June 21-22     

     We had a nice quiet morning at anchor, a nice respite from the near constant  beehive of outboard motorboat  activity of the Thousand Islands. Not to sound negative but they got a bit obnoxious after a while.  

     Kathy got some artsy shots of the layered mist that was covering some the shores.

About 0930 we hove up the anchor and were on our way to the Eisenhower and Snell Locks. Bill and Kathi on our “Buddy Boat”  Jarana  followed suit and soon passed us by.  As it seemed we were in no hurry to get to the busy lock, we took a couple of side channels and did some sight-seeing.  Seems like we were in the sights of the border patrol, as they did several fly-bys.  Probably thought we were lost, and if we were, so be it.

     We caught up with Jarana at the lock and tied up to await instructions from the lock-master.  We were told that it may be from 2 to 4 hours until they could get us thru.  No ship had been thru the lock since the cruise ship incident.  As we were tying up, the first ship was entering lock “IKE”.

To catch up with the story, Friday nite we learned that a cruise ship had an accident in one of the locks and that the locks would be closed until further notice.  We were still several days from there so we started gathering information.  From Tom Giguere in NH, and Al Pease in Camden, we learned that a small cruise ship had hit a lock, injured numerous people, and that the lock had to be drained to keep the ship from sinking!  We waited for good news, but all we heard was, assessing the damage to the ship, the lock, and how many ships were waiting in line to get thru. 

While we were tied up waiting for the lock I installed our new swim ladder, anticipating water warmer than 62 degrees downstream. Finally the lockmaster drove up and told us to be ready in ten minutes, as they were going to let us thru as soon as the ship cleared the lock. 

When we got into the lock we asked what had really happened with the cruise ship.  He told us that as soon as the ship got into the lock and it should have been slowing down,  it sped up!  It went all the way to the front of the lock and ran up on a concrete wall.  We’re not sure it was leaking, but they were afraid to pull it off the wall and make a bad situation worse.  They took things slowly, and made a plan and eventually got the ship out, inspected the wall, and got things going again.  I suspect next time we come thru there will be a sign saying “CHECK BRAKES”

      As it turned out we were only held up a couple hours. After our drop of 42 feet in the IKE lock,  we pushed on to the Snell Lock.  (Not sure who Snell was, maybe the guy that was next in line to Nixon?) Down another 40 feet and ready for 25 miles lock free on Lake St Francis.  

Badly in need of Ice for our cooler we swung in to a dock on the NY side that had gas pumps and an “OPEN” sign.  We tied up, met a nice man with his dog “Jujitsu”, and went into the store.  The store had a freezer with ice cubes, a cooler with beer and soda by the can, a rack with small bags of potato chips, and 50:1 2-cycle oil!  Great store, we left with four bags of ice and a cold Bud Light. Then we realized we were back on the Etats-Unis side of the river, oh well, needed ice!

     We set back out into the river, met another inbound ship, and started exploring once again.  We set off into some more side channels and after 6 or 7 miles found an adequate spot to drop the hook for the night.

      We are anchored just off the ship channel at “Summers Town”, between Stanley Island and Little Hog Island. We will count the ships that sail past by the number of times we get rocked in the night.

A great meal of meatloaf, brussel sprouts baked with garlic, and mashed potatoes with gravy.  As Kathy would say, comfort food.