Arrggg, There be Pirates Matey

Friday, July 17

Coming into Ilion we came across these folks enjoying their outing. It cracked me up to see them taking pictures of us as I was taking pictures of them.

We left Ilion at 7:45 for the first lock opening of the day. It was a little bit lazier of a morning; which was very nice. Our goal for the day was Oswego.  We fell just a bit short; but still covered 70 or so miles. We ended up near Phoenix, NY at Pirates Cove Marina.

I started the morning cooking two pounds of bacon.  Sandi brought the first tomatoes of the season from her tomato plants.  We'd decided we were going to dedicate them to some BLT sandwiches for lunch.  It was still a pretty chilly morning.

This lock was immediately after a bridge.  It didn't look like we were going to fit under this one; but we cleared with about a foot to spare.  Our boat is 19 feet tall from water to the top of the anchor light. Most of the bridges we've gone under have had plenty of clearance.  Some are only 20-21 feet; you always wonder if you are going to fit.

While we were waiting for the lock to open we got to see the train go by.  Both the Hudson River and the Mohawk have train tracks along their length. They are very active tracks. In Amsterdam there were a lot of crossings so we heard a LOT of train horns; in Ilion there were tracks and trains going by; but no train horns. So there must not have been any crossings.

Here's Jerry for some perspective on the bridge size.

Utica wanted you to know just where you were.

Today was a milestone day. Up until today we have been lifting in all of the locks. Today we reached the summit near Rome, between locks E20-21 (supplied by the Black River, Chenango, and Erie feeders) At this point the canal drains west to Lake Ontario and east to the Hudson River. So now we started lowering in the locks.  Instead of coming into an empty lock and having it fill with water and lift us; we now would transit into a full lock that would empty and lower us. We are on our way down to Lake Ontario.

We ran into a little rain as we came out of Lake Oneida.  We could see a huge storm on radar and decided to shorten our voyage a bit.  It rained all night; but looks to be nice weather for Saturday.

Saturday we will leave the Erie Canal and go north into the Oswego Canal section. The Erie Canal continues East across New York, but many of the bridges have low vertical clearance and our boat won't fit. So we will go North.