A long Week
10 June 2016
It has been a very interesting couple of days. As I stated in my earlier post, we stopped in Halverstraw, NY, which was interesting. The total distance we travelled on Monday was around 50 or so miles. We travelled about 100 miles on Tuesday, ending up in Albany, NY, at the Albany Yacht Club. It was a great day on the Hudson. We met some guys that were travelling up in General Patton’s schooner ‘When and If’. They are taking the boat up into the Great Lakes for the tall ships. We also went past the Vanderbilt Mansion and the Roosevelt Mansion and Presidential Museum. We saw some great lighthouses along the way as well. On Wednesday, we then travelled up to the Erie Canal which was only about 7 miles. The first lock, Troy Federal Lock is relatively small. We still looked like the Keystone Cops. The second lock, E2, was a lift of about 35 feet. That did not go well. At one point, we were perpendicular to the lock wall. When we finally got up to the top, the lock master who was very nice, explained how we needed to set up the boat and who did what. Getting into the third lock was not as pretty. Nancy who was/is always in a hurry, decided to sprint up to the upper helm, tripped, fell, hit the helm with her head and split her forehead open. She looked like Lizzy Borden took an axe to her. It was not a pretty sight. Blood was everywhere. We got a wet towel on her head and unfortunately, it was blowing and we could not administer first aid. We finally got to a lock and as we were going up, I was able to put some closure strips on her gash to close it. It was not bleeding. I flipped her off and asked her how many fingers. She answered correctly. We did made her take the rest of the day off. As we got further along, locking up the Erie Canal, we, Blake, Jane and myself got pretty good, although we are not getting cocky about any of this. We stopped after Lock 8, because it was blowing so hard. So we tied up to the wall above the lock and stopped for the day. We made the command decision to not travel today as it was blowing 20 – 30. So, we sat around Thursday and did NOTHING. Nancy is doing quite well. The wind has calmed down and tomorrow we hit the road westward on the canal. We are currently on the Mohawk River. I’m not sure when we hit the man-made canal portion. We did go for a walk today and just down the bike path from us is an original section of the Erie Canal. The walkways, where the oxen and horses would pull the barges are now power lines. The Canal section is all dried out, but still deep. You can still see the stone wall of the canal through the trees. Tomorrow brings another day. Well, it is tomorrow. It is now Friday night, 6/10/16 at 10:30 PM and I am finishing this up for today. We had a great day on the river. We desperately needed a pump-out of the holding tank as it was to the point that we could not flush. Just up from lock 10, there is a small town, Amsterdam, NY. We tied up to the town dock with the help of some guys from a restaurant just above the dock. We asked about a pump-out. He said it was $20. Ice was free, and we could dump garbage and get coffee. We did the pump out, then had the best breakfast at the restaurant. Most of the way today was on the Mohawk River. There really was not much to see. For a long ways, we were parallel to I-90. As we got to Lock 16, the Lock Master told us that they were going to hold Lock 17 for us, as there was a Trawler just ahead of us. Lock 17 started to intimidate us. It was a 40 ft, lift and we had to tie up to the port side of the boat. All the other locks except for numbers 2 and 3, which were about 30 ft, have been 15 ft, and today most of the locks were 8 ft. For part of the later afternoon, we were in a section of the original canal as you could see the stonework along the walls and the raised portions on either side where the horses and oxen pulled the canal barges. After lock 17, we actually were in a man-made section of the canal with cement walls. We came to the wonderful town of Little Falls, NY. Great little municipal marina right on the canal, with power, showers, everything we need. We went into town and had great Nachos and a drink then did some much needed grocery shopping. I will post some pictures then I am headed for bed.