Life in the Erie Canal Time Warp

Because of the damage to the dams and the locks caused by hurricane Irene, we are waking up everyday in the same town waiting for word from a trucking company on when they can haul Sinbad to the east coast.

This is a picture of Mike Czarnopyski.  Mike is new to sailing, he just bought Endeavour and we've shared more than one bottle of wine with him. I was asking him where I could rent a car so I could take Diane to Niagra Falls for her birthday, he thought for a minute and said "Just take mine". Cool! He dropped it off the night before and we took off Sunday morning.

The bridge behind Di goes to Goat Island, we walked across to check out the rest of the falls.

Check out the Black Hole or Time Warp at the bottom of the falls in front of the Maid of the Mist. I don't know, but I think that if you went in it you would end up on the Erie Canal.

We went to the bottom of the falls to check out the Cave of the Winds.

We had a real nice day at the falls. The only problem was the next morning we woke up on the Erie Canal.
Happy Sails...........rr

Life on the Erie Canal,

Well, it’s day 12 on the Erie Canal.  Our progress was blocked by substantial damage caused by Hurricane Irene; at least two of the locks have been badly damaged, another had a channel washed around it, and they are not expected to open again this year.   For two grumpy days we proposed different scenarios to each other, and none of them were good.  We decided that the “least worst”choice was to load Sinbad onto a flatbed and ship to Catskills NY, on the Hudson River, and resume our intended course toward the Chesapeake.  Then came Tropical Storm Lee, pouring torrential rain onto NY and PA, and actually causing the NY highway system to cancel trucking permits, which forced us to stay on another week and more, up through today.

We’ve been enjoying  the lock towns.  Lockport, our first stop and first and deepest locks on the Canal, introduced us to the history of the canal in their interactive discovery center and the old museum right on the original lock.   Middleport has not developed quite so much to cater to boaters, but their biker bar was friendly and served  tasty fish and chips.  The dockage is free there too, which helps a lot, given the unexpected expense of shipping the boat.  Brockport has embraced boaters by building a brand new boater facility with showers, laundry and internet access, staffed by volunteers. Many of the staffers are retired faculty from SUNY @Brockport, and were engaging to talk with.  I chatted with Fransisca for nearly an hour, a retired reference librarian at the U., who escaped from Hungary during the revolution in the 50’s. What a story!  Once we accepted that we had to turn back, we backtracked to Medina, where again the dockage is free, the farmer’s market sets up next to the docks, with luscious peaches and other local produce still glistening with the morning dew.  We hang out withour new friend Mike, who is the owner of the sailboat next to us, and he graciously loaned us his car for a day trip to Niagara Falls, where Randy took me for my birthday! There is also an affectionate, snow white cat who works the docks and comes to visit.

Here are some pix of my birthday at Niagara Falls!

 

All the waters we have known in Lakes Michigan and Huron rushing over the escarpment. Awesome.

 

The bridge tenders and lockkeepers of the Erie Canal have gone out of their way to be polite and helpful, and  to personally welcome boaters.  Likewise the townspeople along the way.  This has been a nice experience; we’re lucky to have been marooned  in such hospitable circumstances.  We could have been stranded in a disabled lock, could have been high and dry with the boat on a truck that can’t deliver, and all the while paying for rental car and hotel… could have been caught in the flooding or if we had left a week earlier…we’re glad to be here!

Giving Up on the Erie Canal

Well, it's been fun, interesting, frustrating and thankfully, almost over. The almost over part is Sinbad being a canal boat. I'm sure the fun, interesting and frustrating part is still in our future. The trucking company will let us know in the morning on which day we load our home up on a truck and head to the Hudson River. We think it will be Monday the 12th of Sept.

Canal boat Sinbad at Medina NY

We have been taking our time enjoying the small towns and friendly people. Not one bad experience, everybody has been really helpful. Three or four times people have offered to drive us to a store. One couple invited us to dinner at their home in Spencerville (unfortunately we never made it that far).

These pictures are of Medina, but they could have been of Brockport or Lockport. The people who live in these towns take a lot of pride in their towns and it shows.

This is Capt. David. We shared a dock for 3 or 4 days with him and his sailing partner Trisha. Good people. David has turned his Catalina 30 into a canal boat. It weighs about 12 thousand more pounds than it should so he sails on the open water very carefully.

Our friends Mike and Nancy Glover took these pictures of us leaving East Tawas Michigan.

 It seams like just yesterday............Happy Sails....rr

Tell me, How Does it Feel...

Like a rollin’ stone!!!!!

Jim asked how it feels to be actually doing this.  

This comes after months of really intensive planning and organizing, like playing a chess game and thinking eight moves ahead.  So many times I felt like my brain was overheating , and  I often woke during the night to mull over a problematic situation to be dealt with, all the while working full time and trying to get the boat prepared  while she lay in her slip three hours from my house. Pressure and stress. Now, I live hour to hour and day to day.  The weather determines what we do, and the boat tells us what she needs.  It seems light years from my working life already, though I am staying closely connected with family.  I really like it.

Our home is our boat, and everything we have is on board, for better or worse. Not owning a car adds an element of uncertainty. We’d like to have a full length mirror, but since we were unable to get one to leaving, it will be a bit trickier now with no car.  We stuffed our laundry into our backpacks today and humped it to the Laundromat, which fortunately was just across the canal.  We bought our groceries and likewise carried them back to the boat in our backpacks, last time a mile each way and uphill both ways, so there were no gallons of milk or 12 packs of soda.  Don’ t know how we will get to West Marine, or when, and that’s a necessity!!!

Also you would not believe how easy it has been to lose things right in the boat. I’ve lost my bite splint (it’s still missing, though I don’t grind my teeth as much now , see Paragraph One above).  We are still sorting, consollidating storing things here, them moving them again as practicality suggests.   But we’ve  only been aboard a couple of weeks, so  it will become organized in time.

Randy and I are getting along well as always, and mainly what we are working on is learning up to  communicate completely with each other.  Our mindreading skills are not super keen, so we are learning to verbalize our thoughts more completely when we are engaged in a boat maneuver, or working on a project since our life experiences have been so different. I am still learning a lot about tools and systems that Randy knew in kindergarten. 

We learn new things daily, especially during passagemaking. Our first lock experience in the Canal system was pretty awkward, and the lockkeeper at the second lock gave us some pointers which helped.  We research each leg of our passage ahead of time using charts, cruising guides,NOAA coast pilots, and of course our smart phones, which have been a real asset.  Soon we will be learning about tides and currents and lots of different types of boat traffic .  We have to be willing to embrace constant change during passage making.

Randy is really good at waking up during the night to check on the boat.  This has saved our bacon at least once.  I will need to get good at that too, but at present  I could sleep through a hurricane most nights. Our days are usually pretty busy and often physical, which makes for good sleeping.

How do I feel?  I haven't yet felt fear, but urgency.  I  anticipate the future and in general enjoy the constant change.  I can  feel  growing self sufficiency and confidence which are the rewards of taking on a task with whatever preparation I have.  At some point, you just do it.