14 May 2014

We got up and walked over to Don and Paul’s Cafe. It is an old style breakfast place and at 8:30 it was very busy. Reminded me of Jack and Helen’s in Chesapeake City. In the back room was a pool table and it was very popular.

After walking across the bridge to make a pharmacy stop we were ready to go. There was a tour boat loading kids, so we waited for them to take off.

At 12:30 it was our turn and we entered Lock 2 and we were on our way! At the top of the lock was the Urger (shown above). It’s used up and down the canal as a demo boat for school kids. And sure enough there were lots of kids around it.

But no time to spend gaping, the next lock was soon there. And the ones after that in quick succession.

The “5 flights” were fun, but a little taxing. The fairly rapid pace made for an interesting run, but I think we missed out on some photos. There was one place that someone had set up a small table and two chairs on the canal wall behind their house. What a place to sit and relax!

Once we got past the locks our next issue was a fixed bridge showing 20′. We are 19′ tall so I needed to drop the VHF and GPS antennas. We slid by with room to spare, which I thought was unusual, but didn’t give it much thought.

We pretty much had the Erie Canal to ourselves and the Quo Vadimus raced along. We passed some spectacular waterfront home high on the hills overlooking the water.

As we approached Schenectady I noticed that there were a number of crew boats in the water. We slowed to 5 kts so our wake wouldn’t swamp them.

We came around the corner to what looked like an abandoned Marina. We were planning to stay at the Schenectady Yacht Club, it was a recommendation from Brian at Shady Harbor Marina. We called the club and were told we were in the right place and we should pull to the fuel dock, just past that was our slip.

Once we got tied up we got told the story of the docks. The power dam we had passed a few miles ago was in the process of doing some repairs. They drew the water down in their section of the canal. Which caused the floating docks at the Yacht Club to rest gently on the bottom. We were told that repairs would be done soon, the water level would be back and boats would be launched.

Susan made a wonderful steak dinner. After dinner we put our recliner chairs on the dock and watched the water activity and read.

Crew practice was still in full swing, with the boats racing up and down the river. Every so often we would see a two person canoe flash by, the two people paddling with a vengeance. Susan finally figured out that it was a health club, an the canoeist were out for exercise.

Ahh what some people will do just to be out on the water.