Exciting days and nights!

Oh, what a wild couple of days!

Yesterday, June 19, we watched the 8 am group of boats go into the Erie Canal lock E2 for what would be a lift of 166 feet over 5 locks. The series of locks is known as the staircase. The lockmaster was late opening the gates and finally shut them at 8:30. The next opening was to be at 9 AM. We rushed to get both ourselves and the boat ready to be in that next group. It turned out that we were only one of two boats for the 9 o’clock. The prior morning there were 6 to 8 boats locking through at that time. We had both sides of the boat fendered and extra lines available in easy reach. The locks had both attached wires that one could put a line through and hold on the way up or boaters could pick up the hanging ropes attached to the top of the lock. Since we had bounced around during a prior lock lift using the line through the wire technique, we opted for handling the dirty, greasy weighted ropes. It did seem to go smoothly wrapping the line around a cleat and bringing it in as we were lifted. Our nice clean clothes were filthy after the first lock. The second lock was a quarter mile away and since we were already dirty opted for using the ropes in the second lock. Again, it seemed to go smoothly. On the third lock, we said what the heck, let’s try the line through the wire technique. We had changed our fender configuration since that first lock where we bounced around. Using both the bow and stern thrusters, we had an easy time getting the line around the wire and secured. Again, we had no issues. Awesome. We may go back to using that technique whenever the locks offer it. The New York Canal Corporation has a spreadsheet showing what type of attachments they have for ever lock. We ended our day at Schenectady Yacht Club.

Schenectady Yacht club has a friendly dockmaster and a nice pool area. Its docks are cheesy. What do I mean by cheesy? They are wood floating docks attached to shore somehow and they rock and roll as you walk on them. The cleats are a little small for the size of boats tied to them. We were tired and happy to be tied up. The temperature was 90 degrees with high humidity and the air conditioning units performed flawlessly.

In the middle of the night a thunderstorm came through with winds gusting to 35 knots. At 3 am we woke up to the sound of something hitting us. Kevin went up to investigate. The boat in the slip next to us had broken loose. There was no one aboard that boat to help us get it secured. In between gusts, Bev pushed to boat over to its dock with a boat hook. When it was close enough, Kevin was able to pull its stern line still attached to the cleat out of the water. He untied the rope from the cleat and retied it to a cleat on the other side of its dock. The winds kept up all night which led to a definite lack of sleep. Is the boat going to pull loose again? No, it didn’t. We did get some scratches to the hull and some scuff marks from the stainless strips the other boat had on the gunnel. We were able to clean up the scuff marks with cleaner wax. We are in a dilemma here. We don’t want to go through the locks in 15 knot wind gusting to 38 knots or do we stay here another night. The wind is supposed to die down in late afternoon and stay around 5 knots overnight. Looking at the security cameras Kevin installed, the boat actually broke loose at 11:02 pm. We were so exhausted from the trip through the locks, we didn’t hear or feel it until 4 hours later!

Just off of the Yacht Club property are parts of an aqueduct that was a section of the original Erie Canal. These were built over the Mohawk River and flooded with water. Canal boats would then be floated over the river on these aqueducts. This is the 200th anniversary of opening the original canal. The top of the aqueduct is not showing very well when converted to this website.