Since we locked through Lock 12 we have
been in the Champlain Canal. This
canal is called the “History Canal”.
The 60 mile long canal was completed in 1822 to connect Whitehall and
Waterford. The guidebook says,
“Before our country’s independence, this waterway played an important role in
our history. The British, French
and Americans all traveled north and south along this stretch of country. Battles were fought, men died and were
laid to rest along this path.”.
We left at 6:45 a.m. The weather seemed to be all right
until we got a little further down the Champlain Canal. We had that dreaded F-O-G word again. For a while it was very hard to see.
Remember yesterday, “What has brown and
white spots and eats grass?” Well,
today it’s a cow, not a deer.
As the fog thinned out, we saw a houseboat
and a trawler in front of us. We
slowly caught and passed the houseboat.
A fast boat passed us and entered Lock 11(up 12 feet, rope and pipe)
just before we did. Gary said from
now on we might as well catch the ropes so both of us would be working instead
of just him.
As usual I was on the stern of TRAVELLER,
doing my holding on duties. The
lockmaster waited on the houseboat since it wasn’t too far behind. While we were waiting, Gary was talking
to the guy on the trawler to the left in front of us. More about them later.
When the houseboat entered the lock, the first thing they did was run
into the lock wall with the front of the houseboat. The old lady in front grabbed her line but the older guy in
the back couldn’t grab his so the back drifted away from the wall and turned
sideways in the lock. After gunning the outboard several times, she let go and
they tried to grab lines closer up toward our boat. I did not have my camera or there would be pictures to go
along with the story. All the
while I was saying in my head, “Please don’t hit my boat!” over and over in my
head. After 20 minutes and 8 or 10
tries, they finally had both lines.
I heard them tell the lock lady that this was their first lock. We don’t want to be in their second
lock with them.
Needless to say we maxed out our speed to
try to leave them in the dust. We
did pretty good and ended up traveling right behind the trawler named GRACE. They seemed to match our speed pretty
well. We could gauge the heights
of the bridges easily with them in front of us.
There was no Lock 10 so next we locked
through Locks 9(up 16 feet, rope and pipe) and Lock 8(down 11 feet, rope) with
them. We had to wait for a tug and barge to
clear Lock 8 before we could go in.
There’s that commercial traffic rule again. It’s also the rule about them being much bigger than us.
In the Skipper Bob guides there is a
contributor named Fred Wehner and his boat Tug 44. Well, here it is. We just happened to see it as we were cruising by. As we’ve said before, faster boats never see everything that slow boats
do.
After Lock 7(down 10 feet, rope and
pipe), the Hudson River Dredging Project is working to remove
PCBs from the river. For several
miles we had to be very careful to avoid all of the tug and barge traffic
related to the cleanup. There were
at least 10-12 cranes, 10 tugs and 20 barges working in the area.
So far we have been traveling on the
23-mile long man-made canal. After
Fort Edward we will enter the navigable Hudson River for the remaining 37
miles. Fort Edward was not on the canal but up the Hudson River before it
intersected the canal.
Lock 6(down 16 feet, rope and pipe) came
next. There was a red barn that someone seemed to be restoring very close to
the lock. I did take pictures of
inside the lock just this time.
GRACE proceeded us through the river passing a
paddle wheeler called CALDWELL BELLE.
Everyone waved to us. They
seemed to be having a very good time.
The dam just before Lock 5 is what they call an
invisible dam. If the big orange
balls with the gulls on them weren’t there, it would be hard to see the dam. It reminds me of an
infinity pool.
Lock 5(down 19 feet, rope and cable) was
going to be our last lock with Bill and Linda on GRACE since they were going to
spend the night at Schuylerville.
They said that they lived near Waterford and would drop by to see us at
the dock when we were there. It
was nice to travel with them although Gary talked to them much more than I did
since I’m at the back of the boat.
We didn’t see as much boat traffic on the
canal today. We did see a family
enjoying the water just hanging around in their inner tubes. I think it would be fun to do on a hot
Saturday.
See if you can see the tiny brown sign in the first picture that says this is the Saratoga National Historical Park. I blew it up for you
in the second one. They say that
if you want to take the 4-mile walking tour of the battlefield and see the
museum, you just have to walk 2.5 miles (mostly uphill) to the Visitor’s
Center. You know me well enough to
know that I passed on this tour.
After Lock 4(down 16 feet, rope and
cable), we watched some kids jumping off Bridge C5. We were only going to have 6 inches clearance. Boy, was I glad we made it under
without breaking our light again.
Lock 3(down 20 feet, rope and pipe) was
our last lock of the day. A little
less than a mile later, we pulled in to the free dock at Mechanicville, New
York. We had traveled 52 miles in
8 hours and 18 minutes. Our total
mileage was now 2274.
No comments:
Post a Comment