New York New York

When we left Tarrytown on Monday, the river was finally wide enough to raise the sails and check everything out. This exercise generated a list of thing that we needed to replace - new reefing lines, jib sheets and furling line.
We were able to see the Manhattan skyline from Tarrytown and we travelled towards it for the afternoon, passing under the Tappan Zee and George Washington bridges. When we arrived at the 79th Street Marina in New York, we encountered the strong Hudson River currents, which we had heard about. It was impossible to make it into the small harbour as the current was pushing us sideways past the entrance, so we decided to pick up one of the marina's mooring balls out on the river instead.
Our first night in New York was rockin' - and not of the musical style. We were bouncing all over the place from the wakes of the tugs and freighters running up and down the river and the current rushing by the boat. (click here for a video)

Grumbly Grey Skys

Friday and Saturday turned out to be rainy grey days. Friday was a long day as we were not able to leave Catskill until 11 am because of heavy fog. Because we left later than planned, we were on the water until after sunset. We arrived in the dark and rain at White's marina with one of the tightest docking maneuvers yet - thanks to Al it all worked out very well... Much to our surprise, Le Temps de Vivre II showed up about an hour after we arrived and we guided them into the marina with flashlights and the VHF radio.
After a relaxing start to our Saturday with brunch at an outstanding cafe in New Hamburg, we headed back out on the river. We spent the afternoon fighting against the current, wind and rain on the Hudson around the aptly named Storm King Mountain (click here for a video). We pulled into the Tarrytown marina at suppertime.
We spent Sunday wandering around Tarrytown (it's a quaint town) picking up groceries for the next few days, including some indulgences at a gourmet grocery store. Al reprovisioned the wine cellar yet again.

Last Lock to the Ocean

We left Waterford on Wednesday and did the final lock on our journey to the ocean - the Troy lock - it was by far the largest lock we have seen so far. As we arrived at the lock, there was another Canadian boat (Le Temps de Vivre II) from Montreal.
We met up with them again on Wednesday afternoon at Castleton, which is the marina everyone seems to use to put up their masts. Our mast went up quite smoothly and we are a sailboat again !
On Thursday, we headed downriver to Catskill Creek where we tied up at a restaurant dock (free dock with a meal) and did some more work on the mast - Al went up the mast to install the wind instruments and the VHF antenna.

Restful Waterford

We arrived in Waterford yesterday finishing the Erie Canal - we can now see the Hudson River a few hundred yards away. We have spend our time here doing laundry and exploring the old Champlain Canal (really small!). We are also getting the mast ready to put up in a couple of days in Castleton, which is a little ways down the Hudson.

For those of you who are interested, we have posted some pictures on Flikr of our trip from Kingston to the end of the Erie. Also of note is that we are now updating our position more regularly (follow the where are we link on the top right of the main blog page).

Oswego & Erie Canals

The trip down the Oswego and Erie Canals was beautiful! We had been told that it is an industrial canal with lots of traffic - for us this couldn't have been further from the truth - we saw no industrial activity on the banks and only one barge. Most of the time we were the only boat on the water, we only shared the locks twice during the whole trip and only saw a few boats going in the other direction. Overall it was a great trip with beautiful vistas as we motored down the canal. The one complaint we could have is that everything was closed down; we stayed at one marina that was closed for the winter. This did cause us a problem in that we couldn't buy diesel when we needed it (many of the places had gas, but not diesel). Ruth solved this for us by talking to a local woman in Schenectady about getting diesel. She was very helpful and drove Ruth to two gas stations in order to get us a jerry can of diesel - this was enough to last us until we could get some on the Hudson River.

We have now done 66 Locks : 37 on the Rideau, 7 on the Oswego, and 22 on the Erie!

A buoy on the Erie
One of the highest lift locks in the world
Guard gate on the Erie

Lake Ontario Crossing

Last week we left Kingston as planned on Tuesday and made the crossing of Lake Ontario to the US. We left Kingston around 9:30am after picking up our groceries from the marina's freezer and getting Al settled onto the boat. The crossing to Cape Vincent was fairly uneventful with waves of about 3 feet in height to bounce us around a bit. We arrived at Cape Vincent just after lunch. Check-in to the US was much easier than expected: a short walk over to the ferry dock, wait while the customs officials unloaded a few cars from an arriving ferry, then a brief conversation and check of the passports and we were good to go. Since it was still early in the day we decided to head on to Henderson Harbor where we have a reciprocal agreement with BYC to use their yacht club. This sounded great as it looked like they had a great set-up .... except they had closed down for the season! However, they still had the harbour wall - with power - for us to spend a nice night at.

Day two on Lake Ontario was the crossing from Henderson Harbor over to Oswego - a long day of motoring out on open Lake Ontario. We went through the first two locks on the Oswego before spending the night at Fulton - a little Northern New York town. The Oswego locks are quite different than the Rideau ones in that they are automated and bigger (longer and a bit wider).

Beautiful Rideau

We are now sitting in Kingston after having spent a wonderful few days going down the Rideau. The last posting covered day 1.

Day 2 saw us down the longest section of the Rideau without a lock - the Long Reach. It was very pretty yet surprisingly narrow and curvy. That night was spent at the Kilmarnock locks, this time accompanied by another boat from Ottawa which was out for the weekend. Kilmarnock is a picturesque lock and we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere with marshland behind the boat.

Day 3 brought us the largest number of locks as we passed through Smith Falls and the Rideau lakes. We had a pleasant surprise as we met Rob Hilkes (a friend from work) unexpectedly at the Newboro locks. We also saw another catamaran (not sail but power) which is also heading south, and we expect we will see again. That night was spent at a small marina just before Chaffeys lock.

Until now our friend Terry had accompanied us during the days to help navigate the boat through the locks. He came by in the morning of day 4 for a short visit to drop off some extra diesel fuel and bid us farewell - thank you for your help Terry! With a bit of trepidation we headed off on Day 4 with just the two of us to master the last 13 locks before Kingston. The day was spent threading our way through the lakes and rivers to the Kingston Mills locks. It was quite a different day than we'd had as we were navigating through small cuts between lakes with rocky shorelines and cliffs, rather than the large marshy lakes and meandering river of the upper Rideau. We didn't expect we would make it all the way through the Kingston Mills locks, however, as we found throughout the whole trip, every lock was ready and waiting for us so we could motor right in - unheard of during the high boating season in summer! We drifted off to sleep to the roar of the train on the bridge above the locks this night, having made it through the entire Rideau lock system - 37 locks in three and a half days - without incident.

Day 5 we completed the final stretch into Kingston down the River Stxy and the Cataraqui, which wind their way through flooded mash and swamp land. Again, like for most of the trip, we were alone on the water. For those of you who are interested, some photos have been posted on Flikr (click on the Flikr link on the right side of the main page).

We will be spending roughly the next two weeks in Kingston getting things further sorted out on the boat before we leave for the US. We expect to leave sometime after the 15th of October (dependent on the weather).


Below is a video of a portion of the narrow Rideau.