brews had a few of their own beers, and several guest beers, ciders, seltzers and wines. The four of us had a great time telling stories. Rick and Jenny are both retired airforce and are currently living on their boat with no dirt home, trying to figure out where in the world (literally) they want to live when they finish the loop. They said it’s such a foreign but freeing concept to be able to PICK where to live, rather than be TOLD where to live. We really enjoyed them.
Tomorrow we’ll put some miles under the hull and move along our way. There aren’t many places to stop between here and the next town. Sorry again for the delayed report. We were out having fun until dark for a change, and then it was bed time for an early get up. Our plan is to jet outta here at sunrise so get to the next place before everybody else.