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 :).