Bahama 2016 Trip Stats

This data comes from my accountant wife

Trip engine hours   783

Gallons of diesel    413.72 ($1082.93)
Gallons of gas          36.95 ($142.94)

Total days               276

Days at anchor       114
Days at Marinas       89 (18 @ Nassau)
Free Wall or Dock    29
Mooring                   34
Overnight sail            4
On Hard                     5
Aground                     1

Malletts Bay, Home

Red Sky in morning, sailors take warning

 

We have a cool, windy and rainy morning traveling to Malletts Bay Boat Club. For the first time this year I have my foul weather jacket on, welcome to Vermont ! 

 

We tied up to the dock and in the rain I row out and install our pick-up buoy on our mooring. 

 

Home at Malletts Bay Boat Club

By the time we tie up to our mooring the sun is out for the rest of the day. 

Kathy gives us a ride home. This time we have our house keys with us. Our last return, we did not have our house keys and had to break in. We had assumed our house sitter would of left the keys with our neighbor, instead of leaving them in the house and locking the door before she let.

Lake Champlain Yacht Club

Today is rather cool and cloudy, but we make good time motoring down the lake. We are hoping to make it to Malletts Bay this evening. 

Burlington, Vermont, Green Mtns in the background

As we approach Burlington the wind picks up to 15-20 knots from the northwest. I feel we are bouncing around too much and don't feel comfortable with our mast on stands on our deck. We turn and head down Shelburne Bay to the LCYC (Lake Champlain Yacht Club) and use the vacant mooring of Keith Kennedy, Kathy's partner. Kathy and I take the launch in to get some ice so I can make her and Linda, Pina Colada's. Later that evening Keith comes by to visit and to pick up Kathy.

 

"Antares" at LCYC, we last saw them in the Bahamas a couple months ago

Chipmans Point, Vermont, Lake Champlain

Monday we leave early and see very few boats. We pass a couple sailboats with their masts down heading south, I assume to Maine for the summer. Today we breeze through all the locks. They are ready for us when we arrive, no waiting. The lock doors close before we even grab the ropes on the wall.

Chipman's Point

By one o'clock we lock down on to Lake Champlain at Whitehall. From here we have 3 hours of motoring to Chipman's Point Marina, where we will stay for the night and pick up our friend Kathy Manning who is going to ride up the lake with us. When we arrive at 4:00 PM Kathy is waiting for us. Again it is quite warm so I plug in the AC to cool the boat down. We all spend the next couple hours sitting on the deck in front of the Chipmans Point office which is an old stone warehouse from the 1820's, Beautiful spot to relax. 

 

Fort Edwards

The General Electric Hudson River PCB dredging project ended last fall and for the first time in 7 years there are no longer any barrages and tug boats on this section of the Hudson. They had priority and sometimes made it slow going for recreational boaters. Unfortunately for us, this being a Sunday there are lots of recreational boaters using the locks. Normally on a week day the lock operators call ahead to the next lock and it is waiting at our arrival. We don't even have to make an opening request on the radio. Not to day, with the extra activity we do a lot of waiting at most locks.

When we arrive at Fort Edwards there is only one other boat on the town wall, so we are able to connect to the free power posts. The first thing I do is turn on the Air Conditioning. We have dinner at the “Ye Old Diner”. Being Fathers day and a Sunday it is not very busy. In fact we are the only ones there for the first ½ hour. This is a very funky local eatery. Most dinners are under $10. We have a good meal and walk to Stewards for ice cream and get scoops for 50 cents for Fathers Day.

Almost full moon at Fort Edwards, town wall

Waterford, NY

We leave at 10:00 AM and stop at the Riverview Marina on Catskill Creek to pump out our holding tank and to fuel up. I am a little peeved they don't respond to my radio call. After we leave there, it dawns on me, Oh yeh ! The mast is down and the antenna is disconnected. We get out the hand held VHF radio. We have 40 miles to go the Waterford, the start of the Erie Canal.
 

View south of the Catskill Mtns.

Tappenzee beam fabrication site

We reach the Tapenzee beam fabrication site and there are lots of nearly completed beams waiting to be transported down river. 

Port of Albany

Federal Lock

At Troy we go through the first lock, the “Federal Lock”. This lock is run by the Federal Government because it is on tidal waters. All the other locks, Lake Champlain Canal and the Eire Canal are run by New York state. 

We get into Waterford late in the afternoon. There is free docks here with water and power. By the time we arrive all the dock spaces are taken, but we can tie up to the wall on a built in ladder. Otherwise the wall is too high to climb from our boat or even tie up. There are two other sailboats with their mast down heading out the Erie Canal, the rest are trawlers.

Waterford, 1st lock of the Erie Canal

Waterford is interesting because sections of the original, unused, hand dug canal and lock walls still exist. The Champlain Canal from the 1820's was hand dug from here to Lake Champlain. Around 1915 the Champlain canal was enlarged by a series of locks and dams on the Hudson, so now the Champlain Canal system uses the Hudson River north to Fort Edwards. From Fort Edwards to Lake Champlain the canal was excavated, some places following existing streams.

Hop-o-Nose, Catskills, Day 1

 

Waiting to take mast down

 

Mast cradle in storage

Mast down day, what a PIA. A necessary inconvenience of leaving the lake. Our mast cradle parts are still stored away in the Hop-o-Nose shed with our return date June 2016 written on the wood pieces. 2014 is crossed out from our last trip.

 

Mast coming down

By late afternoon we are nearly done. A few more things need to be tied down, but they can wait until tomorrow morning. We will not leave until around 10:00AM, to catch the tide up the river in our favor. Again we head to the Creekside for another dinner, Being Friday night it is even more crowded.