Today is the 4th of July! Happy Birthday America!
We left this morning at about 7:30am and made it through 5 more locks over a total of 65 miles. On our first trip though we had been warned about Oneida Lake and stopped early to ensure we could cross in the morning when it was the calmest. With our bigger heavier trawler we had no such worries and sort of laughed about our previous hesitation as after crossing it the first time I don't think it would be much different then a slightly below average day on Lake Erie. But we also now have the benefit of 14 years of experience with 3 boats now and a couple of minor ocean crossings.
Being the 4th of July there were a few boats out. I would not say a lot but enough that they were in the way from pretty much coming out of the last lock before Oneida until we got to Oneida. We had been following a 58ft Sea Ray most the day which was nice but even he could not seem to intimidate them out of his way. Several seemed to have no fear or respect for our bigger boats and would wonder across our bows at times and then randomly slow down or stop in-front of us just to immediately speed up again. Like last time the free walls were both filled before the lake but we wanted to make it across the lake anyway that day so we kept going. Once we got to the inlet for the there was a Sheriff boat wondering about clearly not knowing what he was doing (maybe keeping an eye on some small boats heading out) but like the others he decided to stop right in-front of me then randomly move off to the other side of the channel. The Lake was rough for its size with maybe 2fters. This was nice and kept all the small boats off. In our boat we don't really notice these sized waves much and it was a nice crossing.
Once across we stopped in Winter Harbor marina. We filled up with fuel, got a pump out, and they had an amazing inventory of marine parts. If I had more time I'm sure I could have found all sorts of stuff we needed there but I settled for four new Racor filters. When we stopped in NC I had noticed the fuel filter was really black like we had picked up some dirty fuel somewhere but I also had not changed it over the last 600 engine hours so I just replaced it and decided to keep an eye on it. I had also purchased some additive in hopes of killing anything that might be living in there but unfortunately had not read the label well enough to buy a strong enough dose for the 250 or so gallons I was attempting to treat. I added it anyway & figured I would be burning enough fuel during this part of the trip that anything in there would not have time to really build up any sludge. We had last purchased fuel in Annapolis and it was black again. I had planned to change it but put it off because we only had two extras on board so I decided to wait until we were going to cross the Delaware Bay or maybe the run from Cape May to NYC. For some reason it never got changed but in all fairness the engine never acted starved for fuel so it was still doing its job. However it was really black again after only burning 4-500 gal of fuel by the time we got to Winter Harbor so I changed it again after adding about 300 more gallons of fuel to the boat. Now that we have a number of extra filters I'll keep a better eye on it and maybe swap it out again before we cross Lake Erie.
Winter Harbor turned out to be a great stop for us we found a group of 15 or so loopers hanging out and spent rest the night socializing with them and enjoyed another nice fireworks show. One of them turned out to be the fellow we had sold our new dingy to in Tarpon Springs. We had a few laughs about that and found out he was really enjoying it. I had ordered a new one the day we sold it but because of supply chain issues was told we would not have it until June. Last I checked it was still three weeks out before he thought he would have all the parts so maybe I'll have it before the end of July when we get back?
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