Log June 30th 2010 Home Stretch – The Erie Barge Canal

After taking the mast down in Catskill and anchoring in the river for the night, it was an early start to a cold, cloudy morning. No wind thank goodness, we were freezing! But we had managed to get our canvas on around the cockpit in spite of the big mast laying along the boat and taking up a lot of room.

We nervously arrived at the first lock at Troy, without having seen another boat all day. The lockmaster sent us through right away, and then it was a very short trip to the base of the first of the locks of the Erie Barge Canal proper. We had ahead of us, 29 locks.

Taking advantage of the free dock, with free power, we plugged in our little heater and spent a couple of days shopping for provisions, cleaning up the boat and enjoying happy hours with the other happy boaters along the wall.

The weather around here is announced on the VHF radio on a continuous basis. How civilized. No need to find an internet café, or WiFi, and find out yourself what the weather is supposed to be. So, with a forecast of clear skies and no wind, we took off – leaving a power boat to go ahead of us so we could have the locks to ourselves.

The first six locks are all attached together, so that almost as soon as you leave one, you are into the next one. It had been many years since we had come this way before, and it felt strange. But very soon we were into the routine – call ahead on VHF 13 to the lockmaster about 10 minutes before we were due to arrive at the lock. The lockmasters were very very nice, all of them. They got the locks ready so you seldom had to wait, jut drive right in and grab a rope, pipe or cable depending on the lock, and ride up or down alongside the wall.

Along the locks are lots of places to tie up for free for the night. So we would plan on making as many locks as we could, and then start deciding where we would spend the night. All the locks were in much better shape than we remembered – the walls were fixed up so they were quite smooth, and the landscaping around the locks was all redone and looked great.

It took just 3 days and 19 locks to reach Oneida Lake, where we spent the night at a free wall on the east side of the lake. The weather was not very nice, with cold drizzle, but at least it was not windy.

Once we made the 20 mile motor across Oneida Lake it was a fairly fast 7 more locks to get to the free dock just before the last lock leading in to Lake Ontario. We stopped for the night between lock 7 & 8 of the Oswego Canal and got the boat ready to have the mast put back up.

The next morning, early, we locked through the last lock and into Oswego, on Lake Ontario. We went directly to the marina where they step the masts and found out that there were at least two other boats ahead of us. But, they said, whoever was ready first would go first. We striped the canvas, got the spreaders on, the wind vane, and up went the mast – all done by 9:30. Wow. We still hadn’t had our coffee or brushed our teeth! Motoring over to the $20 dock, we spent the whole rest of the day cleaning up and putting the boat back together – mainsail, headsails, dodger.

Because we were leaving the USA for Canada, we thought we should send some of our loot back to Miami, so that our freight forwarder could ship it to ourselves in Roatan. That way the stuff would only have to go through one customs instead of two. So we packed up two big heavy boxes and sent them UPS to Miami. The plan was to take off for Toronto the next day.

But, unfortunately a cold front went through, with wind from the northwest, cold and waves breaking right over the breakwall at Oswego. We really wanted to go…….and finally around 11AM the waves weren’t breaking so hard over the breakwall and we went for it. A slightly lumpy lake went dead flat calm by sunset, and we motored into Whitby harbor at sunrise, flying all our courtesy flags from around the world – just to show off!

And so began a whole month of NOT sailing. Visiting family and friends, dealing with address changes for our credit cards, drivers licenses etc, getting our taxes done, shopping. We actually got some time to do some boat work too.

A week and a half before we were due to fly back to Roatan, we had the boat hauled out of the water, and spent a frantic week painting the bottom, and cleaning the boat inside and out, and winterizing the engine and water systems. It was long days and hard work, and we were under a time constraint. But all got done in the end, and the boat was safe, clean and insured for the winter.

Time to head back to Roatan.