On Our Way To The Big City!

Today's Friday and we are going to leave Hop-O-Nose marina for New York. It should take a few days. Right now we are waiting for the tide to start going out. Then we will travel down the Hudson for about 6 hours until the tide starts to come back up. Not sure how far we will get.

Mauna-Kea is ready to go.

Yesterday was a very busy day with lots of cleaning and repairs and connect up all the wires for the mast. We also went to Walmart. It's true! All those pictures you see on the internet about Walmart shoppers are true. We saw a couple and he was dressed like a doctor and she was dressed like a doll, Laurie says Maggie Muggon's. We walked up to Walmart for some exercise and took a cab back. As we were waiting for the cab we did some people watching. That was a lot of fun!

Ahoy From The Poop Deck

 

Yes from the POOP deck. If you are following the blog back in July, I found a leak in the black water tank (holding tank). For all you landlubbers that means the poopoo peepee tank! I hate working on this thing. Well I thought I fixed it but the smell never went away. Laurie went down there and cleaned really good and an hour later it smelled. So I had to do the dirty work again. I wiped everything down real good, and you have to get your head right in there to look around. I loosened all the supports and lifted the tank and wiped underneath to let it dry. DIRTY JOB! Well it was wet again so I had to wipe it again and keep my head in there to watch for the leak. I found it! I always complained about this to the guys that installed it last year. They kept saying "it's a new tank". It was leaking from a place where they mold in a fitting, one drop every 10 seconds. So a little silicon and that stopped the leak. Today I asked the people in the marina to cut me a couple pieces of wood because the wood that was around the holding tank is all rotten.
August 22 we stayed in Amsterdam N.Y. for the night to wait for the rainy weather to pass by. The next night we motored 9 hours and made to Waterford N.Y. at Gate 2. The last 6 locks have about a 150 foot drop so they have 2 safety gates to hold back the water in case something goes wrong.
So August 23 we passed through the last 6 locks and made to the Hudson River ( YIPEEE! ) at Troy N.Y. It was a long way to motor 31 locks in 4 days, we are tired. As we were passing by Troy N.Y. I noticed  our speed was about 1 knot faster than normal. I also noticed that some docks didn't reach the water. We are in tides!!! The water will drop here about 4 feet so we will have to make sure when we tie up to a dock  that it's a floating dock. If it's not we have to keep our tie up lines loose for the changing tide. Something to get use to. Later in the day I notice that we were going 2 knots slower than we usually going and I also noticed the current going by the buoy markers. The tide comes up from New York all the way to the dam in Troy. Here are some pictures of the Hudson before Catskills.

 

Light house with the Catskill mountains in the back ground.

 

Traffic on the Hudson 

 

Some guys boat in Albany.

Some important building in Albany

 

 Troy N.Y.

So now we are in Catskills N.Y. to have the mast put back up. We arrived yesterday around 6 pm and the place was busy with boats having masts going up and coming down.

Hop-O-Nose Marina 

View of the docks

 

We had restaurant food for the fist time in 2 weeks. Great food.

 

 

 

Today we got a lot done and of course it was HOT!. 33 Celsius. Tomorrow I will finish the wiring and then it's shopping at Wallmart!. It's a 1 mile walk and then we will taxi back to the boat. We are planning to leave Friday morning. Now I will have to look at the tide charts. The tides will travel at a speed of 1 1/2 knots so it's best to leave while the tide is falling so I can go with the current. 

It's Been Very Hot!

We left Brewerton at 8 am and made it to lock 19 just east of Utica. That was a long hot day! We motored 11 hours that day and it was hot. We crossed Lake Oneida with no trouble at all considering our GPS stopped working. Seems our new GPS doesn't have the Erie Canal installed. Before we left I downloaded some charts and that was one of them. Lake Oneida was a long 21 miles but it was calm and cool. When we got to the other end Sylvan Beach looked like a great place to stay but we couldn't stop that early. We moved along until 7PM and couldn't find a place to stay so we stayed at the next lock. It was a very quiet night, it looked like we were in the middle of nowhere.

 

We need POWER! 

 OK I goofed, it may be the first time I ever made a mistake.

 

 



If we look back to when I found the mast support at Little Sodus Bay I was so happy with myself finding such a prize. Well after we set the mast down on the support guess where our power cord could be found??? As we docked in Brewerton I realized my first ever mistake. The power cord was under the mast support. No problem the solar will charge the batteries. NOPE! Because the solar panels are cover with the mast it wont charge that well when there's shadows on the panel. So when we got to lock 19 we had to lift the mast and get the cord out of the anchor locker. I lifted it just enough that Laurie could get her arm in and grab it. This was important just so we could make coffee or have a shower if we didn't get into a marina. So today we are in a very small town called St Johnsville NY. We are finding it very hard to provision the boat with food and water. When we stopped in at Brewerton we were told the grocery store was called the Easy Mart. We walked about 2 miles in the heat and found it was like a 7 11. Gas station with a small store with mostly beer. So we got lots of beer! Dragging all the beer back to the boat was so hot we had to stop and get Laurie and Ice Cream Cone! Laurie was happy!!

Pictures on our way down the canal.

 

 

We passed close to the Adirondack Mountains.

 

 

Here's a picture of us in the locks. Today we started going into locks that are going down. Locks are a little tricky. Going up there is a lot of current and it pushes you around a lot. Going down is so much easier. We got the hang of it after the second lock in Oswego.







Tomorrow we will try to get to Amsterdam NY then maybe Troy Monday and put the mast up again and then on our way down the Hudson.

 

Making Our Way Through The Locks
 

We left Sodus Bay around 2PM and made our way to Oswego NY.

We arrived about $PM so we thought we would get through one lock, so we entered lock 8 on the Oswego Canal. The Lock master was very helpful in our very first lock.



We had a very lumpy ride on the lake so we decided to stay between lock 7 and 8. Just on the other side of the fence was a very nice picnic shelter with tables. Great spot for the night and a lot of very friendly people walking by.

I wish we had more time to stop and look around but we are a week behind. We saw a great little town called Phoenix NY. It looked like a perfect spot to spend a day but we passed by there to early in the day. We finished the day at a small town called Brewerton NY. Today we went through 7 locks and decided we had enough of the heat. I will try and get some pictures of the inside of the locks. They are caked with green slime. We are wearing our gloves to protect our hands but our bumper covers are a mess. Tomorrow we will cross Lake Oneida witch is known to very rough with a westerly wind. We will cross tomorrow morning with 5 MPH winds so it should be a good motor. If it's a hot day we are going swimming!

We Are Ready To Head To The Canal

We had to wait until today to un step the mast. Yesterday was very stormy and windy. So we got busy early finding wood in the wood pile. I couldn't believe what I found. A set of frames just made for me. So I helped Skylar the marina manager get the frames on and drop the mast.

Mercy, Skylar's rescue dog was watching.

 

 

Then place the mast on and a few adjustments and we are off.

 

 

Thanks to Skylar and Mercy at Fair Point Marina for all there Help. This is a great place.

 





Everything Seems To Been Fine

We motored to Cape Vincent from Ganaoque on Sunday against a strong wind but no waves. We were in the St Lawrence so the waves were not to big. On our way we noticed a lot of trees have turned brown because of a lack of rain. It's been a hot month. It was a four hour trip but it was busy. Checking the engine and checking the batteries every half hour. All went well except for a small leak. I'm going to look for that maybe tomorrow if I have time. Cape Vincent NY is a very small town and we were told the best way to come into town is by water. If you come in by high way you will see all the run down houses and stores. We noticed some thing very different about this town. We could hear the dog barking about three blocks away. WOW it was so quiet. We stayed on the fisheries dock after checking in with customs.



So with all the research I did over the winter I missed something. I ordered a cruising sticker by mail for a boat over 30 feet to cruise in New York. NOPE didn't need that, I needed, not a cruising sticker but a cruising license. So the customs people gave me a cruising license and now I have to call in at certain cities and check in until I leave the U.S from Miami.
Today we are in Little Sodus Bay NY to take down the mast so we can go up the Erie Canal system. It was a long nine hours to get here from Cape Vincent. No wind but at least the waves were going in our direction. We  got a lot done today getting the mast ready. A little more to do tomorrow and we can get it down and on our way, if the weather co operates. This is another small marina and very quite. Very nice place.

THE WORD IS GIVEN!

Kevin the diesel guy says we are good to go. So we are on our way in the morning. We will head for Cape Vincent NY and check in with customs and fill with fuel and provisions. Then next stop will be Little Sodus Bay to have our mast taken down. I'm going to keep a close watch on the batteries and the engine for the next few days. I want to be able to come back to the Kingston area if there are any problems. I would rather pay a mechanic Canadian money than to pay in American!!! Also Kevin now knows the boat pretty good. Being stuck here in Gananoque was a bit of luck. We had some great people working on our troubles and if you want to get stuck this is the place to be. Kevin the diesel guy and Doug the electrician were great. I also have to thank Simon for walking me through a few things when I was too stressed to do it on my own. Dan Klick was also great for sending down parts to Gananoque. They don't have a place here that caries parts. I know I can always depend on Dan, he's a good friend. A couple of days ago I thought we would be sitting around a fire singing Xmas carols in Gananoque but yahoo we are on our way. We are hoping we don't have any more troubles. Lets cross our fingers. Thanks to everyone who helped and commented on our blog with encouraging words. It's off to the U.S.!

It's A Hot One!

It's been very hot on the boat even though we get a breeze coming down the channel. The weather has been perfect for sailing swimming and having a great time, but we can only see that from the dock. Today Laurie is very happy, it was ice cream day today! It was great but you had to eat it very fast. It was fun to watch the kids eat it, what a mess!
Kevin the diesel guy came last night and it was one step backwards again. The new alternator was putting out 17 volts. Way to much! So back to the shop it went. Today he said he has a solution to all of the alternator problems but he can't come today because it's his anniversary. That's ok I had looked for the leak in the engine. First of all we had to unpack all the stuff from the other locker and put in the boat some where.

I found the leak. It was in the water pump that Roy from Roy's Marine just put in new seals and reinstalled. As you can see it looks like he may have used black electrical tape instead of Teflon tape or he may have tried to stop a leak with the tape. Great job Roy!!!! If you don't know Roy he teaches a diesel mechanic course at Humber Collage. I think Roy should have another occupation. Butch tells me he shouldn't be qualified to work on a dinghy!!!

Still Waiting

We thought we were going to get away today but it's going to be a few more days. Kevin The diesel guy is doing a great job. There's so many small problems that he can't get to the all of them at once. So we sit down and figure out what's wrong and then I fix the stuff I can do and he does his stuff. So we are almost there. Kevin is very good at what he does but he only does this part time as does all the other mechanics in this area. So I have been busy through out the day fixing what I can do and he comes after dinner and does as much as he can. I have full confidence in Kevin to fix everything right so we won't have any more problems.
 It's been a very hot two weeks here but it's the best place to be, on the water with a breeze. All though it's been a warm breeze it's still better than being in town. The nights have been different. When you go to bed it's to hot for covers so the mosquitoes have there fun with you. So you spend most of the night slapping yourself in the face hoping your going to get that little bugger! Then in the morning as you wake up the flies are having there turn. With no covers on, they land on you then jump around and land on you every where they can. So your slapping them in the morning. So you wake up early in the morning slap happy! No need for an alarm clock! We have book our slip until Sunday here in Gananoque but we hope to be gone before then.

The Waiting Game!

So we are still on the dock in Gananoque Marina. We are trying to stay positive but it's not easy. Yesterday Kevin the diesel guy was to come with a new alternator regulator. Originally he came Wednesday night but he had the wrong one. He said I'll Be Back Tomorrow.  Well it was like waiting for the Bell Telephone man to come. He said he would be here after 5. Waiting and waiting and putting off dinner until he was finished. Like the Bell man he never came and never called. This is hard to keep your spirits up when this stuff happens. So I will have to call Kevin and find out if he's coming back on Saturday. He can't come Friday because he will be out with his wife. I have been working on the boat wiring myself and I have made progress with that. So we are so close to getting on our way. I hope that Kevin can get everything done on Saturday. We are crossing our fingers.

Trying to keep positive!

The diesel repair guy showed up yesterday. He did a lot of looking around and testing wires. He says he has to talk to the dealer of the " Next Step Regulator" that seems to be a problem. So I'm supposed to call him on Tuesday to find out what's going to happen next. He also looked at the dripless stuffing box and could not fix that unless the boat was out of the water. So when we get the boat going then we can decide where we can go to lift the boat out to fix the stuffing box. THEN we will be on our way to the States. I was also having more problems with my inverter. I called Doug and he told me to shut it off for a half hour and the turn it back on. A REBOOT!. He says the maker will not tell you that. Well what do you know, it worked! That Doug is a smart guy! So now we just sit around in the heat and wait. Some friends of ours took us to dinner last night to try and cheer us up. We had a great dinner and lots of fun. Thanks Brian and Renata. We took a short walk today to the water front for an ice cream. This made Laurie very happy again. Gananoque is a very nice place.