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.
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