We made it to the CANAL!!!!

Okay I know two posts in one day.  So much to fit in.  Well we left early Monday morning (we are talking 6:45 a.m.)  Again with another pretty good weather window.  Must cruise when the weather allows.  Our goal was to make it to the canal, which we did, that was after another 12 hour cruising day and blistering heat.

First mate enjoying the ride.  Ya think we could have at least taken the deck mop down.

Arrived at Buffalo in record time, which wasn't hard since we had a good quartering tail wind, along with the steading sail actually adding a knot to our cruising speed.  Once at Buffalo we entered the Black Rock Canal.  Once in the canal we had to work on lowering our mast and boom from the steading sail.  We lowered it with not much problem, until we heard this crack and noticed the crutch that it lays in had snapped in two.  So temporarily the mast and boom would have to lay carefully on the bikes.  Not like you can just hop over to the hardware store.  

Downtown Buffalo

Snapped the crutch right in half.

We decided to just keep going and knew we could deal with this little snafoo at a later time.  As we entered the Black Rock Canal there were a couple bridges and our first lock to navigate in the Lady J.  In the pictures below you will notice a bridge we had to go under, it was said to have a clearance of 17 feet, but what we didn't take into consideration was the recent rains raising the water level about 4 feet. Our boat is 12 feet to the top of the fly bridge with the bimini down. (Okay do the math as we did not) We literally went under this bridge having to duck and could reach out and touch the bridge above us.  That will be one for the story books.

First mate is literally siting on the floor of the fly bridge to get this picture and not get her head cut off.

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A swing bridge opening just for us.

Yeah finally after having to wait for weeks we have arrived.  (insert Happy Song now)

All kinds of modes of transportation on the canal.

The Captain actually got the camera away from the first mate.  The canal is easier to navigate than the lake.

We navigated through our first set of canals.  This one was a total of  70 feet drop.

Fist night docked at Gasport.  The town was quaint, but the cruising guide book said there would be showers, unfortunately they were wrong.  So after a 12 hour cruising day in the high 80's we tried our own shower on the boat out and it worked out pretty good.

Pizza dinner, supporting the local economy and keeping the first mate out of a HOT galley.

Our first day on the canal in our minds was a great success.  

Oh one last little story.  After dinner I was looking out our hatch and noticed a young mom with her two sons sitting in the park right across from where we were docked.  Little littlest boy was sitting on the older boys lap and they were both pointing and smiling at the boat.  I noticed that the little one had downs syndrome, which as anyone who knows me I have a huge place in my heart for these amazing kids.  So I stuck my head out the hatch and asked them if they would like to come over closer to the see the boat and go up to the fly bridge with Mike.  Well the little one (Mark) was beside himself.  He and his Mom came aboard (oldest son was waiting on their grandmother).  Mark was thrilled to death and giggled when Mike let him honk the horn and move the ships wheel.  It was a perfect way to end our first day on the canal.