Sept. 4th ...Waterford, NY

After coffee we were off the Laundromat and went around the corner for breakfast while the clothes were drying. Don and Paul's was small, shabby, there were some neat historical photos on the wall and a huge coke machine in the middle of the room. There was a door open to the back room and we could see and hear an active pool game in progress at 9a.m. The service was excellent and food was ok...

I called Riverview Marina in Catskill, NY which is about 45 miles south, to see about stepping our mast and made an appointment for Thursday a.m. We will motor down there on Wednesday and spend the night.

With clean clothes back in the boat we hiked over the Hudson River to Troy, NY to a very nice grocery store. We picked up supplies for the next week and were leaving the parking lot with their cart when its wheels locked up. We had read somewhere that we had to ask the management to "unlock" the wheels before we took off with their carts but there didn't really seem like anything to unlock. Wrong....it took both of us dragging and pushing the cart at the same time back across the lot where I stayed while Kathy went in to find an unlocker. After a couple of minutes Kathy brought back a lady with a little plastic box that magically unlocked the wheels. She then walked with us explaining that the locks were set for a distance and that she would need to unlock them again before we were on our way back across the bridge to Waterford.

Since we had the time, I wanted to check a few things on the engine which entailed emptying the storage stateroom and removing the mattress to check the seawater strainer... which was found to be reasonably full of seaweed. I turned off the valve, cleaned everything out, replaced the impeller, and checked the zinc in our heat exchanger. I have decided to remove the prop shaft alternator, but today was not going to be the day.

After getting the boat back together we hiked to the Library to post some blog entries, check our email and find the part number for a new lift pump. ( I think were up to 5 or 6 miles of walking by now.) We stopped at the post office on the way back and then had a late lunch of Jarlsburg swiss, apple slices and Triscuits.

After reading for a couple of hours... I grilled some fresh Haddock, made a lemon/butter/olive oil/dill sauce while Kathy outdid herself again in the salad arena.

Bye for now...

Hello, just a note . . .

I went into the Welcome Center today because they have a book exchange and we are in need of new books. The wonderful book store in Brockport was too long ago. As I was looking around I thought I saw a boat just like ours in a large (16 X9?) picture on the wall. I had to get closer and look and it was "Celtic Song" in front of their old welcome center. It may have been a picture taken before Jackie and Chris owned it, but since we saw "Celtic Song" several times in the North Channel this summer, it brought back good memories!