Days 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

These days are pretty much all the same. Just motoring down the Erie canal, passing through locks, avoiding floating logs and dodging massed seaweed. this requires constant attention and focus on the steering. So not much time for lounging about or sleeping as I was doing in previous days.

Nevertheless we made it from Kingston to Waterford in seven days, pretty good going.

There were a couple of notable events on these days. The most notable is the ingestion of seaweed into the intake hose for the engine. This hose provides fresh water to cool off the engine while it is running. The hose got clogged which caused the engine to overheat. Fortunately, we were tied up at a lock wall at the time. Lisa cleared the filter to no avail. She couldn’t get the hose off to check that. Fortunately the lock master who was exceptionally helpful. After trying to get the hose off he went to get a shop vac to try to suck and blow out the hose. Eventually he got it cleared. It took about two hours.

Another time we ran aground while approaching a wall where we thought we could tie up overnight, but we got stuck on the bottom. Fortunately, we managed to back off and we carried on down the river to the next lock. It turns out that overnighting at the locks was our best option anyways because it’s usually very quiet nobody else around and just generally pleasant being out in the countryside.

Then the freshwater intake got clogged again at another lock. We didn’t have a friendly lock master to help us out. The usual cleaning of the filter didn’t help. It was late in the day so we just packed it in and stayed at the lock overnight. In the morning Lisa had to get into the murky, yukky water to clear the intake which she did. Followed by a camping style rinse off.

Locking is pretty routine and we were getting good at it by the end! No misadventures.

We reached Waterford around noon on day 8 (Sep 21). Found the local diner.

We’ll stay here 2 days to rest and prepare for the next phase, which is getting down the Hudson River, past New York City to the final anchorage before the trip down the New Jersey coast. Maybe 5 days.