Day 15 - Sun 12 Jun 2016
Docked – St. Johnsville, NY

[photo: as of early afternoon, we had 3 PDQ 34s on the wall. We haven't seen the crew of the new arrival yet]

It was a somewhat lazy day today. The morning at 0500 was dead calm, but the forecast was still showing strong and gusty winds starting before too long and I confirmed the decision to stay another day. Diane was enjoying sleeping really late, I was bored, and the cabin was cool, so I started cooking up the pork and sausage that we defrosted for the grill, along with the vegetables. We now have another three meals ready to go and Diane awoke to a very aromatic, and warm, cabin.

When the dockmaster arrived at 1000, I paid for the extra day and filled our fuel tanks. The cost was just a few cents per gallon more than at Brewerton, but this was especially convenient. The only glitch was that he added wrong and charged $20 extra to the credit card. When I caught it, he was embarrassed and said he had no knowledge how to issue a credit on the card. I asked about a cash refund and he said he would have to call the mayor. Since the marina is town-owned, I guess that made sense. I felt bad he had to go through the trouble, but it was his mistake and I was not walking away from $20 for no good reason.

About 1100, Diane and I walked up the hill into town, finding a lot of stores boarded up. That is a common theme along much of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. Old industries could not compete so the jobs went away and so did the people/consumers. One market/deli was open and is obviously one of ‘the’ places to shop in town. We found some gorgeous meat products at great prices, but only bought some chicken since we wanted to limit how much raw meat we would have upon entering Canada. We also left with a nice sub sandwich for our lunch on the boat.

The wind at the top of the hill was blowing pretty hard and reinforced my decision to stay put today. All the other boats stayed, as well. We later heard stories from the dockmaster who keeps in frequent contact with his buddies manning the locks to the E and W of here. There were numerous accidents and problems with those who did try to brave the winds.

As he was relating the story, someone running a 50 foot sportfishing boat came flying by, not only exceeding the speed limit in this stretch, but throwing a large, damaging wake. Fortunately, all of us had large fenders out to protect us from slamming into the concrete wall. The dockmaster said the local marine sheriff was waiting for him just up the river.

After lunch we read some more and then played our first game of Mah Jongg for this trip. Diane whipped my hide. I hosed off the boat from all the leaves and pollen that had covered it from the wind, but didn’t get too crazy as we will just be going through more dirty locks tomorrow. Supper was the last of the scrumptious crockpot turkey and gravy and all the accompaniments. It smelled like Thanksgiving in the boat, for the second time.

Following this rather cold and raw day, it is nice that the weather is supposed to get rather pleasant over the next few days. Tomorrow may be a little iffy, but I suspect it will be fine for us to travel. If we leave to make the first locking opening at 0800, and travel to Rome, NY, about 5 hours away, we hope it will be fine. If we are lucky, we can tie up to the free wall and connect to shore power.

We can’t wait to get these batteries replaced so we don’t have to worry about them discharging so fast. The next day, we will run to Sylvan Beach on the E side of Lake Oneida. Leaving very early in the morning is usually the key to a crossing with minimal wind and waves.