New york

Saturday July 10, 2021.
Temp: 74 /63, Humidity: 59/92%, Top Wind: N8 mph, Precip: NONE! YAY!, Miles Traveled: 49, Locks: ONE

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Sometimes a late start is frustrating when there isn’t a choice, but hey! we got to sleep in a bit today. We have one more lock to go through in Buffalo, to avoid the rapid current of the Niagara River. It doesn’t do the first lift until 11:30 on the weekend. Our plan was to leave early enough to stop and get our fuel tanks topped off, then go the nine miles to the lock. We only need about 80 gallons, but figured we’d like to have full tanks going out onto Lake Erie. So up an atum and ready to go around 9:45. Spinning Dreams and Paradise Falls had the same idea, so they were already at the fuel dock. We only had to wait a few minutes for them.
Toodaloo Tonawanda! During our stay here, we were tied up back by the boats on the right. This is the Dockside Restaurant where we had excellent fish dinners.

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Friday July 9, 2021.
Temp: 73 /66, Humidity: 72/99%, Top Wind: W11 mph, Precip: rain off & on all day, Miles Traveled: a few in Joe’s car

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Today’s purpose was to go see Niagara Falls… and we did! Our new local area friend Joe has claimed himself to be an unofficial harbor host for the area. He showed us great kindness by offering to take us to the Falls today! Woo-Hooooo! He and his doggies came and picked us up at about 9:30, and away we went.
Niagara Falls State Park is the oldest state park in the country, and it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same landscape architect that designed Central Park in New York City. The Niagara Reservation was set aside in 1885 due to a 15 year movement by people who believed that the natural beauty of the land surrounding the Falls should be protected from commercial interests and exploitation, and remain free to the public. And it is still free to visit the park! (But you do have to pay for the boat ride.)

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Thursday July 8, 2021.
Temp: 74 /62, Humidity: 77/97%, Top Wind: SW10 mph, Precip: rain almost all day

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Yes – it rained almost all day as predicted. It was much cooler and so humid! The chef actually whipped up some bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast today! That doesn’t happen very often. Then Kenny set out to wash the boat. It wasn’t raining hard, so the wetness helped with the boat rinsing. I cleaned bathrooms, straightened things up, vacuumed, and baked cookies. Why not?! Monster Cookies. These were always on the list for items that MUST be taken on camping trips when we were raising our kids. Such fun memories!

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Wednesday July 7, 2021.
Temp: 81 /71, Humidity: 64/93%, Top Wind: NE15 mph, Precip: rain this morning & evening, Miles Traveled: 34, #of Locks: 2, Lift Bridges: 4

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This morning we awoke to really hard pounding rain at about 5:00. SHEESH! This was not little pitter patter white noise, but was serious pounding and was accompanied by some thunderousboomus and flashes of light. 💦 It soon quieted down, and we snoozed awhile longer. We knew we couldn’t leave before 7:00, because we have a lift bridge right around the corner to go through. It also was probable that the bridge tender that minds this bridge would most likely be at his other bridge which we came through yesterday, five miles to the east. So we waited for the rain to be good and gone, then got ready to bug out. We knew that we didn’t want to pull lines until we made contact with the bridge tender to get an ETA. Kenny called the phone number for this bridge, and we got no answer. Then he tried the previous bridge and got the guy, and he told us it would be 15 minutes. Cool! OH NO! We realized that we still wanted to pump out our holding tank at the handy-dandy free pump out just up the wall from here. So we quickly untied, tootled to the pump out and got that chore done. We were pleasantly surprised and glad that it was the fastest pumper-outer that we have ever used! Just as we were pulling our lines, the bridge tender called on the radio and said he was ready – where were we? Oops! Just around the corner… be right there! 🤭. We went through this bridge at 8:00.

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Tuesday July 6, 2021.
Temp: 84/74, Humidity: 61/89%, Top Wind: W14 mph, Precip: rain, Miles Traveled: 25, #of Locks: 0, Lift Bridges: 7

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It was warm and humid today, with a bit of rain. At least we didn’t get hit by the big thunderstorm that went by! But wait – back to the beginning. What is today, anyway? Oh yea, we left Brockport this morning. There was a lift bridge right in town that we had to get through and we were only planning to go about 25 miles today. We didn’t get up early schmirly, but we still left before anybody else was stirring. We called the lift bridge at 8:00, and we got right through.

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Monday July 5, 2021.
Temp: 88/58, Humidity: 48/87%, Top Wind: W16 mph, Precip: none!, Miles Traveled: 32, #of Locks: 2

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We knew that today was going to get 🥵 hot, so we planned an early blast off. But we were trapped by a lift bridge which doesn’t come alive until 7:00am, so that was our departure time. We were up and ready, and our plan was to skeedaddle before other boats, because we don’t know who is going where, and we will definitely want a spot with power tonight! We called the bridge operator right at 7:00 from the wall, and he said to bring it, so we did! The lift bridges here on the Erie Canal just go straight up in a horizontal fashion, so they don’t really provide a huge amount of clearance.

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Sunday July 4, 2021.
Temp: 75/60, Humidity: 45/93%, Top Wind: NE9 mph, Precip: none!, Miles Traveled: 14 on bikes, #of Locks: 0

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The advantage of staying in one place for more that one night? Sleep-in day!! AND…. breakfast! It was really nice to just get up whenever we wanted, and then the chef made pancakes and bacon. It was nice to have a sit down breakfast for a change! Too bad I didn’t have any bubbly for mimosas, because the weather was perfect for it. I sat outside for awhile and it was beautiful. The high temp on the survey for today was 75. That’s awesomely perfectly comfortable in every way.

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Saturday July 3, 2021.
Temp: 76/61, Humidity: 50/100%, Top Wind: N10 mph, Precip: none!, Miles Traveled: 26 in 5.5 hours, #of Locks: 5

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Today would be an interesting day, and we were pretty sure we were as ready for it as we could be. We wanted to put Island Girl into a panini press for today’s adventure, but since that isn’t really an option, we just had to get her sleeked down as much as possible. So we put her in go-fast mode and she has her “go-fast-ears” on. Years ago we had a Brittany dog, and when she was really happy or riding in the boat or car, she would tuck her ears back, in close to her head, and we called it her ‘go-fast-ears’. Today, Island Girl needed go-fast-ears because we would be going under the lowest bridge of the Erie Canal. This is THE lowest clearance one that establishes the height limit for transiting the canal west of Three Rivers. All of her antenna are laid back, anchor light laid back, her radar is removed, and the highest point is the little Garmin mushroom. And it’s kind of at a tie with the top of the bimini canvas, so let’s hope that’s low enough. When we measured for the fourteenth time, we came up with 15’ 3”. The lowest bridge is recorded as 15’6”. 😵‍💫

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Friday July 2, 2021.
Temp: 70/60, Humidity: 67/99%, Top Wind: N10 mph, Precip: rain, Miles Traveled: 48, #of Locks: 2

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We were once again parked right under a lamp post, so it seemed like daylight all night long in our bedroom. It did actually help with waking up at 5:00, but wasn’t so helpful when waking up at 1:00 for no reason. Oh well. Plus we have lots of dead bugs onboard now. 😫 We were both up by 5:30, got our coffee made, unplugged, pulled our lines and were cruising away by 6:00. Even at that, we were the fourth boat off of the wall! Our plan was to travel 48 miles to Lyons. There really isn’t anything in between here and there, so we wanted to get out first to hopefully ensure ouselves a spot on the wall there.

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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.

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