September 4-5

We departed from Lock 27 early on Tuesday morning. The mist was rising from the water and it was a beautiful morning. It was also particularly memorable, especially for the ‘admiral’, as it marked the first day of official retirement. You be the judge of how difficult this transition appears to be.

We tied up to the canal wall in Brewerton for the night. This was eventful for two reasons for us. There were three boats already tied to the wall, a sailboat and two trawlers. They were all from Canada and following a similar plan to ours. It is nice to know there are others to meet again along the way

The ‘middle’ section of the Erie Canal passes from Lyons to Rome. It follows the Seneca River and traverses Lake Oneida. It is more open and more populated, with many stretches of lovely homes.

There are seven locks along this section. Three of them are lift locks which raise the boat to a higher level. They are somewhat more turbulent and we have to work a little harder to keep the boat where we want it against the lock wall.


Another early start on Wednesday morning so that we can cross Lake Oneida in a calm. As it turns out, it is quite breezy to start, and becomes calmer throughout the trip. Once across the lake we make our way to Rome, where we meet Debbie and Wayne. They are going to join us for the next part of the trip.

We have made one other realization about the middle part of the Erie Canal. While there are many walls to tie up to, very few of them provide water or washroom facilities. It has been a couple of days since our last shower, and we are becoming less enamoured with ourselves, let alone each other. We decide to walk down to a small marina and inquire about the possibility of getting a shower. We track down the owner who says, ‘I don’t usually do this, but I could let you have a quick shower for … $20. Ya know, the price of hot water …’

We thanked him and returned, a little dejected, to the boat. Along the way Corinne asked, ‘Do you think we could fill that plastic shower bag. We did, and it felt great. We took a couple of pictures, thinking it would be interesting to include on the blog. After looking at them, it was unanimous - no one needs to see that!

September 3

We got a lazy start today, after a longer trip yesterday. Our passage took us from the ‘western’ part of the Erie Canal to the beginning of the ‘middle’ part. We are learning that each section has a personality of its own. We spent the night tied up to the lock wall on the eastern side of Lock 27. This picture is waiting to enter the lock. The lock keeper must either raise or lower the water for your passage.

The western section, from Tonawanda to Lyons, is very much a man-made section of the canal with narrow passages and many potential stopping spots along the canal walls. There is a towpath paralleling the shores of the canal which has been restored to make excellent biking and walking trails.

There is also a vibrant business in canal boats that people rent for a week or two to travel up and down the canal. They are very comfortable boats and the people we saw seemed to be having a great time – for the most part.

Earlier on, one of these boats came in to dock behind us, misjudged the current badly, and started spinning around so as to land on top of us. The cap’n managed to back it out into canal and take another run at it. He came head on to the canal wall and crashed magnificently into the concrete abutment, swung around slowly, and we were able to secure the boat without further incident. A husband and wife came off the boat and thanked us profusely for helping. The cap’n said he wasn’t really worried, because the boat was made of steel, weighed twelve tons, and built as strong as a tank. We can attest to that after seeing the big hunk of concrete it took out of the wall and shudder to think of what it would have done to our boat.

A few minutes later the wife, a real sweetheart, came by with two small bottles of wine and said she was so thankful we were there to help, as she was quite scared.

Shortly after that the third crewmember, the brother came by and said he didn’t know how the cap’n could be so stupid. He himself had years of experience with boats and his brother refused to listen to his advice. He was getting fed up.

The next day they pulled into Bridgeport, right in front of of us, and we were up in a flash to help again. This time the brother was at the helm, and guess what? Crash into the wall, just miss the boat behind them, give it one more try and six people were scrambling to get them safely moored.

The following morning, as we were preparing to cast off, the cap’n dropped by with four tomatoes from his wife’s garden and thanks for helping out.