Day nineteen & twenty of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Tonawanda to Port Clinton, OH

We took our time leaving Tonawanda around 9:30am. The day started a bit misty and rainy as we made our way to Lake Erie. As we were getting closer to the lake our speed was falling off. This is due to the current coming in from the Lake. Buffalo is a low point on the lake and is where all the water comes in that eventually flows over Niagara Falls. Its at this point boaters have two choices.. 1. Fight the current and work your way to the Lake or 2. Enter the Black Rock Lock (a Federal lock) to avoid the current. At this point our speed was down to 4 knots (we normally run 8kts at this RPM) and we had not yet hit the strongest current. We decided to do one more lock and avoid the current. This route is interesting as when entering the lock they raise you about 26ft but this then puts you level with Lake Erie. You then travel 3.5 miles to Buffalo Harbor there is no lock to exit into the lake and you avoid the crazy amount of current in this area. The downside is the time it takes to go through the lock and wait for the two to three bridges that one may need to have opened depending on boat height. We managed to forget about the first bridge and just barely fit under it. I'm pretty sure it was the lowest bridge we went under during this entire journey. The second bridge was open when we got there and we called to have the third one open for us as I was not convinced that we would fit under it despite the operator telling me it was the same height as the first one.

When arriving at Buffalo Harbor we stopped to top up our fuel taking on about 85 gallons. It was about noon when we finally got out onto the lake. Luckily what we were seeing aligned with the weather forecast and we decided to commit to a 27 hour run across the lake. Before we could do that we had to stop the boat so I could jump in again to flip our prop into overdrive mode (a more fuel efficient mode). We had been fighting our port side prop for a while now and I'm not sure why it has not been going into overdrive mode? Our boat came with fancy Gory props that allow the blades to flip directions. Since we got to New York our port side prop had not wanted to consistently change directions. Usually this is accomplished by putting the engine into reverse then promptly shifting it into forward. When we were in the locks I think the water flowing in and past the prop was enough to get it into the correct position but it had flipped directions again when coming into the fuel dock and didn't want to go back. Luckily the water was warm and its a pretty simple thing to jump in and manually push the blades into the correct position. Once I had this corrected we were off and had a fairly uneventful overnight crossing.

We arrived in Port Clinton around 3pm. Called for one more bridge opening. Seems this bridge does not answer to the street name on the chart instead they want to be called by the name of the river. Once I figured that out they were happy to talk with me giving me their next opening. Our adventure ended at Brands Marina where we rented a dock for the next month until the Jet Express can haul us out for the winter.

The next day Amy's parents drove down to get us. Took us out to lunch and next thing we knew it we were back home again after spending the last 23 days on the boat.