Go West Young Man

Just before Denise left for home late last week, she did more domestic chores and left me with a full stock of clean clothes as well as doing her own because she is not quite done yet with the boat.

After Denise left I stayed at the Albany Yacht Club until the new crew arrived.  It turned out to be a great place.  Unlike a marina, most of the people here were members of the club and were around most of the holiday weekend.  When we arrived last Tuesday, they told us they had a happy hour on Wednesday evenings and a club dinner on Friday nights and we were welcome.  As it turns out, happy hour is really every evening at the gazebo.

The big fish on the roof was an addition that was added over the weekend.  They're taking suggestions for a name.  Special thanks to the dockmasters who helped us in and out and a few of the members that I chatted with daily, Tom, Dennis, Joe, Carol and many more.  I also met a couple of other loopers there, one of which also left today.  

 The yacht club was a popular spot for watching the Albany fire works Monday night.  The new crew, brother Ron and friend Mark arrived on Amtrak Monday afternoon right on schedule.  Conveniently, the station is just 5 blocks away.  By the time they stowed their gear it was alreay time to begin the Independence Day celebration.

We shoved off this morning just before 10 after I got Ron out of bed at 9.

I suppose like a lot of cities, Albany seems to have wasted what was and could still be a nice downtown water front, but instead they put in an expressway.  Maybe it can be blamed on the Feds because its an interstate, but none the less, its here and it really hides much of the skyline.

As we got a little further north on the Hudson, there was a better downtown view.

The crane in the middle of the above picture is at the capital.

We had about 10 miles left on the Hudson and one lock to traverse before our left turn onto the Erie canal.  I was getting a little worried about how this new crew was going to perform.

This was before the first lock at 11 AM, just 2 hours after getting up.  I have a pretty strict rule for myself, which is no drinking until stopped for the night, but I don't hold my crew to this rule.  Maybe I'll need to rethink this.  Even my friend Tom wasn't this bad.

The first lock is in Troy, NY, still on the Hudson and is called the Federal Lock.  It was about a 15 foot climb.

Mark had read about the kinds of locks we would be encountering and what the procedures were for easily getting through.  He was a quick learner and also gave Ron a quick tutorial and we through without incident.

In just another mile or so we came to the junction with Erie Canal.

We are now done going east, having reached our eastern most point of the loop off the coast of New Jersey last week at the west longitude of 73°56.162'.  For the next couple of months we are headed west or north before eventually turning south.

The junction is in Waterford, NY which happens to be the oldest continuously incorporated town in the country.  There's been a fair amount of investment in recent years to upgrade the Erie Canal facilities and many towns have improved city docks and offer free overnight tie ups, sometimes even with electricity in the hopes to attract boaters, like us, to stop and spend money.   We expect to stop at a few in the coming days.  We hadn't planned a stop in Waterford, but the first lock had a 25 minute wait, so we tied up and took a short walk.

 The first westbound lock is also the first in a series (called a flight) of 5 locks.  In just over 2 miles there are 5 locks that took us out of the Hudson River valley and up about 165 feet and into the Mohawk River. 

The signs like this one from lock 4 make it easy to keep track of the statistics of each lock.

Once through the flight of 5 locks we got a better perspective of what had just happened.  We are now over the escarpment and on the west side of the Hudson river valley.  The bluff in the distance in this picture is on the east side of the valley.

This series of locks kept my crew out of trouble.  Even though they had already started drinking beer, their lock duties through this back to back series of locks prevented them from over indulging.  It was already well after 2 PM by the time we went through lock 6.  Ron, who spends much of his idle time thinking about food, did not let me down when he produced lunch.

Of course we went under numerous bridges all day and of course I took pictures of all of them, but will only post the ones I find interesting because of design or because of history or because I happened to get a good shot.  This is the I87 between Albany and Schenectady, NY.

None of these bridges are "high bridges" like seen on the ICW and most are in the 21 to 24' clearance range. 

We went through one more lock in late afternoon and thought we had identified a spot to tie up to on a free town dock in Scotia, NY.  While Ron was napping, Mark and I went into the channel identified in the Waterway guide only to find a sign that said it was a private dock and not for public use, at least for today.  It looked like there was a water skiing show getting ready and that the dock was only closed for today.  The next spot identified in the Waterway guide was at lock 8, so we kept going.  We met a very boater friendly lock master at lock 8 and after talking to him the whole lock through time we decided to tie off on the lock wall just after his number 8 lock.

While we had planned to cook some burgers, our new lock master friend offered us a ride to a nearby pub, where we went for some bar food fare.  He even came back at the end of his shift and brought us back to the boat.  Now that is service.

We only covered a little more than 10% of the Erie Canal today (36 miles), but the 8 locks we completed are a little more than 20% of the total locks.