We were reasonably close to the 8:00AM opening time for the New York Canal System locks. High winds were forecasted for the entire day with thunderstorms in the afternoon. Our hope was to make Ess-Kay Marina before the rain. Oswego Lock #8 (lift up 11.1 feet) is the first lock encountered when heading south from Lake Ontario. We were hoping for a quick lock through, but we had to wait 10 minutes for the lock master to “set up.” This and two other locks (O-7 & O-6 - lifts up 14.5 and 20 feet respectively) are a quarter mile apart. We started at Lock O-8 at 8:50AM and exited Lock O-6 at 9:40AM. We had traversed all seven of the locks on the Oswego Canal (there is no Lock O-4) by
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| Sign posted at Three Rivers |
1:00PM. We turned left at Three Rivers (now 118 feet above sea level) as we entered the eastern section of the Erie Canal. Our first lock on the Erie was E-23 (lifted up 7.1 feet). By the way, the New York State Canals are structurally nothing like the beautiful wooden locks we went through in Canada. These locks are “commercial grade” locks having steel hydraulic gates, chamber walls of either concrete or steel, and slimy grab-lines for the boat operators to hold on to stay their boats while going up or down (you cannot use your boat cleats) — and the lines are not secured at the bottom, so different techniques are required. We use gloves to keep from touching the gooey lines. The rest of the canal is beautiful. Trees on both sides of the canal were tall and thick protecting us from the high winds. The canals are very scenic and some areas resemble the North Carolina Inter-coastal Waterway. We arrived at the Ess-Kay Marina fuel dock around 3:00PM. The wind had picked up and dark clouds loomed ominously in the West. We took on fuel, got a pump-out, in our slip, and checked in before the skies opened up. The wind was brutal.
We met up with Charlotte and Mike who recalled our boat, but couldn’t remember where. They had just completed going out the Trent-Severn and back and crossed Lake Ontario the same day we did. After a bit, we figured out they were the couple who checked just before us at the videophone upon returning to the US. We enjoyed trading experiences and a glass of wine. Charlotte was able to bring us up to date on another couple aboard Mazel Tug, whose boat was at the marina. Ralph was one of the first people to welcome us to Montreal and was joined us for the fireworks. Unfortunately, they had to depart quickly for family reasons and we weren’t able to reconnect with them.
We are concerned about tomorrow’s forecast. It’s to be similar to today’s weather and we need to cross the full length of Lake Oneida from west to east (28NM, ~2 hours). The best time to cross was early in the morning so we would have the smoothest possible crossing.
