The morning greeted us crisp (43 degrees) and sunny, with a snapping breeze. Leaving Fairport, we called for an opening of the Main Street Lift Bridge. This bridge is in the Guinness Book of World Records because one end is higher than the other, it is built on a slant and no two angles on the entire bridge are the same. We had chatted with the bridge tender the day before, as we crossed over on our walk.
We noted an unusual feature of the local locks, a type of drain, which creates a large boiling dome of water on the lower level near the lock entrance.
This area of the canal is fairly level, and after lock 33, we had 65 miles until the next lock. We had smooth sailing, with the occasional high school crew rowing team practicing.
With no locks on this stretch, we instead had to contend with bridges just off the water’s surface, and we had to radio the bridge tenders to raise these for us. Fortunately, there is lots of warning both on the charts and on the canal sides.
There isn’t enough room for a canoe to pass under these bridges.
And they raise straight up for our passage, after stopping vehicular traffic.
In most cases, the bridge tender is responsible for the lift of two – or maybe three – bridges. So, after he lets you through one, you wait patiently while he races along the canal side to let you through the next bridge.
And once in a while, we see a major obstruction coming down the canal from a bridge opening, and Monarch waits to the side for the commercial traffic to pass.
We passed Albion, NY, and made a note to stop next time. The downtown looks most interesting.
The orchards that we passed were in bloom. When we came through 18 months ago, they were laden with apples.
The farms along the canal are well kept.
This stretch of the canal has a road that passes directly under the canal. It is named Culvert Road, appropriately enough!
We came into Medina for the night, and docked along the wall. We were the only boat to spend tonight here.
We strolled the downtown, which has historic buildings constructed with Medina sandstone. This sandstone was a very popular building material around 1900, and has been used in such far-flung structures as the Brooklyn Bridge and Buckingham Palace. At the peak of its popularity, over 2000 men were employed in area sandstone extraction operations.
After dinner aboard, we went for a stroll along the banks of the canal and saw the Medina Falls. Directly upstream of the falls, the Oak Orchard Creek passes 45 feet below the canal, which forms an aqueduct above the creek.
We continue to be impressed by the early 1800s engineering expertise that made this canal system possible.
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