21 May 2014

We pushed away (well after all the Sundaes we waddled away) from the Ilion dock a little after 8 this morning. We headed west through water that still had trash and tree limbs floating along. In about an hour of picking our way along we arrived at Lock 19.

It’s a pretty low rise at only 20 feet. It’s a little tricky to get into since there is a train bridge just before it. But we slid in, got bubbled up to the top and we were then off to Lock 20.

The Canal system was doing repairs in a number of places so we needed to wait for the channel to clear. We also passed two barges with dredging equipment on them. I can imagine that dredging is a year round process for them.

Lock 20 turned out to be pretty easy, but Lock 21 was a new wrinkle. Rather than lifting us up, it lowered us down. Susan was able to scoop the forward line from the upper level and I got the stern line. We then lowered down the 25′. We both though it was easier to go down, the water drops out the bottom and does not create the turbulence that coming in does.

A mile later it was time for Lock 21, also going down. This one was a little more interesting since there was water pouring into the lock from the top of the gate and from the bottom two corners. I looked like an elaborate fountain at work.

That was it for locks for the day. We soon motored through Sylvan Beach and headed into the open waters of Oneida Lake. We were watching the weather, there was rain predicted earlier in the day, but that had fizzled out, along with the wind. There were no waves, just flat and calm as the eye could see. Setting the autopilot we headed west at 10.5 knots, making short work of the 25 mile crossing.

We were soon berthed at Ess-Kay Marina, we have an amazing view of up and down the canal. A feature of the docks are slats that run from the top down into the water. These slats collect all the sticks and debris from the canal and keep it from running into your boat. Very nice.

We walked into downtown (by the way Google rocks on car distances, seems to be overly optimistic on “walking”) and had a nice dinner of ribs and “salt potatoes”. They are potatoes that are boiled in salt water to season the potato as they cook. Mom did that for years, we just called them boiled potatoes.

On the way past the Public Library there was a sign for “Now Appearing the Brown Brothers“. We were reading the sign and two guys go, “We hear it’s going to be a great show.” So we followed them in to find out they are the Brown Brothers. They were pretty good playing my favorite Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah and a made up song called Star Wars, (Note: Never ask eight year old kids for song requests). It’s neat to see the Libray hold these kinds of concerts.

We walked back and watched a very pretty sunset, all settled for our next few days.