Day 87 Tuesday September 17th

Day 87 Tuesday September 17^th

Mist in the morning 

Up at 7:30 for coffee and breakfast at the  Baldwinville dock.  There is lots of mist on the water which we will have to wait for it to clear.  It makes for some lovely photo opportunities.  The air is very cold, but it is supposed to start warming up soon.  We head off and the canal is very populated along the shores.  No longer are there Blue Heron’s but lots of cottages and boats.  There is also lots of algae on the water which is not very appealing.  There is no wind so the reflections on the water are pretty.  It would be prettier if the trees had changed colours, but we are about a week early.

Swan along the way

Pretty park by the locks

Lock gloves on life lines

Featherweight machine

We have our first up lock today and as seen by our gloves, the walls are slimy.  Today we are crossing Oneida Lake and the lack of wind is good because we don’t want the mast which is stored across our boat to be rolled off in waves.  As we putter along, Julie tries to get the sewing machine up and running.  No luck.  Finally we find the manual for this 1930’s machine on the internet and Julie putters away at figuring out what is wrong.  Finally after taking out a few screws we realize the assembly has been put together incorrectly.  It still is not working right though, but better.

Algae in the lake

We get across the slimy lake to Sylvan beach by 3:00 and meet some of the docking neighbours.  We are told about a produce stand within walking distance and we are off.  The little town boasts 4 miles of sandy shoreline (although green from the algae), and has an amusement park etc.  It is like a Wasaga beach.  Unfortunately everything is closed.  We head to the neighbours for a cocktail which turns into a tour of their 48 foot Hatteris.  Karen and Kerri are very hospitable and enjoyable to share some laughs with.  After a couple hours another sailboat pulls in and we meet Debbie and Vincent on their Morgan 454.  Enough cocktails, so back to our boat to barbeque dinner.  Karen and Kerri also let us know that lock 13 was closed for a couple of days so we went to the website for the NY canal and their was now a new posting alert indicating the lock would be closed for 2-3 weeks.  Yikes, we are trapped.

We are all madly chatting about our options.  We decide we will push on but at a much slower pace.  We would have been to lock 13 in 2-3 days, but will now take a week to get there and hope that it will open sooner.  Alas, we have no firm schedule.  Just the winter, and we want to make the Annapolis Boat show which is the Canadian Thanksgiving.  We can always drive to the boat show if we get a bit closer as it is a 7 hour car ride from where we are docked.  Beth and Gary T were hoping to meet up with us in Annapolis so it has screwed up those plans.  Oh well not much we can do at this point.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson