Waterford is a great cruising town. The town provides free dockage for up to 48 hours with WiFi and washrooms. The grocery store is a short walk away and the stores allow you to take the carts back to the dock, then they come and pick them up once a week. The lighthouse liquor store is a bit farther than the grocery but they will drive you back as long as there is more than one staff working. The local diner Don and Paul’s serves a $2.00 breakfast and a full (greasy) menu the rest of the day at a very reasonable price. We spent our 48 hours here with Raptor; Jamie and I were even able to sneak away for some chocolate beer one afternoon. When we arrive in Waterford the dock was almost full and a nice boater pulled their boat up so we could fit. It was a boat named Whisper (and this shows how small the boating community is) they were a boat we met in the North Channel a year earlier. They are from Wisconsin and normally travel in the North Channel. They are headed south for the first time and we happened to run into each other again.
The first section of the Erie Canal is the Waterford flight. It is 5 locks within 2 miles and we ascended 100 feet. By the time we got to the top of lock 6 (lock 1 was in Troy, before Waterford) we were done going through locks for the day so we went to the bottom of lock 7 for the night. We had only left Waterford at 2 pm and were done by 5:30. It was a lot of work holding the boat off the wall in the large locks. Day 2 we traveled up to the top of lock 10; this was a bit longer day we set out by 11 am and were done a 5 pm when the locks close. Andy and the kids started a bon fire after dark and Carmal called it the best boat night ever. We are really starting to miss the boys; especially with the Raptor kids around.
Day 3 we got moving a little earlier because I was starting to feel the time crunch of us getting home. It is mid September and we still had about 400 miles to home before Thanksgiving when the Canadian locks close. We pushed on to lock 15 and had a great pork chop dinner planned , however we ran out of propane half way through so Raptor lent us their cylinder so we could finish cooking. Day 4 was a hunt for propane, we decided to try Little Falls; it is a small town along the water that has a free day dock to tie to. I had called the gas station there and they said they do refills. I guess they meant you can bring your tank and pick up a refilled one. They only had exchange tanks there and we have a fiberglass tank so we would have had to buy a tank for $50. We were told there was a refill place about a mile down the street so we walked down there but we were in a small town that still closes up everything on the weekends and nothing was open. We decided to stock the fridge with food we don’t have to cook and hope that we could find some more propane along the way.
Lock 17 was an interesting lock to go through; instead of a set of doors closing there was a solid wall drop down to close the lock. This is the first time I have seen that. 17 was also the largest lock at 48 feet.
Lock 17 door
We continued up to lock 18 for the night. The nice thing about the Erie Canal is you can tie up free at any wall overnight. Garth had looked at the weather and Wednesday was our day to cross Lake Ontario so I had prepared to say goodbye to Raptor because we were going to need to start moving as far as possible to make our crossing. Jamie had found out that the town of Rome had a propane refill station so that was our goal for day 5. Raptor thought this was a good stop as well and got moving at 7:30 am with us (after Andy boiled us water for coffee). We had made it to Rome by 2:30 so we had time to get the propane and visit Fort Stanwix. This is a replica fort from the revolutionary war that the National Park service re built in 1969. They discovered the foot print of the fort and got the original prints from the British, bought up all the land (a whole city block) and reconstructed this fort down to the hand cast iron nails. This is an impressive fort.
We had to keep moving the next day but Raptor stayed for the guided Ranger tour the next day. If we had more time we would have stayed as well; the rangers dress in period costume and have live demonstrations. We said our goodbyes and headed up to the Oswego canal. It was kind of weird because this was the first time in 9 months we were not traveling in the same direction and now there is no chance we will bump in to them again (on this trip). In lock 20 we reached the summit of the mountain in the last 20 locks we had ascended 420 feet. We literally climbed a mountain in our boat.
Now it was time to go down. We made it to Phoenix, NY; another great town dock. This one is run by the local youth club during the regular season. In season the kids come down to get you lines and welcome you with lemonade and coffee. There is a small museum there, they offer free wifi, power and water for up to 48 hours. I think a lot of towns along the waterways can learn from the small towns on the Erie Canal. They offer a free place to tie up so you can go into their town and bring money to their economy.
Our next stop is Oswego another boater town and the last stop before Lake Ontario. We went out for dinner to a delicious Mexican restaurant with the people on 2 other boats that pulled in. We had a great time chatting about our adventures and hearing about theirs.
Along the way we saw many east bound boats; it was disheartening to be headed home. Most of them yelled at us that we were going the wrong way; we agreed but what can you do. It was nice to see them all excited to be starting their adventure.
The Erie Canal is the most boater friendly waterway we have been on in the last year and I would love to spend a season going from one end to the other.
Next Lake Ontario and back to Canada.
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