Day seventeen & eighteen of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Medina to Tonawanda, NY

In the lock with the tour boat

After leaving the town of Medina we went under two more lift bridges quickly finding ourselves in Lockport and the last set of locks on the canal. When we called the lift bridge the lock master also responded on the radio. It seemed that a tour boat was getting ready to depart to give a number of customers the experience of going through the locks. Apparently there was not enough space for both of us to hold outside the lock while we waited for the locks to drain and open for passage. Once they saw that we were the larger vessel the captain decided he would wait on their wall until we passed but wanted to enter the locks first. This seemed odd but we were happy to oblige. Thankfully we had been on a roll lately and had been doing pretty well in the locks. As there is no pressure to make it look like you know what you’re doing with 50-100 tourists pointing cameras at you while attempting to grab lines and hold the boat while in the locks. Thankfully both locks went well and I don't think we will be on any dumb boating channels for this part of our adventure. 

The original flight of 5 in Lockport

After emerging from the locks we found two other boats waiting to go in. I was hoping the tour boat would clear them out of the way for us but unfortunately he was not big enough. They both seemed a bit surprised to see us coming at them and it took a few minutes for each to figure out how to get their boats out of the center of the channel and over to the side allowing us enough room to pass. Once we passed them the tour boat then proceeded to turn around infront of us to head back into the locks once again. The entire process made for a bit of an interesting puzzle as the canal is about 50ft wide in this section and we took up about 30ft of it and of course no one wants to go aground along the banks. It all worked out and no boats were damaged during the process.

We remembered Lockport as a nice town when we came through a few years ago. We were hoping to stop and possibly spend the night here but after seeing the docks again we didn't think we would fit in or if we did no one else would be able to stop so we decided to continue on.

For whatever reason there seemed to be a fair amount of debris in the canal (big logs and what not) that we had to navigate around but we enjoyed our last few hours as we traveled the last part of the canal to Tonawanda. 

We had read that Tonawanda offered a lot of space for transients and that each side of the river was operated by different marinas/organizations. It seemed one side was half the price of the other but the more expensive side was closer to local attractions. After not seeing any power or water offered on the cheaper side we opted for the more expensive side closer to town. The cost was $40 a night but it seemed they didn't actually have water. Luckily they did offer showers which was good enough for us.

We spent two nights here as we waited for favorable weather to cross Lake Erie. Last time we stopped in Tonawanda I was busy putting our mast up on the first boat while Amy & Annabelle got to explore town. This time we both got to see it. Unfortunately the Herschell Carrousel Factory/Museum was not open nor were some of the other local attractions. We could have gone to see the the local orchestra play the music to the movie Labyrinth in a really cool old theater but alas I was too cheap to buy the tickets and we decided to find ice cream and Mexican food instead.

The next day we spent mainly socializing with other boaters and the folks walking along the waterfront. We also did some more exploring of town by foot. While none of the 3-4 local museums were open we did at least walk by all of them. We also found an amazing cheesecake restaurant where we had lunch which was good but the cheesecake was better!

On our second day in Tonawanda we were lucky enough to see White Lighting go by. We knew Dustin from our Great Loop days. We had met him at the fall rendezvous in Alabama when he was just starting out as a Highfeild dealer. We actually purchased two dinghies from him and have stayed in touch over the last few years. We had heard he was going to make an attempt at the record for the fastest Great Loop and had been watching his progress over the last two weeks. We thought he would pass us in the canal but speed limits and 6pm lock closures slowed their adventure down quite a bit. He actually stopped for about 5 minutes to catch up on their way by. It was nice to be a small part of their journey and I was happy to see that they accomplished their goal of setting the new world record for fastest time of just under 13 days to travel the 4300 miles. By comparison we spent a year to travel our Great Loop which worked out to about 7000 miles. I'm pretty sure we enjoyed our slower adventure more :).

Day sixteen of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Brockport to Medina

Shortly after leaving Brockport it started raining. The rain was on and off again for a couple of hours as we navigated through a number of lift bridges. Not a big deal but just enough to get us wet. Unfortunately I never got around to waterproofing our Bimini this season so anytime we get a prolonged or heavy rain we get wet and then get to sit there getting dripped on until the canvas dries. Seems like I would learn, make the time and just put the waterproofing stuff on. We even have it on the boat with us. I just have not gotten around to getting the canvas off to spray the stuff on. Fortunately, it's only rained 4 or 5 days on this trip so it has not been too bad. 

The river and waterfalls near where we tied up

Upon arrival to Medina we learned that the canal basin we were traveling in was actually raised above the nearby river. It seemed when designing the canal the engineers could not figure out a way to work with it as part of the canal so they built the canal right over it. Seems the river flows directly under the canal then immediately over a 40ft waterfall. This was the first time we realized we went over a bridge in our boat and it was quite a big one. The resulting nearby waterfalls looked pretty epic but it seemed the engineers did not care to much about giving us a view of them. The best we could do was to find a fairly obstructed view. Needless to say reading about how they built it was pretty impressive.

We also learned that we had traveled over a road at one point and never realized it. It seems the engineers got quite creative in Medina as this is the only location along the canal where a road travels under the canal. There are some neat pictures showing the water leaking with ice forming during the winter months. The sign said that Ripley's Believe it or Not has even documented it as a unique thing. Having traveled through no less than 14 lift bridges at this point in our trip I have no idea why they chose to go over the road vs the ever popular bridge option. But I will say I'm thankful for it as each bridge that has to open for us just adds more time to our trip.

Again we have been keeping an eye on the weather over Lake Erie. It looks like we might have a nice weather window to get across the lake in 3 days so we decided to make a short day of it stopping in Medina. The guide book had good things to say about it. Unfortunately we arrived on Sunday and almost everything in town was closed. Seems the only thing that was open was the train museum, but we had assumed it was closed like everything else and missed out. We wandered around a bit, found a partial view of the waterfall then headed back to the boat for the night. While the book raved about Medina we were not that excited. It was a cute town they did provide a decent dock, free water, power and facilities but it seemed none of the businesses were open on Sundays and we were told most would be closed on Monday as well so we decided to move on the next morning.

Day fourteen & fifteen of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Bushnells Basin to Brockport

Shortly after leaving Bushnell's we arrived at our first lock that we had to wait for traffic on. Just as we were getting there eight rental canal boats had left their base and headed off on their own adventures down the canal and into their first lock. We only saw the last one go in the lock but I'll say we were pretty happy to not be sharing a lock with them as I think that guy hit at least three different rental boats as he attempted to find his spot in the lock. For those unaware these are long narrow boats. They range from 30-40ft in length and are maybe 10ft wide. They are made out of some sort of metal and are quite popular in Europe. We actually rented one many years ago in England. It was quite a fun adventure. Anyway like most boat rentals the folks renting and using the boats are generally not very experienced with the boat they are renting, often don't have much experience operating a bigger boat on the water, and frankly may not care to much about the actual boat they are on as they don't have to be the one to fix it when something happens. The upside is these are generally steel hauled boats covered in rubber rub rails and travel at about 5mph so its probably pretty hard to damage them when they run into each other, docks, locks, the banks, etc. 

Rental canal boat

The lock operator sheepishly asked if we wanted to lock though with the group of rentals but we let him know we were happy to wait. Turns out that was a fantastic idea as when we finally locked though about 40 minutes later the lock doors opened up and the first thing we saw was two of them running straight into each other with a third one driven directly into the bank. We opted to hang back for about five minutes until the two playing bumper boats figured out how to get themselves on a strait line. We each took a few deep breaths and put the boat into gear hoping they could maintain their direction. We quickly passed the one in the bank as they were figuring out which direction the tiller should be pointed as they attempted to back off the river bank. Two of the other boats headed into the first marina they got to before we caught them (at least one of them was the bumper boat guy). As we started to catch the reminder of them we would attempt to call them on the radio most answered a few were a bit scared or being passed but we attempted to reassure them they just needed to maintain the line they were on and we would easily come around them.

Amy crossing a lift bridge

We ended up arriving Brockport with three of them lined up ahead of us as it was not worth trying to pass them. After going though the first lift bridge in town they all raced for the good spots on the wall. We decided to hang back at the end of the wall giving them plenty of room to figure out docking.

The guide book claimed that Brockport is the friendliest town for boaters on the canal and they were not wrong. After helping to get the canal boats tied up we had two local volunteers checking in on us and happily giving us the scoop on the town, loaner bikes, and nearby activities. At this point we were about 2-3 travel days from Buffalo and the weather on Lake Erie was not looking great. So we decided to spend a couple days here. The docks are right at the center of town and everything here is easily walkable. We had lunch on the boat then head up for a walk though town where we found the movie theater and decided to see the new Practical Magic movie while relaxing in the Air Conditioning. On our way back to the boat we chatted up several of the canal boaters and got to tour one of their boats. They are quite practical boats and much like the one we rented more then 20yrs ago. Amy made friends with a group of ladies that were on a girls trip. I think six of them were packed into that boat but they were having a good time. Another fellow and his wife we chatted with were avid boaters until they decided to sell their fiberglass boat to purchase an old wooden Chris Craft. He has been working on it the last three years but it was still not ready for the water so they rented the canal boat to get their boating fix. Most of the rental boat crews were quite friendly and all of them wanted to see our boat so we gave a few tours. It was fun talking to the various groups.

At the top of the falls looking down into the park

The next day we headed into town for breakfast. Turns out the first place we stoped at only served breakfast by reservation. We were told that the owner only cooks for people she likes, does everything herself, and does not allow the use of cell phones. Needless to say we didn't have a reservation so we continued down the street to the local dinner. Afterward we wondered though town, Amy found the local bookstore (which was huge and quite popular). We spent and hour or two wondering though while my and my wife restocked on books. Next we decided to take advantage of the free loaner bikes to check out a local waterfall we were told was about 10 miles away. The loaner bikes were fun they both had bent rims, squeaked & groaned a lot, and the brakes even worked on one of them. We made it to the waterfall that dropped down twice then turned into a gentle river running by a park. After enjoying it for a bit we headed into the nearby town on our bikes finding the local ice cream shop. Amy decided to order their apple cider and dounght ice cream which it seemed the bees were quite fond of. Needless to say my wife does not love bees so it was quite entertaining watching her running around trying to escape the bees with her ice cream. We ended up finishing our desert in the local pizza shop away from the bee's :). We then rode our bikes back to Brockport just ahead of the rain. That night we spent sitting on the back of the boat chatting with many of the residents that were out for walks or had come down to check out our boat. It seems our boat was quite popular on the local Facebook groups as they don't get many big catamarans that look like a spaceship come though.

Lift bridges only open to about 15ft high

Before leaving the next morning we headed up to their farmers market. Picked up some fresh fruit and local honey. This was my first time running into mini water Mellons. they were about the size of a softball. Unfortunately they were quite full of seeds but they tasted great.

Lift bridge at the end of town

This is the car the lift bridge driver takes between bridges as he is responsible for opening 2 or 3 of them

Day thirteen of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Lock 25 to Bushnell Basin

We are finally starting to find a few towns along the canal. Today involved a number of lift bridges. It seems most towns have two and both are controlled by the same person. When you are within sight of the bridge one can radio for an opening. Once the bridge master is happy that you are close enough they will open the bridge. Once you have passed though they will then drive down to the next bridge while you wait and then go though the process once again. Most of these bridges are about .5-1 mile apart. There are 16 of these along the Erie Canal.

We had planned to spend the night in Fairport but when we got there no space was available. It seems that a lot of locals now treat the city walls as dock space and keep their boats there all season making it hard for boats transiting to luck into empty spots.

We kept going another few miles down the canal and found Bushnell Basin. They had a really nice public dock for $30 a night. We lucked out here. As soon as you step off the dock your immediately created by a small ice cream shop then about 200 ft to the right of that is the local brewery that happened to have live music. Needless to say we enjoyed both.

If you choose to explore more there are a couple of restaurants nearby as well as a doughnut shop and a couple of gas stations where we resupplied on milk.

Bushnell while unplanned turned out to be quite a pleasant stop and we really enjoyed our evening there talking with the locals while enjoying the live music.

Day twelve of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Lock 23 to Lock 25

Today was a humbling day. We were in one of the bigger locks and lost control of the boat. It started with us deciding that we no longer needed the ropes that we had left on our cleats to put though the cables as we had cables available for last 20 locks or so. I should mention that we have ratchet straps attached to most of our cleats helping to hold our mast in place so adding a dock line on there takes up more room and is slightly inconvenient and time consuming to get into place. Since coming though the flight of 5 all of the locks had lines hanging down the wall. We would generally pull up to the wall then grab a line for each end of the boat. If we were lucky those lines would be long enough to sort of get on a cleat and we would tighten those up as the boat rose in the lock. If we did not keep those tight the boat would/could drift over to the otherside of the lock and of course we didn't have any fenders on that side of the boat so it would be a bad thing for our gelcoat. So long story short we removed the lines we had not been using only to pull into the first lock that now required them. Luckily we had simply hung them on our rail rather then actually putting them into a locker somewhere but in the time it took to get them back on the cleats and around the racket straps a strong wind came in and blew the boat over to the other side of the lock and of course this was the only lock where you had to use the wall on the port side of the boat because the other one was missing really large chunks of concrete. Well needless to stay we sustained some damage before we could get a couple of fenders moved over to protect the boat. As we started to get blown over I attempted to control the boat from the helm but suspect I was to afraid to give the boat the power it needed to fight the wind and move back over before hitting the wall. After we were pushed up against the wall we did finally get a couple fenders in place which allowed me to reverse the port engine to get the bow of the boat off the wall and moved back to the other side. Of course as we are doing this the lock master is calling us asking what we are doing and letting us know that she now has another boat waiting to lock though. I'm sure the entire event took less then 10 minutes from start to recovery but it felt like a really long time in the moment. Once we made our way back over to the correct side of the lock we ran our lines though the steel cables and didn't remove them again for rest of the trip. Side note the opportunity to use them was not available but we kept them on anyway. 

Other than this humbling experience the day was fairly uneventful. Most our time was spent traveling though no wake zones and I think we only made 40 miles or so of progress.

When arriving at lock 25 we asked about spending the night on his wall. He was happy to have us as he was only there for another 45minutes or so before it was time to close the lock and head home for the night. He invited us up for a tour so we took him up on it. I will say you can tell a difference in the supervisors priorities between sections of the canal. Everything in this section of locks was clean, well polished, and perfectly maintained down to the flowers along the lock wall. This lock master was proud of his job and his lock. When he opened the control panel showing us how the mechnisiams worked all of the switches were polished the wood was nicely varnished and the wiring was neat (he showed us both sides). Next he took us around the lock explaining how and where the water flowed, how the weights worked that opened the water gates, and then how the doors operated. We ended in his shop which used to be where the electric motors were that ran the lock. Again everything was highly polished and cared for. It was interesting to hear about his day to day duties, the amount of traffic he saw, and what they do in the winter months when the canal is closed. I had heard that the canal is drained in the winter but seems that is not the case for this section at least. He said they do a lot of preventive maintenance during the winters and that at least one lock gets its walls rebuilt each year. Even with that it seems that most of the lock workings are still much the same as they were 100 years ago. It really is impressive how these have stood the test of time and how well maintained New York keeps these without charging any fees. While I imaging these are a major expense in their operations budget I would question if that is recovered in the amount of tourist traffic the canal generates. While clearly well used by cyclists and recreational boaters the Lock Master said he only sees 2-3 commercial boats come though a year transporting various items... But without these access to the Great Lakes would be limited to the St Lawrence and the Mississippi River system adding possibly several thousand miles to a lot of recreational boaters trips to Florida each year should this system not be available.

After our tour we went back to the boat for dinner and another quiet night on a lock wall.

Day eleven of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Lock 20 to Lock 23

Today was a shorter day. We left lock 20 around 9am but decided we needed a break and stopped after 23 around 2. The lock master had told us there were a couple of restaurants within walking distance and the park at this lock wall seemed a bit bigger and well used by the locals. We tied up. I went for a walk just needing to get off the boat for a while. Later that night we walked into town to check out the pizza place that was recommended by several of the local fishermen. Unfortunately it seemed that all three of the local restaurants were closed due to the holiday weekend. I guess the locals here don't want to eat out on Labor Day?

It ended up being a nice, quiet day. We both caught up on some screen time, got some exercise, and enjoyed the short day on the water. 

Day ten of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - St. Johnsonville, NY to Lock 20

After a late night with our new found friends we left first thing in the morning ensuring that we could do the first lock though of the morning for Lock 16. It seems they have been having some erosion problems between lock 16 & 17. To address this someone decided to only allow boats to pass though every two hours. They are also strictly enforcing a no wake speed limit. So if you show up at the next lock early you will be penalized and have to wait for the next opening two hours later. Of course their are stories about boaters really pissing off the lock keepers which have the power to hold you all day if they feel like it. Being a sailboat we pretty much only travel at a no wake speed so arriving early was not much of an option for us.

By this point in the canal the locks were becoming fairly spaced out. We did go through the unique one where the lock door actually lifts up. They call it the guillotine it is the biggest lift on the canal. Lock 17 is significant for several reasons. Completed in 1916, it was considered an engineering marvel. With a 40.5 foot drop or lift, it is the highest lock on the Erie Canal system. But what makes it really special, at least in my mind, is the enormous guillotine style lock gate. Suspended by what looks like giant bicycle chains, the gate is lifted and lowered with the aid of a concrete counterweight. You can see the counterweight descending  When full, the lock holds 6 million gallons of water and that water really rushes out when the valves are opened! I should mention here that the other end of the lock chamber has standard mitre gates. By this point in the adventure its fun to see something different but it does drip on you as one goes under it.

We only made it though 4 locks today but they were quite spaced out. I'm not sure how many miles we traveled but we did use most the daylight hours available to us before stopping at Lock 20 for the night.

Each of the locks are generally part of a nice park. Often we would run into a number of bikers riding along the canal and camping along the way. Each park generally offers a place to tie up, walk around a bit, and a port a poddy. There is generally no power or water available. From time to time one gets lucky and they are within walking distance of a town. Unfortunately that was not the case here so we tied up, went for a walk then came back made dinner, watched a movie and went to bed.

Day nine of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Troy, NY to St. Johnsonville, NY

This morning we woke up had breakfast and decided to head up to the state’s largest farmers market in Troy. They were not kidding the market was huge and even sorted by street and vendor. Clothing/neckless/cute stuff vendors were all on one road. Hot food was all in the center within a traffic circle area, fresh produce was on a different street, and fresh made items like bread, honey, peanut butter were all on yet another street. It took at least two hours to walk the market. I am generally terrible at these things as when I find something unique food wise I always want to try it. We did pretty well limiting our purchase's to fresh bread, home made brownie peanut butter, some fruit, and fresh pesto. Amy had a fresh desert crape and I found the special cake that was supposed to change my life (per last nights ice cream guy). The cake was a lot like pineapple upside down cake but with 3-4 kinds of alcohol in it. Strangely it didn't taste like alcohol but you did need to be over 21 to buy it. Unfortunately while it was good, it was not something I would get again or even recommend to anyone else. Guess the guy at the ice cream stores good taste buds were limited to frozen concoctions. 

It was about noon before we pushed off the dock and headed into the first set of locks. Per the guidebook all the locks were at least 150ft long and 45ft wide. It seems some are only 40ft. The 40ft locks felt really small our first few days with our boat being 26ft wide plus about 2ft of fenders hanging over it felt quite tight driving into them. The first few locks had long cables hanging down that are attached at both the top and bottom of the wall. This made it quite easy to put a line though and attach to back on the boat. When going up in the lock I could occasionally put the starboard engine into gear and the boat would pull the line and snug right up to the wall. Then we got to the next five locks which are creatively called the flight of five. These have ropes hanging from the top. Some of the ropes are longer then others which meant sometimes we could get one around a cleat then pull it tight as the boat rose in the lock. Other times we had to hold the line until the boat came up enough to get it around a cleat which generally meant the boat would float over to the other side of the lock. For this trip we only had five fenders. All of them were about 3.5ft long and 18 inches wide (quite big). Because they were inflatable I had thought fender boards might be a good way to protect them against the walls as I was worried they might snag something and pop. Using fender boards meant that you needed two fenders for each fender board and that our set up would be quite time consuming to move from one side of the boat to the other and that all our fenders would be on one side. Meaning if we drifted over there was nothing to keep that side of the boat from rubbing the concrete wall.

The first two locks in the flight of five went ok. The dock lines were long enough to get on a cleat. The next two were challenging but we did ok. Lock five went pretty well. We were feeling good and thought we had a system in place. Of course that's when everything falls apart. With our past boats they were light enough we could pull them over or if they drifted out it was not a big deal as they were no where near the other wall. We quickly found out that we were no match for the weight of this boat especially when we had to work against the wind and water flow. We drifted over almost rubbing the wall. The next lock we did drift over and hit the wall leaving a little bit of gel coat behind from our rear sponson as we could not keep the lines tight enough on the cleats. After those two the next couple of locks went pretty well.

We ended the day after lock 15 as lock 16 had limited hours only opening every two hours for traffic. We pulled into the St. Johnsonville Marina and Camp Ground for the night. I'm pretty sure we stayed here during our first trip through the canal 16yrs ago. I still recall the marina convincing us to head to a local Italian restaurant and packed eight of us into an old 80's Cadillac they were using as a curtesy car. Anyway.. Once we were tied up some ladies came over to check out our boat. Amy gave them tours while I paid. It seemed they had their campers here and had seen us on the water while exploring in their pontoon boat. After making some dinner we headed over to their campsite for dessert and made some new friends. They all had their big dogs with them and it was nice to be around their furry four legged children while hearing about their adventures and sharing the campfire for the night.

Day eight of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Kington, NY to Troy, NY

Last time we did this trip with the tug we were able or maybe just motivated to travel from the Statue of Liberty all the way to Catskill in just one day. We are now essentially on day 3 of going the same distance  motoring up the river with the catamaran. Last time we had timed the tide perfectly to push us all day additionally helped by the fact the tug travels about 2kts faster than this boat and seemingly they both burn about the same amount of fuel.

We had planned to be moving about 730 this morning but woke up to a rain shower and it felt good to roll over for an extra hour of sleep. By 830 the rain was gone but it was still quite foggy. We weighed anchor and continued our trek north.

We had the tide with us for the first 3hrs or so after that we were fighting it rest of the day. This day going up the river was much like the other two passing beautiful Mansions on the river banks, neat old light houses, and the occasional train along the way.

After about 53 miles we decided to stop in Troy for the night. Originally we had planned to stay at the Erie Canal visitors center but when we called, it seemed their space was somewhat limited for a 70ft boat and the Dock Master convinced us that Troy was the place to be. Troy was also our first fuel stop. At this point in the trip our tanks were just under 50%. I think we took on about 120 gallons thinking this should be plenty to get us through the entire Erie Canal and probably back to the west side of Lake Erie.

Once tied up we met some folks that were just coming out of the locks having spent their summer going through the Canadian locks & the Georgian Bay. It was nice to hear about their trip which is still one we would like to do one day and had planned to do with the tug but decided to push up the circumnavigation plans instead. Thinking the other trip would be easier later than sailing around the world as we continue to get older. After a week or so it was nice to get to talk with some other boaters and Troy did turn out to be a nice stop. That night we decided to relive our first trip up the river when we stopped here for fuel and lunch at Browns Brewing. Dinner was good. Afterwards we took a walk finding a remarkable ice cream place called the Dutch Utter that is now in my top 5 favorites. We met the owner, he easily translated his passion for creating new flavors and was really into what he does. He also told us that we could not miss the farmers market the next day where I needed to seek out some cake that would be life changing.

Day seven of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Croton, NY to Kington, NY

Going up the Hudson River is always a beautiful trip. Oddly I'm still surprised how pretty it is each time we do it. You feel like your in the mountains fully surrounded by nature at times going past all the big granite cliffs, reminded that your near a big city by the bridges that your regularly going under while also getting to pass light houses and mansions from the early 1900's. Then about every hour you'll see a train traveling along the bank. It seems the passenger trains are mainly on one side while the freight trains travel the other side of the river. On the surface it seems like all of these things would be at odds with each other but somehow it all just works making for a very enjoyable trip.

We got a bit of a late start leaving around 10am or so. We had waited till morning to return the rental car then decided to wait for slack tide to depart the dock. This leg of the trip was quite uneventful. It was just a nice motor up the Hudson. We motored most the day with the tide (finally) waiting until about an hour before dark to pull into one of the few nice anchorages we found on the chart. While we were anchored just in-front of the town neither of us really felt like heading in at dusk to walk around the area. Instead we relaxed on the boat made dinner and just enjoyed the sunset. 

West Point from the river

Day six of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Croton, NY - Halfmoon Bay

Front side of the dam

This marina is in a fantastic location. It feels a bit like the middle of no where but there is a rental car place only 1/2 mile walk away, a grocery store, ice cream, a couple restaurants, and more. Best of all the price was quite reasonable. We made some phone calls booked a tour of West Point, rented a car, and unfortunately found out that the Culinary Institute was not open yet as the students had not returned to campus yet. Guess we have to save something to see next time we come by here :).

West Point Catholic Church

We booked the first tour of the morning. The drive over to the pick up location was about 25 minutes away. The pick up location is the West Point Visitor center and military museum. Both are very much worth visiting and free. I'll even say they were better and more interesting than the actual tour. As West Point is an active military base the only way to get on campus for most of us is via a private tour company. They load you on a bus for about 2.5hrs. Let you out about 4 times then drop you back off where they picked you up. I'll say I'm glad I did it once but I would not do it again. The campus is neat to see, the guide gives some of the history of the original fort, talks about a few of the statues and various monuments around campus, takes the group to the Catholic Church, then takes the group to the wall that overlooks the river and a couple other stops. After which everyone is packed back on the bus and driven back to the visitors center. I'll say that we both enjoyed the tour of the Navel Academy much more. We spent 2-3 hours in the visitors center and museum then found a really good Chinese place for lunch and headed out for our next stop.

Back side of the dam

The Croton Dam was amazing. I had only seen pictures of it from some of our friends that stopped by here on their loop. Unfortunately pictures don't do this place justice. To me it felt like a place they should be filming a James Bond movie or big action movie at. The dam was completed in the early 1900's and is supposedly the second largest man made stone structure next to the pyramids. At one time this was once of the major spots that NYC got its water from. The backside of the dam is a bit like a pyramid in that it has a large number of stone steps that is probably 2-300ft high that allows water to run over into the river below. Along side those steps is essentially a man made river that is also moving right along a huge granite cliff. The amount of water flowing through here is incredible and is not been something that I could visualize at a dam before. The entire area is hilly and very upstate New Your feeling.

The front side is pretty impressive as well. At one point there was a road across it but it seems that has been shutdown for a while now. Fortunately the dam is located in a park and there are several hiking trails that let you make the trek to the top. I easily spent an hour and a half just marveling at this thing as we walked around the various trails. I'm not sure Amy was a bit less excited than me but this stop was really a highlight for me. I could not tell you why but it was just neat. It probably also helped that it has been raining the last two days allowing for a fair amount of water to be flowing when we were there.

After our two stops we headed to the grocery store then back to the marina where we lounged in the pool for a bit, had dinner and turned in for another early night to bed.

Dam wall

Partial view of the marina, our boat is in the very back

Day four and five of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Cape May to New York City (Croton, NY)

When we awoke early this morning I checked the weather as any respectable sailor does first thing each day. It seemed our desired window was still there but just moving in a bit slower than we planned with the rain pattering down on the boat we went back to sleep for a couple hours and hung around the marina until about 11am when we got the next slack tide. Our desired weather window still looked good but unfortunately we had lost about 5 hours of daylight travel time. This meant would might be coming into New York Harbor between 3 & 4am if all went well. This didn't sound like a bad thing as there might not be as much commercial traffic running at that time. Which would allow us to focus on all of the various channel markers in that area.. I won't mention how much more exciting it might be to navigate these in the dark.

The 18hr leg from Cape May to New York Harbor was fairly uneventful. The day started out a bit rolly but settled down after a couple hours and stayed that way until about midnight when we got a light rain and a 4-5ft following sea. We passed a lot of ships drifting waiting for their pilots to bring them into the various ports along the coastline. I chatted with a couple of them on the radio but most didn't seem very concerned about us. This might have something to do with our AIS (sort of like a transponder for marine traffic) probably not working very well as it can't broadcast very far with the mast down and no antenna hooked to it but from what I gathered the big ships could still pick us up once we were within a half mile or so of them.

As we turned into the Lower Harbor coming by Sandy Hook around 3am our following sea was now on our quarter which made the boat roll in all kinds of fun ways that makes steering really fun especially when one can't see the other side of the boat and the other half of the channel markers your trying to stay between. I woke Amy up, convinced her to head to the bow, and with our headsets on we worked as a pretty good team. Sitting up front she could see the markers I couldn't and even found some without lights that I would have never seen from the helm. We spent the next three hours or so navigating like that until we got near the Verrazano bridge where things get a bit easier channel wise and we were getting first light. Unfortunately this is also when the commercial traffic starts running. For those that have not experienced it commercial traffic does not care much about pleasure craft. Our job is essentially to stay out of their way. Fortunately its a big river and we move slow so its not to bad.

I had taken a nap the day before knowing I had the night shift. I had taken the helm around sunset at 730 and by the time we got to the Statue of Liberty around 8am I was tired. I usually love to see NYC from the water but by 9 I was done and just needed a nap. So Amy got to enjoy all the city views on her own. We had been fighting the tide for a couple of hours and decided we should find a stopping place. Being cheap by trying to avoid marina fees for a 70ft boat in NYC I started looking for anchorages. Seems there are not many recommended anchorages on the Hudson. So we decided to splurge on a marina just past Terrytown called Halfmoon Bay. It was supposedly close to West Point, the Culinary Institute of America, and the Hudson Dam that I wanted to see but never made the time to stop at previously.

After we got checked in and tied up after our 25hr journey we had some lunch and both took well deserved naps. Later that night we wondered out and found ice cream but we really didn't feel like doing much most the day. Looking forward to exploring this stop more tomorrow!

Day three of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Chesapeake City to Cape May

Seems we both overslept a bit. We had planned on leaving Chesapeake City around 8am, unfortunately we did not have the anchor up until around 930. The leg from here to Cape May would be around 60 miles or about 10hrs. This time we had planned well to ride the tide but unfortunately had trouble executing so we had the current pushing us along for the first 3hrs or so but then lost it when the tide switched causing us to travel slower then usual.

Emerging into the Delaware River from the C&D canal can be challenging if you don't plan it correctly as its sort of like two bodies of water mixing right there and there are a lot of different markers where the various channels are coming together and diverging from each other. Luckily we had some experience coming through here four years ago with our Nordic Tug when we did the Great Loop. We had plenty of daylight and it was a nice day weather wise making this area fairly uneventful.

On our way down to Cape May we past a lot of big commercial freighters. This was made a bit more exciting by the fact that our mast is laid down on deck. For those that have not had this experience is a  very much like driving a car with a ladder running from the dash board in the front seat to the back of the trunk. It basically means you can't see anything for about 180 degrees on the passenger side of the car or boat in our case. Amazingly even though these freighters are huge the mast can still cover them up as well as all the red bouys that one generally uses to navigate channels with. This meant I really preferred to hug the green marks I could see which is a bit like driving on the wrong side of the road.

We had good weather most the day. Unfortunately the wind picked up a bit towards the end of the day creating a wind against current thing that made a four foot chop with around a three second period for the last three hours of our trip down the Delaware River. This kind of short chop is never fun as the boat rolls and bangs around a lot but our mast never moved which felt very reassuring.

With our mast down we were able to enter Cape May via the Cape May Canal. Unfortunately we entered at low tide which made it a bit more exciting as the channel is narrow, shallow, and there was a fair amount of traffic going both ways. I would guess the channel is about 45ft wide but we took up 26 of it thus a boat had to be pretty brave to come around us against oncoming traffic that they probably could not see coming at them until they pulled up really close to us. Needless to say we had a nice escort of 6-8 small boats that really wanted to go fast but were stuck following us at sailboat speeds. Once we got into Cape May it was about an hour till dark and it seemed both the anchorages were full. Amy started making phone calls and found one marina that had a dock big enough for us. We both really hoped this would work as if it didn't we might be shoving our way into an over crowded anchorage in the dark which neather of us were excited about. The marina said they had one dock available and it was a 90ft dock they generally put any big boats staying with them into. Amy asked several times what the dock width was but it seemed they did not know.. just that it was their big dock and it would for sure handle us. Once we pulled into the marina and started lining up for the dock I knew right away we were not going to fit but they were quite instant we could get into it. Well as you can see above we didn't fit. The dock was maybe 25ft wide? So we wedged the front 1/3 of our boat in between the two posts. The marina was ok with us hanging out of the dock as long as we left early in the morning and Amy was happy to not have to figure out how we might fit into an over crowded anchorage in the dark. The only other option would have been to start our Atlantic leg early but the weather conditions were not in our favor yet.

The marina was kind enough to only charge us for a 50ft boat instead of the 70ft boat we are with the mast down even though we probably only took up 30ft of dock space (with the other 40ft hanging out into the fairway) and we didn't have a cord long enough to get power. Fortunately our hose was long enough to allow us to refill our water tanks.

Cape May was another cute East Coast town/area to walk around. We found a restaurant and ordered a much needed adult beverage and tried not to think about any new gelcoat damage we might be acquiring at the dock.