The Lady J: Oh the Locks

The Captain working on the wiring.

Well a big storm rolled in on Monday morning so we decided to stay put in Baldwinsville or as it affectionately know B'ville. It rained off and on most of the day, nothing to hard, but enough to not cruise in. The day started off that our lights once again would not work along with the fact when the first mate woke up the air conditioning was not working either. No air is not a pleasant thing to experience when you have a hot flashing menopausal Grandmother on board. (yes that me, Jana). So Mike spent the morning chasing wiring around and cleaning up part of the wiring (or rats nest) trying to figure out why sometimes the lights would work and other times they wouldn't He was able to solve this mystery by finding a fitting that wasn't making a good connection. 1st problem solved. On to #2 that air conditioning. This turned out to be a much easier fix than what we originally thought. Mike came to find out there is a screen that covers the water intake pummp for the air conditioner and it was clogged with plants, etc. So once that was cleaned out we were back in business. Note to self, periodically clean out this screen.

Last night we had a bit of a scare when our friends dog, Hatch ate a piece of fish bait while he was out for a walk. The bait was attached to a fish hook (and a big one). Well to make a long story short 6 hours later, two car rides from strangers and spending part of their children's inheritance the hook was removed and Hatch is doing fine. After talking with Jeff and Sandy they had decided to stay one day longer in B'ville to help Hatch get back on his paws. We on the other hand have a shorter window of travel and needed to be on our way. So this morning we said our good byes and knew we would see them again either on this trip or in Columbus (they are from South Bloomfield) and we were on our way by 8:00 a.m.

Locking through these canals were a new challenge for us.

We had three locks to get through and roughly 35 miles to travel. I know that doesn't sound far when driving a car, but by our boat and it's speed that takes about 5 hours. Now we have traveled through a total of 14 locks already and were getting rather proficient at it. But just when you think you have it under control well you come to find out YOU DON'T. The locks in the Oswego canal are a bit different than the Erie Canal. The Oswego locks at least the two we went through do not have ropes to grab when you approach the side wall. What no ropes, ropes were all we knew. Now what? I had read that there were three different types of things to "hook up to" along the canal. Well I guess this was another one. I (first mate) had seen these kind, basically it is a long cable that stretches from the top to the bottom of the canal and your goal is to get a line through the opening in the wall around the cable and back to your boat. Well the first time I tried to do this it just wasn't happening. Mike wasn't able to get me close enough to the wall to do this. So a very kind dock master comes over and asks me to throw the line to him and he would do it for me. I think personally we were holding up the closing of the lock and their was another boat in it. After we were secure the lady at the boat on the other side of the wall hollers over and says to try and use the boat hook next time to pull the boat closer to the wall. I thought hey that make sense. So the next one I was ready with my boat hook in one hand and my line in the other. We had a strong wind coming from behind us and Mike had a difficult time getting the boat over to the wall. I tried reaching with the boat hook for the cable and was able to hook it but about that time a wind came up and pulled the boat away from the wall. Needless to say my little arms were not strong enough to keep that 3 ton boat from pulling away from the wall and I either let go of the boat hook (which I couldn't get unhooked from the cable) or I loose an arm and fall in. So yes you have it right the boat hook falls into the canal. Ugh!!! Mike is still trying to get the boat over to the wall and I am trying to get the hose out to fish the boat hook. By this time the boat hook is in the middle of the canal and there is no way in _ _ _ _ I was going to get it out. But once again a dock master was on hand to grab the rope and then went and got a longer boat hook and was able to fish our boat hook out of the canal. By this time the other boat that we have traveled through 2 canals with was I'm sure happy to get as far away from us crazy people as possible.

But we made it through and we traveled on to a city dock in Fulton that we thought we would be at for the evening. Mike was so good about reading all the books about this location, but when we got there whew were those books wrong. There was no way we were going to fit our 36 foot boat into a slip that barely fit a 20 foot boat. So we were off again to look for another location to dock and came across this small area here in Minetto NY. Big enough for our boat and they had electricity, just what we needed.

So we are here for the night to ride out the storm, which currently is pounding on the roof of the boat. Tomorrow we are off to Lake Ontario and Oswego NY.