Saturday, September 18, 2004
Inside the Erie Canal, Tonawanda, NY
Buffalo Harbor Light and Entrance
Farewell, Great Lakes! Thanks for the . . . well, uh . . . just thanks.
Tuesday marked the end of the beginning of our trip. We entered Buffalo Harbor in the early evening motored around looking for a place to drop the anchor. We ended up calling around for a slip. One of the only places to answer the phone was the Buffalo Yacht Club. They offered us a slip – first night free! Since we only were staying one night, it was well with in our budget, so we decided to go for it. Good choice. The people there are very nice. BYC Fleet Captain, Jerry Ravin, came out to personally welcome us and took a polite interest in our boat and in our trip. He offered us the use of all the club’s facility’s, as well as plenty of advise for our upcoming canal trip and clearing in with US customs. BYC is a beautiful place, with gorgeous facilities, and very friendly people. We’d like to thank BYC for all its hospitality during our too brief stay.
Buffalo Yacht Club
Wednesday, we cleared into the US, first thing, then headed north into the Niagara River toward our next destination, the Erie Canal. Making it this far is a big deal. First, for the next phase – the Canal – we have to lower our mast, which we will attempt to do ourselves. Also, this point marks an end of the Great Lakes portion of our trip – and ain’t we glad!
Mast Prepped for Lowering – Ready
Mast Down
Mast Stowed – We did It!
The Great Lakes was much more challenging than I’d ever imagine. Way back in Chicago, one of the Harbor Masters told us if we could sail the Great Lakes, we could sail anywhere. I hope that is true. I certainly thought sailing in the mountain winds on Lake Mead were bad, but the Great Lakes were much more challenging. I can count on one hand the number of truly good sailing days we had – two on Lake Michigan, one on Lake Huron, and two on Lake Erie, Lake Erie with the highest percentage of days sailed while traveling. Vanessa noted the Great Lakes had some of the most beautiful sunsets she’s ever seen and she loves Mackinac Island. I’ve had my life-long dream of sailing around the Lakes. We’ve both agreed, we won’t have any plans to return to sail here again anytime soon. Next time, it’ll be on some sort of fast and comfortable power boat – with reliable engines.
With the Lakes over, we turned out sites on the Erie Canal. Before we could travel the canal, though, we had to take down our mast, as the maximum overhead on the canal is around fifteen feet. We pulled into a marina just across from the canal entrance and proceeded to do the unheard of. Vanessa and I took down our 42 foot, 350 pound mast by ourselves. It took the whole day, Thursday. We were ready.
Welcome to the Erie Canal
Friday, we moved over to the Tonawanda town dock, inside the canal. We hadn’t provisioned in over a week, since Amherstburg, Ontario, and things were getting a little sparse aboard. The local Tops store was three blocks away, so we decided to stock up.
When we first began talking about cruising to our friends and family, we would get some pretty silly questions with obvious answers, like “What are you going to do for food when you’re on the boat?” It was as if people though we were taking off for six months of open ocean sailing with out ever making landfall. Obviously, we just go to the grocery store like every one else, but we soon tired of pointing out the obvious. We began coming up with crazy answers like “We have lots of fishing gear, so we’ll be good.” Or, “It is our weight loss/diet plan. We are guaranteed to lose weight, and keep it off as long as we stay out.” My favorite, of course, “Well, if we get real hungry, we can always bar-bee-que the cat.” People never knew if we were serious, joking, or stupid.
Going Shopping in Tonawanda
In actuality, shopping for the boat (or “provisioning” in cruiser jargon) is very similar to shopping for a household. We buy basically the same things we bought when we had our house, with a slight eye for storage in the confined, moist, marine environment. The challenge is getting $250 worth of groceries from the store back to the boat. Normally, you’d just throw everything in the back of the ol’ “grocery-gitter” and drive home. We needed lots of stuff, and since we’d be walking three blocks, we needed a plan. First, it would take us two trips to get every thing to the boat. Since we knew we’d be coming back for the “freezer” stuff on the second trip, we decided to borrow a grocery cart from the store to push everything over to the boat. After all, we were coming back for load two when we promised we would return the cart. So, down the sidewalk we went, pushing our rattley, rusty, old grocery cart filled with our bags of stuff (I bagged liberally to fortify my on board supply, of course).
We were just one happy family, pushing our grocery cart full of bags, when we decided, “Hey , wouldn’t it be great to take the bus over to Niaagra Falls for the afternoon?” We stopped at the bus stop, with our grocery cart, to check on the bus schedule when I had an awful realization. “Wait a minute. We are standing in a bus stop, pushing a grocery cart outside of the store parking lot, and we don’t have a permanent address. Oh shit! We’re homeless people!” I screamed. “We don’t live anywhere! We are pushing around a grocery cart and it is full of bags! We are in a bus stop! What do we do! We’re bums!” Then, I quickly calmed down, as I noticed the people at the bus stop were looking at me as if I were crazy. Last time I saw that look on someone’s face, I was looking at a real homeless guy standing on a street corner in San Francisco, screaming at people who had that same look. Well, needless to say, we decided not to take the bus to the falls. We promptly threw our bags on board Nereus and returned the cart to the store, hopefully shedding the homeless aura around us. We hand carried our second set of purchases and avoided the bus stop on the way by. After all, I’ve showered this week, so I can’t be homeless. Besides, we still have all our teeth. Plus, we’ve got groceries and haven’t taken to ravaging garbage cans. We sleep on a boat, not in a dumpster. We’re okay.
Top of Locks 35 & 34, Lockport, NY
Since getting off the Great Lakes, we’ve rediscovered the cruiser’s life style. We slept in today – the mast lowering pretty much wore us all out. Our new batch of groceries provided us with a nice pancake breakfast and fresh coffee. We departed on a newly found leisurely pace – late. We aren’t in any hurry here. There’s no stress of weather, no lake conditions or wind issues, no place to be, no long jumps to make. For once on our trip we are relaxed. It is nice.
Vanessa Ready to “Lock Down” at Lock 35
We traveled up the Tonawanda Creek portion of the Canal until we reached Lockport, NY, where we would begin our trip off of the Niagara Escarpment and down into the heart of the canal system. Lockport is home to the first set of Locks that would drop us 49 feet, in two steps, down from the Lake Erie level, to a level more in line with Lake Ontario. It is the first of many more locks to come, as we have to continue our downward trend, then back up and over the Adirondacks and back down to the Hudson River.
Looking 49 feet up at Lock 35 from Bottom Inside Lock 34
We’ve had two locks, so far. The first in Chicago, with a lift of all of about two feet. The second, the Black Rock Lock in Buffalo dropped us all of six feet. Big deal! Each of these two connected locks would drop us 24.5 feet each. We pulled aside to get our canal passes, visit the museum, and watch other boats go through before attempting it ourselves. Holy cat shit, that is a lot of water moving through those locks, and it is a long way down. In we went.
The currents around and in the lock are slightly violent and our fat, heavy, old boat doesn’t handle the best. However, we’ve got the mighty new Big Red under the hood and it makes a huge difference as I can force the boat to do things it has never been able to do before. Such as enter the lock when the doors are opening and swirling up a nasty current – we just plow through. Then it gets interesting. The giant lock doors creak closed behind you with a giant “Bang!” Then, the water starts to drop. Locks are really simple things, but the imposing size makes it all very exciting. Once out the bottom, we’re on our way down the canal.
Downstream of Lock 34/35, Lockport, NY
Life on the Canal is really laid back. The summer season is over here, so there is very little canal traffic. The Lockmasters and other canal folk are all incredibly nice, knowledgeable, and helpful. Canal life is kind of a subculture of its own. Perhaps, by the time we’ve locked though all thirty-some locks and cleared countless lift bridges we’ll feel differently, but for now, we are really looking forward to our time here on the Erie Canal. We are even trying to learn the song . . .
I got a mule, her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
She’s a good ol’ worker an’ a good ol’ pal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
You wanna know how the rest of it goes?
– Steve