Day 77...Lock 17 to Community Marina, Ilion, New York

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2012

     After watching the big boat lock through Lock 17 yesterday, I thought I might lose sleep thinking about it, but I didn’t.  I wanted to go through the lock as early as possible so we wouldn’t have an audience in case we messed up.  Locks are manned starting at 7:00 a.m. so at 7:05 a.m. we requested a lock through.  The lock looked enormous as we approached it.  Of course the gate was dripping water as they said it would.  We stayed inside to stay dry, as I said we would.

     The lockmaster said to go as far forward as possible for an easier ride.  We always go as far forward as we can.  Sometimes the ropes are fairly far apart so we look for two as close together as possible so it will be easier to hold on.  On this lock with such long ropes, ones that are close together are more important than ever.  The picture of the steel wall is deceptive.  It is much higher than it looks in the picture since the water was going to raise us 45 feet.   

     The door opens and closes on the counterbalance system.  Simply a huge cement rectangle is used as a counterweight.  As the block rises the door closes.  As the weight lowers it opens.  At least I think that's what Gary explained to me.  Here are a series of pictures of the door closing.  You can see the gray block move, until it is under the wide steel bar at the top and the door is closed.  The last picture shows the weight better after we have finished the rise. 

     Here are the usual going up pictures.  I included one of Gary of course decked out in his long gray gloves.  Do you think he'd rather have my beautiful purple ones?  I don't think so. I kinda like my purple ones.  The water was really swirling, but we had no trouble at all.  That boat yesterday made it look much harder than it really was.

     As we left the lock, I took some pictures of the gneiss rock walls.  We were going to explore the rocks but ran out of time.  No rock climbers this early.  The rock walls were pretty high on the port side.  Some even had houses perched up on them.  I took a picture of the view of Little Falls from the boat, but you can only see a couple of big brick buildings.

     We proceeded to Lock18(20 feet, rope and cable).  As you can see the water is smooth as silk today.  Inside the lock as the water entered, there were only bubbles instead of lots of swirling water.

Here I found an interesting building right by the lock.  I took pictures of it as we came up to show you our perspective from bottom to top.

     Some one at this lock must be a bird lover.  There are bird feeders hanging off the sign and at least 6 of these white birdhouses.  I guess with the extra time they have between boats,  bird watching gives them something to do.

     As we were leaving the lock we saw a Mama and a baby on our port side.  A Mama tug and a baby tug that is.  Isn't the baby cute?

     About 6 miles later we made it to Ilion, New York our destination for the next several days.  Allison and the kids came right on time at 4:00 p.m.  More about the Ilion Community Marina and the rest of the day later.  Today we traveled 10.4 miles in almost exactly 2 hours.  Our total now is 1572 miles.

PS:  The replacement MiFi came and it seems to be working.