Mike and Kathy
08/26/2007, Brockport, New York

Thursday, August 23 Middleport to Brockport


I was the designated driver of the car today. I haven't done laundry in a month, so I went to the Laundromat for a few hours and then drove to Brockport. It was a nice drive through some small towns. I did find a vegetable stand to get some tomatoes. I scouted out the place to park on the wall in Brockport and let Mike know where to go. It started to rain pretty hard and I heard the lift bridge open so I went and stood out in the rain to help them tie up. They have water, electric, rest rooms and showers here for $8/night. It's a nice town. There is a branch of SUNY (State University of New York) here, so it's a bit of a college town.

Kathy

So .... Today our ride down the Erie was easy... the lift bridge operators always know when you're going to get there even if they have three bridges to operate. It's magic.

The canal is about 30 yards wide and is usually banked with rocks. There is always a walk way on one side or the other . Waterways that I am used to are natural and as such follow the lowest contours of land. The Erie Canal is much more like an aqueduct. Upstate New Your is rolling, much like the west side of Michigan. As the Canal passes through the land it's up and down .... Which means that al least half the time we are above the land....There are many times that we are looking down over valleys ... way below us, that consist of fields, orchards and much prime deer hunting territory.

Whoever engineered this looked for north facing slopes ... when it was dug, the tailings were moved to the north side and became the berm that is the north bank of the canal.

The only other surprise is the lack of boat traffic ... we are alone most of the day just driving along... our friends are joggers, old men sitting in chairs and farmers checking their irrigation pumps. We see two or three boats per day....


Friday

We all drove to Rochester to West Marine to pick up some things we needed-like a patch kit for the dinghy which had a run-in with a rough wall while tying up to wait for a lock, among other things. We went back to the boat and had lunch and then Mom and Annie left for Michigan. It was fun having them with us for a few days.

Mike changed the oil and some of the fuel filters, which took a long time and the boat has to be torn apart to do the job, so it was a mess. We were sitting in the cockpit relaxing after putting the boat back together when it dawned on me that there was a laundry room about 40 steps away. Shoot, I did six loads yesterday but I gathered up all the sheets and some other things and did a load. The washer was $1.75 and the dryer was free! Can't pass up these opportunities!

Another strange thing about driving through the canal is that we can't use the auto-pilot. There are too many turns and bridges and it is almost too narrow. We can't just put it on auto and sit back and read our books, checking things out now and then

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Kathy
08/25/2007, Middleport, New York

Wednesday, August 22 North Tonawanda to Middleport

This morning we stocked up on groceries and prevailed upon our friends at the Chamber of Commerce to fax some more insurance papers for us. We are now covered to the Bahamas. We tried to find someone who would drive the car up the canal a ways so we could all go in the boat, but had no luck. So, Mom and Anne drove the car and Mike and I drove the canal. When we got to the first locks, 35 and 34, they were waiting there to take pictures of us locking through. We tied up on the wall past the locks and decided it was not a good place to spend the night, so we traveled on to Middleport and tied up on the wall just before the lift bridge. It was free and there were bathrooms and showers , water and electricity. It is a small town with a couple of bars and a laundromat. There is a cool church built of stones carted from Lake Ontario.

Mike cooked the last of the walleye and we had a wonderful meal.

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Kathy and Mike
08/25/2007, North Tonawanda, New York

Wardell's ... Tuesday , August 21

We spent the morning building cradles and lashing our masts to the boat and finished about noon when Anne (sister) called to say that she and mom were on their way for a visit. The boat was a disaster. We hadn't been able to find the guest stateroom for weeks. I started scrubbing the mud off the decks while Kathy cleaned below. After a few hours we had things back in order, got cleaned up ourselves, and took off to find a place that would fax some insurance info back to Michigan. We wandered into the Chamber of
Commerce and Mary the desk girl, went out of her way to help us out Now that we're covered for the East Coast we were free to head out on the canal.

Mom and Anne arrived as advertised at about 6:30. We chatted for a while and then walked to the Dockside to have dinner.

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