Day 72...Schenectady, NY to Putman Park near Amsterdam, New York

SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 2012

     Let me tell you a little about navigating the canal.  What we’ve noticed about the red and green channel markers in the canal are the loops on top of each marker.  Each winter they hook the loop and haul them out of the water since the canal freezes solid.  How do you think they know where to put them back in the spring?  That’s where the markings on the trees or rocks or whatever’s handy come in.  Most of the time they use white for the green marks and red for the red ones.  The tree with both colors means that a red and green are needed at that location.  

     Farther up the canal there were colored boards with numbers on them that correspond with the number on the nearby buoy. Some of the bridges have red and green marks to let you know you may enter either section.  I just thought that was interesting.  

     We left the anchorage at 8:45 a.m.  We had been planning and reading since we woke up.  This was going to be a short day so we weren’t in a hurry.  When we first left Schenectady, we passed several rowers (One even had mirrors so he could see where he was going.) 

and a few kayakers.  

      We locked through Lock 8(14 feet, rope), Lock 9(15 feet, rope), Lock 10(15 feet, rope) and Lock 11(12 feet, rope) before we stopped for the night.  These shorter locks were ones with just ropes hanging from the top of the lock.  Gary gets a rope in front and I take the back one.  We both hold on as the water fills the lock.  I was worried at first that I wouldn't be able to reach the ropes, but they were long enough.   Some of the locks still have visible damage from Hurricane Irene.  Lock 11 had huge cracks in the walls that were worse than we'd seen in any previous lock.

     We locked through several of the locks with a nice guy named Tim.  He said his wife had just let him buy a bigger boat.  When he went ahead of us, I told him good luck with his new boat.  He told me he'd need it.   It looked like it was going to need a lot of work.

     Right before Lock 11 in Amsterdam, New York there was a marina called Riverlink Park.  It had a cute fence made out of people holding hands.

     On the other side of Lock 11, I took a picture for our Joel.  There was a vintage, red VW Beetle sitting on top of an old 80' redbrick smokestack.  It was placed there as a marketing gimmick for Dudka's Garage in Amsterdam.

     I really like the way we're approaching this trip.  We look through the books we bought and tentatively decide where we want to stop for the night.  If we get there and it's not what we expected, we keep going.  Then we might find a dock or maybe an anchorage, where we can spend the night.  That way we're never disappointed with where we end up.  
     Our planned destination for the night was Putman Park.  There was supposed to be a 150 foot floating dock before you get to Green Marker 229.  Irene struck again.  There was a dock AFTER the green mark that was about 60 feet long.  We only need 30 feet so it was perfect for us.  There were two old locks from the original Erie Canal there.  These lock were built so two barges could pass each other in the narrow canal.  You will need to enlarge the signs to read them.

   

     There was an old store there that used to service the travelers on the canal.  It was closed due to Irene.  I did take a picture through the window though.

      We took a walk in the woods until the bugs started biting us.  We saw an interesting sign.  

     You sure don't see many of these signs in Florida.  Good thing we didn't bring a snowmobile or we wouldn't be able to use it.  
     You must buy a pass to travel on any of the canals.  We bought one for the season ($75 for our boat) since we will be traveling in the canals for more than 10 days.  It is a purple pass that each lockmaster looks at so he/she can write the number down for their records. 
You can see it on the window in this picture of what is ahead of us tomorrow.

         We traveled 24.1 miles today in about 4 hours and 30 minutes of actual travel time not counting all of the stopping we did.  Our total miles are now 1524.