October 8, 2007 - Waterford,NY

Tonight finds us in Waterford, NY. This town is at the junction of the Erie Canal and the Hudson River. Coming from the West on the Erie Canal, you have the choice of turning North on to the Champlain Canal or South on the Hudson River. This sign is right over the stern of Monarch where she is docked along the wall. Needless to say, we are going South for New York City. It was on overcast day but we had smooth sailing. We made it through the 'Flight of Five Locks' in record time - 1 hour and 10 minutes. We were greeted at every lock with a 'green light'. This is the signal that the lockmaster is ready for you to enter the lock. If you get a red light, you wait.

This shot gives you the view we saw in all five locks of the 'Flight'. Nothing but tree tops. Most of locks dropped 33-34 feet. Once again, we had great weather - no wind, and locking was easy. One Lockmaster commented about Marty at the helm (we rotate positions so we both get experience). When I explained our process, his comment was "great". He doesn't see many women at the wheel.

The following are some pictures we took right after locking, and also after we were docked and went for a walk. We wanted to give you an idea of what the locks look like.

This is looking back at the base of the fourth lock (we came down five steps/locks). We were just exiting the lock and got this quick snapshot. The drop in the lock was about 34 feet, so the door height is almost 50 feet. You can just see the upward lock gates through the cracked downward gates.

On our walk we were able to see part of the original canal locks that are now chutes to control the water in the canal. This is part of the system that was replaced by the 'Flight of Five'.

As we completed our walk (four miles to the hardware store to get one single bronze fitting for the horn), we were able to capture this picture of a trawler entering the fourth of the five locks in the Flight. As you can see, there is little room to choose where to go.

October 7, 2007 - Lock 8 Wall

Today broke with the weather overcast and misty. We had planned to cover just under 40 miles today and waited to start until we had one of Marty's famous breakfasts - omlettes!

Our travel today was mainly on the Mohawk River portion of the canal system. The locks operate along side the dams like the one shown here.

We take turns piloting the boat into the locks, to hone our skills.



After yesterday's drenching during one of our final locks, Jerry finally got the message and donned his foul weather jacket. HA - the rain never came.......
















With the cooler damp weather today, all of the piloting was done from the pilothouse. Marty readily adapted to this routine of navigating.











For people looking for a way to see the Erie Canal, here are some of the canal boats that you can charter. This appeared to be a group of people out for a great vacation, as they had five boats in their flottila.









We are enjoying the sound of the dam off our stern tonight, as we are tied to the wall just below Lock 8. Today turned out to a relatively easy day as we did just 6 locks. The temps are getting cooler -63 degrees at 8:00 p.m. - we are looking forward to good sleeping weather tonight. We need our rest as tomorrow is the big day when we do the 'Flight of Five' locks to wrap up the canal. These five locks are all within a mile and drop us over 140 feet to the Hudson. Once you start into the locks you have to go all the way through.

October 6, 2007 - Canajoharie, NY

Today finds us travelling in our first 'flotilla' on the canal. We spent most of the day with three other boats as we worked our way through six locks. Imagine our surprise when we pulled into the first lock, and the Christ Craft cruiser ahead of us was Dennis Turner's Ricochet. Dennis was Commodore of Edison Boat Club in 1994, when I was the Commodore of DYC. What a coincidence!!!

This picture shows the two sail boats that we travelled with today. We all ended the day at the same dock in Canajoharie and had 5:30 cocktails in the pavillon by the dock - just like West End at the DYC.

We saw our first 'commercial' traffic on the Canal today as we passed this barge heading westbound. We took notice, as there is very little traffic of any sort on the canal.















This is the lock door in Little Falls. It represents the largest lift on the canal, at 40 feet. We were downbound, and the lockmaster was in a hurry. It felt as though he had pulled the bathtub drainplug, as we quickly descended the distance.
We wished that our next lockmaster had been as quick to drop the waterlevel, as a nasty squall hit just after we entered the lock. The two sailboats and Monarch had to hold on tight to the lines to maintain our positions, as the wind blew the rain sideways. Even with our Europa side overhangs, we both were soaked to the skin. Fortunately, it was in the mid 70's, and so weren't too uncomfortable. Great lightening show with thunder rolled through.
















Here is a picture of Little Falls as we approached the lock. We have heard this is a great place to stop and from what we can see, we are adding it to our itinerary for our next trip.

October 5, 2007 - Utica, NY

Friday - On the move again. What a great day to be back on the canal. The best thing is that Marty is back onboard.

Shortly after leaving Brewerton, we were in Lake Oneida. This lake is approximately 21 miles across and provided a most enjoyable cruise, with gentle winds.

We were led out of Brewerton by Candor from Banbridge Harbor, Washington, which I think is a Krogan 39 trawler. We slowly overtook them as we crossed the lake - blistering along at our 7.6 knot trawler speed. That may seem slow, but our philosphy for this cruise is that it is the trip that counts (also, it greatly increases our fuel economy). As the day progessed, things really warmed up, with t-shirts and shorts the attire, and temperatures in the low 80s. It felt more like August than October.

We arrived in Utica, NY around 3:30 PM. We had our first chance to handle locking with the just the two of us and we did a great job - two locks up, one down. We really are looking like pros.

Here in Utica we are docked at the City's 'free dock'. What a nice amenity of the Erie Canal, which we don't see elsewhere - along the canal walls, the dockage, electricity, water, and restrooms are most often without charge. This dock is located adjacent to a very nice restuarant (linen table cloths and napkins). However, we preferred the 1/2 mile walk to the supermarket to get some ground beef, as Marty had her taste buds set for a good rare burger. Earlier in the week she had tried to order one at a tavern in Brewerton, and they would only serve it medium. I must say they were GREAT. We had entertainment during dinner, as a father and his two kids came to the dock for fishing and some parental bonding. The kids were interested in our boat and barbeque, incessently questioning us about all aspects of our seafaring lifestyle!

October 4, 2007

A good day to work on my chore list. Even if Marty had been on the boat, we would not have been moving in this fog for a few hours. It took until 9:30 AM for the visability to clear. But what a beautiful site.......

October 1 - 4, 2007 - Brewerton, NY

October 1 thru 4 found the Monarch in Brewerton, NY at Winter Harbor Marina. We are having the marina quote some work (ie. painting the boat, etc) for next summer. The marina is only 15 minutes from the Syracuse airport, perfect for Marty to return to Michigan to attend the Michigan Tech Board meeting, the reason for the extended stay. We could not have picked a better spot. The staff bends over backwards to make you feel welcome and the rates are VERY reasonable. They also have the lowest diesel fuel rates on the Erie Canal


Here is Monarch docked in front of the marina owner's home. It is one of the nicest houses we have seen on the canal. His gardens are beautiful and he had tomatos, herbs and peppers growing on the fuel dock and told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted. Marlene was tempted for the habenero peppers but we could not figure out what we would do with something that HOT!!!





This is Monarch at the end of the dock. For most of our trip we have been one of the bigger boats. When we went through Lock 23 on the Canal, we suddenly became one of the medium size boats by comparison - almost magical..... We know from past experience as you head South you start experincing larger and larger boats, but it was weird how in one lock this transformation happened.
While Marty is back in Michigan I have had my list of projects to complete. Today was mostly spent getting the solar panels hooked up. This - of course - involved a trip to West Marine. The marina has two courtesy cars handy for guest use. The keys are in the cars and you replace the gas you use. It has worked well for us, as we went out for dinner the first evening and there have been several trips to the Syracuse airport, along with the trip to West and Home Depot.


The sad thing about Brewerton is that Carl and Marlene left to return home to prepare for their upcoming trip to the Middle East. The nine days they were aboard just flew by. We will really miss them and look forward to them joining us later this winter for some southern cruising.

October 1, 2007 - On the Erie Canal

We finally hit some lakes. This is Cross Lake which we had to cross to get to the canal on the eastern shore. It is a very pretty lake with a fair number of cottages. Reminds us of UpNorth Michigan. We were only on the lake for under a mile and then we were back on the river portion of the canal.