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.
No comments:
Post a Comment