Wednesday, May 18th we left Catakill for Waterford, New York and the beginning of the Erie Canal - a 40 mile trip. We arrived about 3 pm and it is warm...warm enough for shorts! We walked to the grocery store to reprovision (they let you bring the cart back to the marina) and later after we cleaned up, we had dinner at our favourite restaurant, McGrievey's. It was just as good as we remembered. Our friend, Lockmaster Rick is now at lock 5 so we won't see him until tomorrowbut in the restaurant we chatted with Chris Callaghan who wrote a song about us when we were stranded here in 2013.

Our first day on the Erie Canal we did 9 locks and stopped at Riverlink Park in Amsterdam. Day 2 took as far as Ilion and the next day, Sylvan Beach on Lake Oneida. It was fairly quiet here - next weekend is the big opening of the Amusement Park and little shops. Train noise is very loud in all the stops on both the Hudson and the Erie Canal. Most of the way, the freight trains run down one side, passenger trains the other.

On our 4th day, we made the turn into the Oswego Canal, which is new to us - we have always before gone to Buffalo. The scenery is very nice and there are just 8 locks to Oswego. We had hoped to make it to Lock 7, but were too optimistic! We docked between locks 2 and 3 on a short little dock in a very tight little marina. We didn't find out until morning that there are washrooms and showers here and the lockmaster has the key!

Monday, May 23rd - We are just 5 locks and 10 miles from Oswego! We arrived at 10 am - at 11 am they stepped the mast. The rest of the day was spent rigging and getting the sails on. After a quick shower, we treated ourselves to dinner at the Pressbox Restaurant and an early night.