Monday
Left from the Whitehall town dock
around 8:00AM. Cloudy. There was a trawler on the wall overnight with
us, but we never saw the owners. Just as after we left another south
bound sailboat appeared behind us in the distance, then followed by
the trawler. We slowed down our arrival to Lock 11, since we would
all be locking through at the same time Another easy lock up at Lock
11, although rather crowded by Champlain Canal standards, never had
to share a lock before. Still rather cool and overcast, forecast was
for sun in the afternoon after a front came through. We did so well
at Lock 11 we decided to skip right over Lock 10. Actually the canal
planners discovered after establishing the lock numbers they did not
need a Lock 10 after construction commenced.
A couple miles before Lock 9 the cold
Front came through. Winds were clocking 30 miles per hour. The wind
chill made it very cold, had on my fleece jacket and foul weather
jacket, although the temperature was probably in the mid 50's.
Coming up on Lock 9, which has a long open fetch to the north wind,
we started to get some wave action. The lock was not ready for us so
we tried to slow down as much as possible. Had the engine in reverse
numerous times to slow down our wind driven speed. Would have to put
it back in forward to maintain steerage as the wind driven backend of
the boat was pushing us off course. After the lock open we had the
same problem going in. How to slow down without slamming into the
exit doors ? I managed to slow the boat down and keep near the wall,
but once I put the engine in neutral, the wind was driving us fast
forward again. I quickly grabbed one of the hand lines, but could
not hang on, because of the force of the wind. So I put a couple
wraps on the rear cleat to bring us to a stop. Normally a no-no, but
it did save our ass. The sailboat behind us went through the same
drill. The trawler came in third on the right wall, it was then we
found out the owner was by himself. He did not have a stern line, but
he did have a bow line. He tossed the bow line to the lock tender.
Of course once the lock keeper tied it off the trawler spun around
and was now facing in the opposite direction, but at least safe from
hitting us, our first thought. Once the lock doors closed the wind
abated somewhat. Unfortunately as we rose in the lock we were
becoming more exposed again to the north wind. And with the rising
water the cleated hand line could not hold us as tight to the wall
and there was no way to pull it in tighter. As we rose the stern
started to pivot away from the wall and there was too much force for
Linda to push the bow off the wall. Fortunately the front end of our
mast was over six feet off our deck, so at this point it cleared the
wall, but our bow anchor did scrape the wall, no damage to either.
Going wrong way
Boy were we happy when the lock door
open to let us out. We were even more happy when we managed to clear
the lock walls without any further contact. The port side of the
boat was a mess. The lock hand lines which spend much of their time
under water are more like slimecycles, which we managed to get wrung
out all over our decks. Our fellow sailboat behind us had the same
problem. We suddenly looked like we had been at sea for a year
without a mop.
Fortunately by the last up lock at Fort
Edwards the wind had died down to a reasonable level. Our Trawler
friend had enough and called it a day and tied up to the town wall at
Fort Edward. Gee, it wasn't even noontime yet !
The rest of the day by comparison was
rather uneventful. Unfortunately, we were getting down into the GE
PCB dredging area of the canal. When we brought out boat up four
years ago they were just starting phase 1. Now they are well into
Phase Two and the dredging operations are vastly expanded. Well,
guess who has rightaway in the locks, not us, so we had to tie up and
wait a number of times for our turn. Greatly slowed our progress for
the day. During one of our tie ups, as we waited we got to meet our
fellow sailors, Bunky Bernstien and Carol Hanley in their C&C
“Luna” also heading for the Bahamas.
Both boats spent the night on the wall
at Lock 5, since it was closed before we arrived.
Tuesday
Woke up early to be ready for the lock
opening at 7:00 AM. Was very foggy, both boats locked through then
tied up and we waited 45 minutes or so for the fog to lift.
Since we
were beyond barge land we made it through the rest of the NY State
locks quickly. The Federal lock was having electrical problems so we
had to tie up for 30 minutes before they let us in. Then it took
them another 15 minutes or so to fix another issue to let us down.
Made it to Catskills just before sunset. We went to Hop-in-Nos and
Luna went to Riverside Marina.
Wednesday
Sean was there at 8:00 AM and the mast
was up by 9:00AM. Since he had no one else scheduled for the day, we
took off to Lowes and Walmart pick up a couple items. Late afternoon
Sean came back to hang me up in the bosun chair to install the radar.
By the end of the day we were finished.
Mast going up
Had a couple good dinners at the Creek
Side restaurant at Hop-in-Nos.
During Sandy they were completely
flooded out. Boats they pulled for the Hurricane floated off their
jackstands. The water was one foot below the roof gutters. All the
parked cars were totaled.
Thursday
Started backdown the Hudson as a
sailboat. It was so nice to have room again down below. It was like
having a whole new boat. We stopped for the night at Mariners
Restaurant in Highland NY, just north of Poughkeepsie. Free dock
with dinner, but our real goal was to hike up and do the “Walk Way
Over the Hudson”, http://www.walkway.org/,
an old railroad bridge turned into a walk way. Pretty cool.
Mariners Restaurant from Bridge
Food was OK at Mariners, nothing
special. The view from our outside table was impressive as the full
moon was rising.
Moonlight over Hudson
The dock we tied up is where all the
local seagulls hang out, it was a mess. Cleat to Cleat S**T. Had to
wash off the bottoms of our shoes.
Friday
Another nice sunny day. We spent the
night in Haverstraw Bay, by Croton Point Park.
Saturday
Headed down to NYC and picked up a
mooring at the 79th Street Marina. Now we had to pay for
that full moon. The currents from the full moon high tide were
ripping and with an opposing wind gusting to 30 knots it was somewhat
chaotic, especially when the southerly winds started sending 2-3
foot swells up the Hudson early in the evening, when the out going
current had our stern to the incoming waves. I was prepared for a
wave to climb into our walk-off stern. Fortunately that did not
happen. It was to chaotic to even consider lowering the dinghy.
Linda had to resort to her back up drugs to combat all the motion.
Sunday
Things calmed down somewhat overnight.
Ran into “Luna”, Bunky and Carol, they were also staying at 79th
Street. We headed into NYC to do some sightseeing and food shopping.
Came across a street fair along 20 blocks of closed to traffic
Columbus Ave. Munched our way up the street on our way to pick up
some parts at ACE Hardware. Tomorrow we plan to head overnight to
Cape May after a fuel stop. North or Northwest winds should allow us
to sail most the way.
On the mooring
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