Sunday Aug 26-Monday Aug 27: Lyons to Baldwinsville to Phoenix

Sunday we had another short walk about town in Lyons and then topped off the water before leaving.  Very hot and humid here but today a small breeze from the SW, which is very welcome.  Thunderstorms were forecast, so we played toneau on-toneau off on the fly-bridge, and then we ended up taking down the bimini when we heard how low the upcoming railroad bridge was.  Good thing, because Dan could touch the underside of the bridge from a standing position as we passed under it.  After this bridge, we’ve heard we don’t have to worry anymore about the bimini, as the heights are all 18 feet or more. 

We spent a leisurely day cruising through the Montezuma Heritage Preserve.  Just inside was a spendid example of an aquaduct - pity it isn’t used any more. 

Saw lots of herons and kingfishers, a few turtles, and some great white egrets as well as one bald eagle.  It’s a thirty mile stretch through this preserve to the next lock, which made for a long day, but it was a pleasant one. 

Great blue heron

We got to Lock 25 - Baldwinsville - just after five pm and tied up at the seawall, pleased to find electricity there.  We don’t use the fridge, and we have plenty of battery power for lights, but it is very nice to be able to hook up the box fan to get the air moving.  The temperatures haven’t been going down much at night.  I think in the future we’re going to want to put in some a/c.  

Baldwinsville is yet another charming town with grand, historic houses and a lot of history they are proud to display on plaques.  We took a long walk, in search of ice cream, and finally came to what looked like a gas station/convenience store called Byrne Dairy.  We not only enjoyed some great ice cream, but scored some River Rat cheese!  We discovered River Rat cheese on our last big adventure, when we spent a couple nights in Clayton, NY on the St. Lawrence River.  (We love the cheese so much, we’ve even ordered it online for Christmas presents.)  As we sat eating our ice cream, we met a wonderful woman from Baldwinsville who told us she was 90 years old and filled us in on her growing up in town (no plumbing, no electricity) and her many vacations in Maine with her husband.  She was funny and full of stories and I hope she enjoyed our company as much as we did hers.  

Monday we awoke to a high-pitched alarm going off somewhere outside- we finally traced it to our own fly bridge, much to our chagrin, as the Monk 36 right behind us was also searching to find the source.  It was a propane sensor - no propane nearby, but the sensor was diligently alerting us anyway.  Dan spent the morning dealing with that and working in the engine room changing the fuel filter and inspecting the impellor while I tied up and kept Tommie distracted from the open hatch.  We had a short day cruising to Phoenix, so we weren’t too upset that we didn’t set off until just after noon.  We got to our destination about 2:30, plenty of time for a walk and a visit to the laundromat, which is located just steps away from the tie-up. 

Phoenix is at the mouth of the Oswego Canal, in 2015 and decided it would make a good overnight stop before we travel into and through the Oneida Lake on our eastbound course.  We have officially traveled halfway through the Erie Canal and are now retracing our 2015 path.  Phoenix is a great, friendly little town, famous for the Phoenix Bridge Brats - teenagers doing their community service for church, scouts, or school.  They offer to run errands of any kind for the boats tied along the seawall here.  There is also a cute little canal-side park with a band pavilion and tonight it’s busy with a church supper/fundraiser and dancing courtesy of the local band.  Unlike other canal-side parks, we get the feeling the town would be doing this whether or not boats were in residence - many townspeople are here dancing, eating, or just sitting in the lawn chairs they brought for their evening out.  We had hotdogs and 'coneys' (think red hotdogs only they are white) and pie and listened to a mix of country and sixties music.  So fun, so small town.  

Church supper table.

The band pavilion and dancing.

Friday, August 24-Saturday August 25: Spencerport to Macedon to Lyons

Friday we left Spencerport around 9:30 am and headed back into the Canal.  We had consulted our new friend Dick the Canawler about choices to spend the night and he strongly urged us to consider Pittsford, so that was our preliminary destination.  As we traveled closer to Rochester we encountered more roads, and that meant more bridges to pass under.  The lowest height of fixed bridges on this part of the Canal is 16 feet.  We are just over 15 feet with the bimini up, so we had some nail biting moments.

The top of our bimini just clears the bridge by inches.

We also performed a man overboard drill on a drowning bat.  We both spied something floundering in the water at the same time and Dan plucked it up with the net.  We laid him out on the back deck to dry out, hoping he wasn't injured.  It took a couple of hours, but our bat friend perked up enough to start hissing and snapping at us.  We scooped him into a hat and put him ashore when we arrived in Pittsford just after lunch.

Rescued bat.

We opted for a walking stop in Pittsford instead of an overnight stop because of the time.  We criss-crossed the Canal at the lock we'd just come through as well as at a couple of bridges and ended up at a brew-pub Dan had read about called Lock 32 Brewery.  We stopped for a beer (Dan) and cider (me) and left unimpressed by the lack of interest in service by the lone bartender.  We were the only two people in the bar for a good twenty minutes and he never greeted us or even made eye contact until I bluntly asked if he was serving.  He was more interested in his phone, but we noted that he did manage to welcome a group of bicyclists who came in just before we left.  Because of our dawdling at the brewery, we ended up missing the lock opening at Macedon and tied up to the seawall for the night.  Locks close at 5 pm - something they failed to mention in the Boater's Resource guide the lock master hands out.  Now we know.

Macedon is a very small town, whose main claims to fame are being one of the few places in New York where you can see all three versions of the Erie Canal side by side and a very large plastics manufacturing company.  The town itself is a ten minute walk from where we tied up, and there were no amenities.  Friday evening we took a walk around and literally stumbled on the remains of an earlier version of the Canal. Saturday morning we took a walk through a nearby Butterfly/Memory garden and came upon the site of where the three different Canals sit side by side.  (In Macedon they use the older canals as spillways.)  The original Canal was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide.  The second Canal was 7 feet deep and 70 feet wide.  The latest one is much wider and much deeper.

Three canals side by side - the sign points to each one.

Saturday we set off from Macedon close to 10 am, this time with no destinations in mind.  The lock keepers always ask and we just tell them we don't know.  (They ask because they call ahead to the next lock or opening bridge to warn them we are coming.) The weather was very hot - nearly 90 degrees - but with a good breeze.  We've been told it's been hot since the beginning of June.  There was more activity on the Canal today - lots of people out fishing, though several of them said they hadn't caught anything and that fishing in general has been slow this summer.

We stopped for a quick walkaround in Newark, and made a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up some hamburgers for supper.  We've been making great use of our little grill!  Newark had some charming trompe l'oeil murals:

We opted to spend the night in Lyons, which is a very boater-friendly place with free tie-ups, electricity, and water, and great showers at the fire station.  Unfortunately, the town is also enjoying an extended vacant building festival.  It's such a fine line for these waterfront places - they work hard to attract boating and cycling tourists, but when you get beyond the actual dock there isn't much there.  We saw this in the South along the Intracoastal Waterway too.  We took another walk in hopes of seeing the remains of aqueducts that used to line the Canal but it was hard to tell without accompanying pictures what the remains actually are.  We've been told that tomorrow we'll see some better ones as we cross through the Montezuma Nature Preserve.

Bringing Home the new Willie Dawes: Aug 19- August 23 Grand Island NY to Spencerport NY

We spent several months this past spring thinking about, looking at, and deciding what we wanted in a new boat.  Don't get us wrong - we love our 30 foot motorsailer, and she served us well on the Down East Circle, down the ICW, and to the Bahamas.  But we thought, if we could find something a bit larger, maybe with two cabins/two heads, maybe with the galley up on the same level as the inside helm, maybe with a fly bridge....?  Well, we wouldn't say no.

Introducing the new Willie Dawes.
Yes, we're keeping the name. She's a Newburyport 37, and met all our criteria, including being in the price range we wanted. She's a trawler. We've gone fully to the dark side. And we LOVE her!

Dan took two trips out to Grand Island, NY this summer - once to look her over, and the second time, after the sale had gone through, to bring out the initial load of stuff every boat has.  On Sunday, August 19, after we'd finished with our very busy summer schedule of commitments, we rented a truck to bring out the dinghy and everything else we thought we might need.  The truck turned out to be a lot larger than we wanted (Dan had asked for a 12 foot truck, they 'upgraded' us to a 16 foot truck) and despite our best efforts, we only managed to fill it less than half-way.  With the awesome boat cat Tommie in the cat carrier, we set off early Sunday morning.  We spent the night in a 'pet-friendly' room at a hotel in Syracuse ('pet-friendly really means DOG friendly, but Tommie tolerated the smell) and arrived at the marina in Grand Island just before noon on Monday.

We spent the entire day Tuesday unloading and stowing, taking breaks only for meals and to make a large provisioning stop at the local grocery store.  By dusk the truck was empty, the bed was made, and we even knew which cupboard everything went into.  We toyed with the idea of setting off in the morning, but the looming thunderstorms and 20 kt winds kept us at the marina for another day.  We found things to keep us busy, and ran into previous owners Jeff and Eileen at the grocery store when we stocked up on the last minute fresh produce and meat.  They offered to help Dan get the rental truck back.

Tommie has settled into boat life as if she never left it, and has, in fact, explored every inch of the boat.  She thoroughly enjoys a good game of hide and seek - she hides, we seek - and has shown us several access portals into the engine room.  She loves the large dashboard and the big windows, but still doesn't care for the sound of the engine.

Diarama of the old locks next to the new locks.

Wednesday we set off at 9:25 am and entered the Erie Canal five minutes later to start the journey across the state of New York.   We began our journey on the flybridge and had a weather-drill hastily evacuating everything to below decks and snapping on the toneau (the canvas cover that goes over the flybridge helm and seats.)  Nothing like a sudden rainstorm to sharpen our skills!  We traveled about thirty-five miles, with a break just after the first two locks in Lockport to have a walk around the town and visit the history museum.  Lockport initially constructed a 'Flight of Five' - five locks to raise or lower boats along the steep Niagara Escarpment.  There were two sets of locks - one for each way - an engineering feat for the early 1800s.  Today the remains of one set of locks is right next to the two modern locks.

The remains of one set of the old locks in Lockport.

We continued on and spent the night in the charming small town of Medina, whose claim to fame is the quarrying of quality sandstone used in Buckingham Palace, the Brooklyn Bridge, and other famous buildings. 

So far, this section of the Erie Canal has been entirely man-made, mostly hand dug with shovels.  When you think about it, the whole Erie Canal is an engineering marvel.  We were actually above the surrounding landscape, which often comprised of large farms on one side, and small towns on the other.

See how straight the dike is. 

Farm lands on one side.

Towns and houses on the other side.  

Many of the towns along the Canal exist because of the Canal, and so far all of them have shown to be extremely boater-friendly, with seawalls to tie to, bathrooms and showers to use, and the downtown area just a block away.

Thursday (Aug 23) we set off from Medina around 9:20 am and spent a leisurely day viewing deer grazing in ball fields and herons playing on the Canal's edge, working our way from lift bridge to lift bridge until we stopped for the night in Spencerport.  This town has a small museum/welcome center with official packets for the boaters offering a walking tour of the town as well as free Wifi and suggestions for meals.  Dan and I spent an hour sight-seeing and enjoyed an ice cream on benches in the shade alongside the Canal.  So far the weather - though somewhat showery at first - has been quite warm.  Ice Cream sounded like a good idea to me!