Hop-o-Nose, Catskill Creek

We leave the wall at 8:30 am. We are through Locks 1 and 2 on the Champlain Canal in the next two hours and then the final Federal Lock down to the Hudson.

South of Albany, we come up to the assembly yard on the west shore for the New Tappenzee Bridge down stream. This small tug boat shoots out in front of us towing 300 feet of plastic pipe. We have to slow down not knowing where the pipe will swing. We eventually pass him a couple miles down stream. The wind out of the north builds during the day and the river is a little rougher than I care for with a mast on the deck. It was a relief to turn up the calm Catskill Creek. There is a couple sailboats under the mast crane so we tie up on an empty dock across the creek. Many boats that come down the Erie Canal ship their masts ahead to “Hop-o-Nose”. Raising these masts is rather difficult. They have to lower the mast from a travel lift on to a section of floating dock which is then moved under the crane to lift the mast up. Then the sailboat is moved under the crane for installation. Much quicker to lift the mast directly from the sailboat.

"Second Wind" our sister ship third from the left.

Once the workers replace the dock finger they “borrowed” to float the mast, we move over and tied up to that finger dock. We met some fellow transients, Dave & Laura from Minnesota on a Catalina 36, “Second Wind” same year as ours. We quickly tour each other's boats to see the different enhancements we have each made. Laura even has a potted tomato plant on one of the stern rail seats. Being an avid gardener this was a compromise to giving up her garden this summer.

We then head to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, “Creekside” at the Marina. The Marina owner, Sean, is the cook and it always has a good crowd. We split the Chicken Marsala, excellent.

Mechanicville

Locks Time Lapse

Train overhead

Lock next to Power Dam above Mechanicsville, NY

Another warm sunny day on the Canal. We are the only boat in any of the locks again, today. We get to the Town Free wall at Mechanicsville by 3:45. We use their free pump out and then move down the wall and tie up for the evening. Connect to power and again turn on the AC.

High School Girls Crew

For Dinner, we walk to a local hotspot, “Bubbles” on Yelp. We split another dinner and still leave with left overs. On the way back to the boat we swing by another “Stewarts” for some more of their coconut ice cream. We get back to our boat and recovering from my ice cream stupor, I realize I left my backpack at “Stewarts”, with my iPad, so I quickly walk back, while Linda calls to make sure they have it. Using “Find My Phone” app on my iPhone I am happy to see that my iPad is at “Stewarts” and not doing 60 mph down the highway.

Truck Nuts

Boat Nuts ?

 

I put old socks over our turn buckles so they don’t bang on the deck and to capture any parts that come loose. Sean the owner of Hop-o-Nose remembers me as the "Sock guy", apparently I am the only one who does this.

Fort Edward

After a rainy night we wake up to a drizzly morning. If it rains most of the day we will stay another day at Whitehall. We head to Breakfast at "Historic Grounds" a fairly new breakfast/Lunch eatery, that is highly recommended by a number of people. It did not disappoint. A very good breakfast and a cool old building.

Historic Grounds

After breakfast the weather starts to clear and we decide to head south to Fort Edward and their Free Wall with power, water and showers. We have stayed here a few times before, some times the showers work and other times they don't. Otherwise a very nice place to stay. When we arrive the only other boat there is a trawler that we shared the wall with at Whitehall. The couple on the trawler are from Philadelphia and have spent the summer in Canada and are now returning to Philly. 

The Lock at Fort Edward is the last lock on the dug northern half of the Champlain Canal. Once we lock down we are on the Hudson River. This section of the Champlain Canal has a series of power dams and locks. There is current and some scary looking dams that we motor close to, not a place you want your engine to fail.

New commerical gravel business on the canal

There is a new gravel barge delivery operation at the northern section of the canal. They deliver somewhere on the Hudson either Albany or a cement plant further south on the Hudson. We pass a few empty barges coming north to reload. Nice to see some commercial use of the canal.

The initial canal in 1820 was hand dug the entire length from Waterford, NY to Whitehall, NY.  Sections of the old canal still exist and the original locks are still in existence at Waterford.  The doors have been removed and the multiple old locks form a series of waterfalls. The old lock and canal was only the width of the canal boats of the day. The canal was progressively widened until 1910 or so when the Hudson was dammed and the upper section was widened further. 

The towns along the canal were wealthy centers of commerce in their day, now only a shadow of their former selves.

Fort Edwards is the smallest town on the Canal with a free dock. We usually like to go out to dinner to pay back the free dockage. Not a lot of choices here. We have eaten at the “Ye Old Fort Diner” before a very homey establishment, nothing too fancy. We decide to try the fancier “The Anvil” and split a diner since their portions are on the large size. We stop at Stewarts on the way back and get one of their monthly specials, Coconut ice cream which is their version of Almond Joy ice cream, very good.

Whitehall, NY

Sunrise over the Green Mountains

Crown Point Bridge

Monday morning we start south for Whitehall as the wind picks back up. It would have been too windy to come down the main Lake with the mast over the deck today. The Lake south of Westport gets narrower becoming more like a river for the last 20 miles or so. Early in the afternoon I spy a fuzzy snake swimming from the New York side to the Vermont side. As we get closer I realize it is a squirrel, essentially swimming across “Lake Champlain”. 
 

Squirrel swimming to Vermont

 
Years ago I gave our friend Genie a hard time when she said they saw a squirrel swimming across the Champlain Canal, so I immediately email her on what we saw. She writes back “Hmm didn’t you make some wise guy comment when we told you we saw a swimming squirrel”, Yeah that would be me.

An hour later we see another squirrel swimming from the Vermont side to New York. I guess it was getting too crowded in Vermont.

Squirrel swimming to New York

I was expecting to see this next  !

Approaching the lock at Whitehall, first lock up

The up locks are more turbulent and Lock 12 is the worst

Around 3:30 we reach the first lock at Whitehall. We lock-up and tie up to the Free Wall at Whitehall, power and water. We immediately power up and turn on the AC after another warm afternoon. We decide on dinner at Busty’s a new rustic BBQ place a short walk away. Linda and I split a very good rib diner and still can not finish it all. We head back to the boat and close up for rain later at night from the northern remnants of Florence. 

Finally, we are leaving

 

Well, once again we leave the dock at Malletts Bay Boat club of the “Crack of Noon”. Still lots of last minute things to finish up before we can leave. We are like students writing a paper, but we get to move the deadline, so we can finish beyond the last minute.

We had hoped to leave a few days earlier since we have had a long period of little wind on the Lake, very unusual for this time of year. It needs to be fairly calm to travel with the mast suspended over the deck. Fortunately, Sunday is one more very calm day, which is going to be the last according to the forecast. The downside is, being a nice warm Sunday there are a lot of power boats out and many feel the need to wake us as much as possible.

I can't believe you talked me into doing this trip again !

We drop anchor at Westport, NY for the night. Being a warm night, we jump in for a swim after dark.

House-sitters

We were lucky to get Sam and Aubrey Titus to house sit while we are gone until June. Sam's Aunt Rose and Uncle John were our house-sitters during our last trip. Sam's Mom and John's sister is Brenda, who is the office manager at our dentist office.  Last year Linda again mentioned we were looking for house sitters next year and Brenda said her son and soon to be wife would be moving to the Burlington area next year. Sam and Aubrey moved in last week while we were slowly packing for the boat and cleaning our boat stuff spread all over the house.

Aubrey started teaching in Bristol, nearly an hour commute south. Last week we took Sam and Aubrey to a neighborhood party and Aubrey discovered 3 other teachers on our street that teach in Bristol. So now they all commute together, each driving every fourth week.

Sam, Aubrey and Sam's Parents

Mast Down, Load the boat

Our mast came down on Tuesday. We were in a rush because the Marina lift was closed for the following two days for dredging. Then with the impending damage along the ICW coming from Florence we started having second thoughts about leaving.

With Lake Champlain very low at the end of this summer we could not bring our boat along side the working dock at our Boat club where we could park our Van next to the boat to load up. This has saved us a lot of time in the past. So we became dock hogs on the club floating docks for a week while we wheeled our stuff down to our boat. At least it was down hill to the dock.