Erie Canal - Day 4
Plan A - leave at 9:00 am and cruise to Rome, NY. Four locks, four hour trip. Weather called for sunny and 74 degrees.
Reality - tried to leave at 10:00 am but the port-side engine would not start. Fred worked in the engine room. Leave at 10:30 am.
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| Heavy mist and rain. Deb preps the lower helm for rain operations, which included removing the front window screen. |
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| Lock 18, rain stopped. All is good. Cruising along, seeing no other boats, almost to Lock 19, we come across a 53 ft. sailboat that had run aground. The Captain claims he was watching the debris (tree) in the channel and got outside the channel markers. “Can you pull us back out to the channel?” Fred says “Sure”. They tossed Deb a line secured to their stern, which she secured to our stern and Taurus tried hard to pull them out. Didn’t work. He sent over his brother in a dinghy with two lines to make a bridle from our stern. Still didn’t work. |
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| Changed their end of the line to the bow. Ultimately successful. |
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And all we got were these t-shirts. |
Another 30 minutes behind schedule and on to Rome!
Rome, oh my, that doesn’t look good. 😮 A dilapidated dock and “interesting” people and no boats. On to Plan B…
Plan B - dock on the east side of Lock 21 (before the lock) but the Lock Master wouldn’t let us because he had to ride his HOG to a 4th of July party. He came on the radio at 4:45 and said “Hurry up, I’m leaving at 5:00”. So we did, and didn’t dock there. On to Plan C…
Once we went through Lock 21, we were required to lock thru Lock 22 as we weren’t allowed to dock in between 21 and 22. Lock 21 was our first lock going down. You know how when you fill a bathtub with water, it takes awhile? And then when you’re done and ready to drain, it goes down fast? Same thing in the lock! I was a little nervous we’d be washed down the drain too!
On to Lock 22, six minutes away. “Change of shift, you have to wait.” Oh-K? 15 minutes later, the light goes green and we can proceed. As we were entering the lock, the Lock Master is on the side of the lock yelling, screaming and cursing at a young Canadian goose in the lock. No time for that story…
(Change of shift guy didn’t show up) “YOU KNOW, I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING NOW!!!” Thank you. “I don’t need this. I’m too old for this!” Thank you.
Out of the lock, water down in lock, successfully docked west side of canal (Canadian geese poop littered). 7.5 hours later, Plan C successfully executed. It’s time to drink. 🍺 🍷
Wow. After a day like that I hope you had multiple drinks! In fact I’ll have a couple for you, just in case.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping out with the drinks. There’s no way the two of us could drink enough to make up for that day.😬
DeleteWOW! you said this would be an adventure, I hope you have now got it out of your system and it will be smoother travels. Hopefully, today will be better or maybe you can just rest and take it easy.
ReplyDeleteIt’s out of my system, believe me. I can’t handle all that very often. Fred and I were rolling on the floor laughing yesterday evening while we were writing it. 😂
DeleteI can tell you now, my wife would have been on the first train or car back to Connecticut if she experienced a day like that. To me it would have been an adventure. But what about the geese; I bet you didn't expect that! Anyway, sounds like your 4th was more interesting than mine. Keep the blog and pics coming. Tom
ReplyDeleteTom, you crack me up! It was just one thing after the other. I felt like jumping ship, but the Canal water is really dirty, and the land is covered in goose poop. So I stayed onboard. And, in addition to the lock master yelling and screaming, the rest of the flock of geese stood on the side of the lock yelling at the young goose. What a fiasco!
ReplyDelete