Day 97 Friday, Sept 27, 2013 - A very exciting day!

Day 97 Friday, Sept 27, 2013

Today would prove to be a very exciting day for a number of reasons. 

It started out with beautiful blue skies once again.  The view from the portholes is quite beautiful in the morning as you get the early morning sun on the canal with wisps of fog lifting off the water.  It is something that would look great in a picture but we have been unable to successfully capture it yet.

 

Dawson installing the water filter - note the reading glasses, now a regard tool for all jobs

Dawson installed the water filter we bought the day before and that went well which was a great omen for the rest of the day.

Our friends on Ocean Cowboy and Amicus headed out today towards lock 13 in preparation for the great opening to occur in a week’s time.  We plan on moving tomorrow which is one of the reasons for it being an exciting day – our last day in Utica, New York.  The second exciting reason was that we received word that our niece Alicia and Alex got married during their recent trip to Las Vegas.  We are both happy for them and hope they have an excellent marriage, one similar to ours.  Official welcome to the family Alex ~woo hoo, although you have been part of the family for many years already.  The third exciting item was that our solar panels arrived today, delivered by UPS all the way from Flagstaff to our boat in Utica. The delivery guy said this was a first delivering to a boat.  We ordered an 85 watt and 140 watt panel which along with our wind generator should be able to meet our electrical needs while at anchor in the sunny south.  Dawson took his final walk to Lowes to pick up some mounting hardware for the panels and will mount them over the next week.  For now we have put them back in the boxes and stored them in the forward head.  This room is now being total taken over for storage as 4 of the 5 sails we have on board are stored in the shower.   Julie had to move her toothbrush back to Dawson's washroom.

Forward head, now used for storage while we complete the Erie Canal

 

Sitting for two please

While Dawson was off at Lowes Julie hiked over to the local grocery store and picked up more food (we keep eating it all) for the next leg of the journey.  Julie also picked up some lovely pink roses that added well to our dinner.

Quick game of Kings Cribbage and some language lessons and we will be off to bed.  We plan on leaving Utica tomorrow around nine.

 

Cheers

Dawson and Julie