A short cruise in the Thousand Islands

We are underway southwesterly across Lake Ontario, bound for Oswego. We had a mostly pleasant couple of weeks in the Thousand Islands, but today is the last good day to cross the lake for the foreseeable future.  We've mostly had our fill for this visit, and we managed to hit a few new spots before we slow-roll our way back to New York City.

At Boldt Castle, in background, near the Dove Cote.

After last I posted here, we splashed the tender after dinner and I went ashore stag for a walk, landing at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Fisheries dock. I chatted for a while with our friend Paul from Parnassia and had a nice stroll around town, refreshing my memory. As on previous visits, the line for the ice cream stand was the busiest place in town. The brew pub, the lone restaurant in town, had closed early for the 4th. The Coal Docks restaurant, right across from the DEC, had shuttered, along with The Roxy at the other end of town, where we ate on our first visit.

There is always a line for ice cream at Twist of Cape.

Friday we returned ashore together for a nice walk through town, landing at the transient dock closer to town. As we had remembered from five years ago, the town is very quiet on the Independence Day holiday, with most folks driving east for the big goings-on in the Clayton/Alexandria Bay area, with the local celebration reserved for the annual "French Festival" that happens every year on the second weekend in July.

We dropped lines before lunch to continue downriver to Clayton, taking the longer but more scenic route behind Grindstone Island. We worked our way as far into the harbor as depth would allow, dropping the hook not far from our last couple of spots (map). Evidently, we picked the weediest spot in the harbor, and swinging most of the way around a full circle overnight gathered a metric ton of them on our anchor chain.

We seem to have gathered a few weeds.

The last time we were in this region over the July 4th holiday, the lake was so high that docks everywhere and even some streets were under water, and I think that had the effect of keeping a lot of people off the lake. Not so this time, and the channel on the American side was a washing machine. Clayton itself was packed to the gills, and we quickly determined that we did not want to tender through the river to the free town docks, nor would we be able to get anywhere near the Wooden Boat Brewery near the $7 day dock. Instead we tendered around the back of the sheds at the French Bay Marina to The Boat Yard at French Bay, a recently opened joint with a nice patio and decent casual fare. Even the live music was enjoyable.

The wakes that had made the harbor so miserable when we arrived died down after dinner, and we had a comfortable night. But we knew things would be even worse on Saturday, and we made plans to skip town before things heated up. In the calm of the morning we tendered around the corner to the free visitor docks, and hoofed it up the hill to the Shurfine supermarket for some fresh produce, with a stop at the gas station on the way back for a couple of gallons of fuel for the dinghy. By the time we pulled back out into the river, the Cigarette boats had already awakened from their slumber and we beat a hasty retreat to Vector, splashing over wakes the whole way.

Vector, looking diminutive on the Cape Vincent breakwall.

This little taste of high holiday on the river had me scanning downriver looking for an anchorage that would be protected from these wakes, which would, no doubt, continue for the remainder of the weekend. And while there are a lot of anchorages for Vector in the Thousand Islands, most of them are exposed either to the river, or to one of the many well-used side channels that criss-cross the islands between the US and Canada. Ultimately we decided to try for a familiar spot off the Thousand Island Club, in a no-wake zone and protected from the river by an island, with a backup option to continue downriver to Goose Bay.

It was just a one and a half hour cruise downriver through the American Narrows, but the steep sides of the narrows simply reflected all the giant powerboat wakes back into the river, making it a miserable, choppy mess for the entire cruise. We were happy to find the anchorage in front of the club empty, as there is but one spot there where we fit, sparing us another half hour or so in the river to Goose Bay. It's a narrow entrance that requires complete attention and no hesitation, with the depth going from over a hundred feet to less than twenty in the span of three boat lengths, but we had a good track from when the lake was higher.

There is a Bruce anchor in there somewhere,

We had the hook down in that familiar spot (map) before 2pm. We figured we'd be hunkered down here through the rest of the holiday weekend for traffic, and then another day beyond for weather. Of the three nights we'd be there, only on Saturday would the club be open for dinner, and so we booked a table on the covered deck for the evening, and I called the marina for instructions on landing the tender. While "club" is right in the name, both the restaurant and the marina are open to the public, and tables are booked through Resy.

We were relaxing on board, recovering from the holiday shenanigans on the river, when a 58' Tiara pulled up and a woman on the foredeck started screaming at us that we had to move. Apparently they were trying to get into their slip, which was, I kid you not, a full 250' away (we used the laser rangefinder as well as the chart). We were, as I said, in the only spot in the harbor where we fit, managing our swing among the rock side of an island, an underwater rock, a shoal, and the marina channel, and I tried to tell her there was no place I could go, but she was having none of it.

A view from our masthead cam showing how much maneuvering room there is between us and the docks. The Starlink terminal is at the corner of the boat.

A Tiara 58 has pod drives and a joystick control that makes docking dead simple even for rank amateurs. The problem with that is that you don't learn how to do anything without them, and, to be fair, she did say they were having problems. If you have one engine out on these boats, you need to drive it like an outboard. The skipper had no skill, and while his mate on the foredeck was still screaming and calling me names which I can not print here, he managed to wedge the boat cattywampus between the finger pier and a steel piling. They had no fewer than five line handlers on deck, including the teenagers who were treated to mommy's potty mouth, and several of their dock neighbors came out to help, so eventually they got it squared up and tied off.

Dinner on the deck with a Vector view.

The whole episode really rattled me, and I had my fingers crossed we'd not run into them at dinner. At one point while she was calling me unprintable names I asked if she needed me to come over and dock the boat for her -- it was a really unchallenging docking. For our landlubber readers, most marina fairways (the space between the boats in rows of slips) are less than 100' wide. And we've had some doozies where I've had less than 60', or just barely enough to get Vector parallel to the slip before pulling in, including the place we stayed in Beaufort when I needed to rush to the eye doctor. 250' is a lot of maneuvering room.

We had a lovely dinner at the club, with the livid Tiara crew nowhere in sight. The interaction just reinforced our decision to hunker down, because not only do holiday weekends bring out the run fast and play hard crowd, but they also bring out all the amateurs who only use their boats four times a year. These guys got it to the dock and we never saw them again. Nor did we see anyone open up their engine bay to even look at the alleged problem.

The Alster Tower at Boldt Castle, This was, essentially, the rec center.

We had a nice stroll around the grounds after dinner, wherein we learned there was a little coffee house in the historic Hart House B&B, and we thought about returning in the morning for a breakfast pastry. As it happened, however, on Sunday morning we ended up helping some good friends who were under way and having a medical emergency on board. We know first-hand how difficult it is to research this kind of thing online while underway, and so we were happy to help.

It was Professor Plum, with the lead pipe, in the billiard room.

Unwilling to brave the maelstrom of the river or the holiday crowds to visit Alexandria Bay, known locally as Alex Bay or just A-Bay, and with the club closed, we just had a quiet day and a nice dinner on board. My big project for the down day: figuring our where we were going next, and when we needed to be out of the lake to be back in New York City in time for a commitment there.

Our goal for this trip was to cruise the New York State Canals, as a destination more than a conduit. This has been stuck in our minds for a year, as we were hoping to do a Hudson River and Erie Canal cruise whenever we left the boatyard last year. A pipe dream if ever there was one; regular readers will know we barely left the yard in time to get out of the northeast before everything closed for the season.

1892 steam yacht Kestrel in the Boldt Yacht House. It's still operational.

We spent two weeks coming up to the lake from New York, and had figured we'd spend maybe three weeks of the remaining seven getting back, leaving us four weeks to spend cruising the Thousand Islands, which we like very much, or maybe some more of the western parts of the lake if the weather cooperated. Our last time through here we bypassed the New York side in our haste to get to Canada. But here, not even a week into the Thousand Islands, we had already lost our enthusiasm to uncooperative weather, and generally unpleasant boating conditions. It has been nothing at all like our past two visits.

After staring at charts for two full hours and looking at all the options, we finally decided we'd have a more pleasant cruise by taking a little over a full month to get back to New York City, making even more of the stops that we missed on our last three passes, and staying a bit longer at some of the stops we enjoy the most. Among the many factors in that decision: Louise is being eaten alive up here, and the bugs were a lot more manageable further south. We will likely pay a price in higher temperatures; it has been blissfully cool on the lake.

Elaborate stained glass ceiling. There were no plans; the restoration artisans had to just guess.

Monday morning we loaded up with sunscreen and again ventured out in the tender, this time to Boldt Castle, the icon of the Thousand Islands region. Regular readers may recall that we skipped it on our first visit because the lake was so high that the docks were under water, and no private vessels were permitted to land (they built up the tour boat docks for the tours from Clayton, A-Bay, and Gananoque). These sorts of tourist attractions are seldom our thing, but we were anchored literally five minutes away, and when in Rome ...

Arriving by private boat, admission is quite reasonable, and we purchased the combined ticket for both the "castle" and the Yacht House on Wellesley Island. I won't bore you with the details of Boldt Castle and Heart Island, which you can read about on their official web site, among other places. I will just say that we enjoyed seeing the restoration in progress and strolling the well-kept grounds. We indulged in concession food for lunch and even ice cream.

Louise pointing to her namesake on a monument in A-Bay.

In the evening we tendered across the river to Alex Bay. The river was not flat calm, but it was certainly better than it had been all weekend. We landed at the large municipal dock on the west end of town, where we've landed before, and discovered there is now a $5 landing fee, which we handed to the dock attendant. We had a nice walk through town, ending up at the River House for dinner on the shaded patio. They had a nice selection of drafts, decent food leaning toward Italian, and a surprisingly good, freshly-filled cannolo, which I certainly did not need after a big dinner, but could not resist when the server suggested it.

Monday evening, after dinner, I took my well-laid plan for the return trip to New York, via some more Thousand Island cruising, and basically ripped up the first section, as the remains of Hurricane Beryl took aim at us. Long-time readers will know we've already been through more than a dozen tropical cyclones on this boat, so it's not really a big deal, but anchorages with all-around protection are few and far between here, and we needed to shift gears in order to have protection from forecast winds and waves. That planning turned the Thousand Island Club into the eastern terminus of our Thousand Islands cruise for the season.

Louise seated in the Vector-view Adirondack chairs on Casino Island.  You can just make out Vector across the river and between a pair of islands.

Tuesday morning we returned to Alex Bay, this time landing at the eastern town dock, which has no attendant and, evidently, no fee. We had a nice walk along the riverfront past the hospital and across the little bridge to Casino Island. We returned to the dock along the main drag for our final glimpse of town before heading out. We decked the tender just as another boat arrived to the anchorage and promptly dropped their anchor right on top of a marked submarine cable; I tried calling them on the radio several times to warn them.

We had a short cruise back up the American Narrows, turning right past the community of Thousand Island Park and making our way into the little bay on the south side of Picton Island, where we worked in as far as depth would allow and dropped the hook (map). There were a handful of day boats there, enjoying the shallows at the tip of the bay, but they were all gone by nightfall and we had the place to ourselves. This was the most scenic of our stops this visit, surrounded mostly by protected forest, with the lone house on the southwest point of the island barely in view.

It was already raining when I remembered to snap a photo of our lovely little bay on Picton Island.

This is a perfect spot in all but southwest wind, and that, of course, is what Beryl was forecast to bring starting in the middle of Wednesday. The pouring rain from the storm had already started overnight, and we remained in the little bay, all alone, until a lull in the rain mid-day, when we weighed anchor for the half-hour trip back to French Bay and Clayton, which was our best option for when the southwesterlies started.

We had the anchor down in French Bay, as far to the southwest as we could get (map), just before the rain started again in earnest. We were the only ones at anchor in what is normally a fairly busy bay, and there was almost no traffic in and out of the marinas. At least one moderately sized boat came in and took shelter on the inner side of the city dock. It came down in buckets through most of the afternoon.

Vector all alone in French Bay. That's the city dock in the foreground on the left.

In what seems to be a rare occurrence these days, reality was far milder than the forecast, and other than the rain, Beryl turned out to be mostly a non-event for us. I would not have wanted to be in the lake or river, but the harbor was comfortable the whole time. We were prepared to be pinned down aboard, but we even got a reprieve in the rain right at dinner time, and we splashed the tender and landed at the town dock in the bay (there was no way we were taking the tender out in the river, which was still way too rough).

The attendants who collect the $7 were nowhere to be found during the storm, and we walked a very wet two blocks to the Wooden Boat Brewery for dinner, where we grabbed the last two seats at the bar. The food was good -- I indulged in their tasty soft pretzels and a nice salad -- and we like their drafts. At dinner we learned Wednesday is "growler day," where growler fills are just $15, and after a brief walk I dropped Louise at Vector and returned with our growler for a half gallon of their excellent stout.

Drafts at the Wooden Boat Brewery.

We could have spent another night in Clayton, but we wanted to make a stop at Cape Vincent again on our way back, and we needed to beat the start of the annual French Festival if we wanted a spot at the dock. And so on Thursday morning we weighed anchor for the short 12-mile cruise, arriving right at noon. Our preferred spot, on the east bulkhead, was again occupied, this time by a pair of sailboats nose-to-tail, but the west bulkhead was open.

Our chart says there is a 6' hump on the way into that spot, and the charts have been off by +/- a foot in various places at this lake level. I worked my way into the space very, very slowly, during which time one of the sailboaters came over, offering to take lines. This is a nice gesture, common among boaters, but we seldom want help of unknown skill and so we politely waved him off, but he was not taking no for an answer. Beyond that, he wanted to ask 20 questions while we were both very focused on the task at hand, and we had to explain we were busy.

The slip turned out to be deeper than charted, and we had no trouble coming alongside. Louise lassoed three cleats in her usual fashion, and Mr. Poor Boundaries had commentary each time with complimentary words but in a condescending tone. When we finally were stopped and secure, right where we wanted to be (map), he asked me if I wanted to move the boat back to "make room for another boat" at the dock.

Vector hogging the dock in Cape Vincent.

When I said, no, we needed to be right where we were, he switched from asking to directing, basically telling us we had to move, and I just completely lost my cool. In a decade of doing this, I've snubbed a number of busy-bodies on the dock, but I've never screamed invective comprising words I can not repeat in a family-friendly blog, however this time I did. He finally marched away, muttering about how rude and unskilled we were.

For the record, we had ten feet behind us to the end of the pier, space we prefer to have to properly secure the stern with a "cross tie." The pier was 85' long, and we take up 56' of that, so "moving back" would have opened up perhaps 20' of usable space in front of us (the very end is too shallow, and you need at least a little room between boats for maneuvering and normal movement). This facility has a whole separate dock for boats that size, which was mostly empty. Not that any of that was any of his business, but if he had asked politely, I would have explained it to him.

Chairs already staked out on Thursday for Saturday's parade.

After he stomped away we no longer had to interact with him. Ironically, I am very nearly certain that Mr. "Make room for other boats" actually overstayed the 48-hour limit on the dock. He had clearly been there the night before we arrived, he was there with us our one night, and it appeared they would be staying for the festival. So I guess it's OK to preclude other boats by overstaying your welcome, but not by using too much dock.

We otherwise had a very pleasant stay in Cape Vincent. We had a couple of nice walks around town, and I stopped into the well-stocked French Towne Market for a couple of items, including more beer. It was interesting to see the whole town gearing up for their big annual festival, the bulk of which was to happen Saturday. That included a parade, and fireworks launched from the very seawall to which we tied a week earlier. Here on Thursday people had already set up their lawn chairs for the parade, perhaps a hundred of them. One of the locals told me people start staking out their perfect spot as early as Monday for a Saturday event. Of course, everything was drenched from Beryl. We walked to the Cape Vincent Brewing Company for dinner, where you get your beer at the bar and order your food at a window; both were good.

I kept running into this pair of Pekin ducks in Sawmill Bay, Chaumont.

With all of the hullabaloo, we briefly considered whether we wanted to stay through Saturday. But that would mean figuring out what to do when our own 48 hours ran out, and it would also likely mean then running straight from there to Oswego today, to catch this weather window before it slammed shut. We can picture exactly what the parade, fireworks, and cheese-ball vendor booths would look like, so we opted to continue on to our other planned stops on the lake instead. We did walk to breakfast at Ann's Fisherman's Fare, which was not worth repeating; in hindsight the Cup of Joy might have been a better choice.

From Cape Vincent it was a four hour cruise back to the lake, around the Point Peninsula (yes, that's really the name), and into Chaumont Bay, new territory for us. I wanted to see if we could get all the way to the village of Chaumont, but it was not looking promising, with a persistent SW swell following us all the way into the bay and then in to Sawmill Bay. Fortunately, the very last dogleg, ever so slight, was just enough to block it from the end of Sawmill Bay, and we dropped the hook there across from the Crescent Yacht Club (map).

Brand new town dock in Chaumont. Vector is center-frame.

Our guides did not show any sort of town dinghy landing, and neither did the satellite view, and so I was prepared to land the tender at the closest marina to town and maybe give them a few bucks to let us land. I saw a brand new dock attached to a town park, absent from the sat photo, that looked vaguely like a public dock, but there was no signage, and two boats with canvas covers on were at the dock and looking very much like permanent slipholders. I landed at the marina as planned and set off to find someone.

Lots of historic buildings in Chaumont; I only walked past a few of them.

I never found an employee -- the office was closed -- but one of the tenants told me that the dock I had seen was, indeed, the town dock and we could tie there, and so that's what I did. It was much closer to town than the marina, and immediately adjacent to one of our dinner options, Wise Guys Italian restaurant. While I was standing in front of the yet-to-open restaurant looking for hours and menus, Andy, the proprietor, opened the door, invited me in, showed me around, and took my reservation for seating at the bar -- the dining room was already fully booked.

The charming proprietor of Wise Guys, Andy, showing me the bar seating.

I walked the whole downtown, and about halfway into the historic district. There are four other restaurants here, a hardware store which I missed by mere minutes, a library, and a community center which was having a little farmers' market out front. There is a small but well stocked grocery, and I even found a massage place. A sign in town for ice fishing parking belies what it is like here in winter.

This little market was in front of the community center on my walk. Amish gentleman at left was selling produce, preserves, and baked goods. I presume they arrived in the wagon at left, but I did not see a horse. Perhaps there is a paddock behind the center.

We returned ashore together at dinner time. Wise Guys was as good as its reputation, and we enjoyed dining in the bar. Restaurant checks here are almost shockingly low. We had a short walk afterward, marveling at the raging post-Beryl torrent that was Horse Creek, which empties into the bay right next to the town dock by way of a waterfall. We could easily have spent another night here, sampling one of the other eateries and maybe trying to book a massage, but once again the rapidly closing weather window for crossing the lake forced our hand and we opted to move along.

The small but complete supermarket in town.

This seems like a remote and sparsely populated part of the state, with the waterfront itself being the bulk of development, so I was surprised in the morning when not one, but two different photos of Vector in Sawmill Bay popped up on my Facebook feed, from some Great Loop hopefuls who were wondering what the boat was and what we were doing there. I gather they don't get many big cruising boats here; even Andy the restaurateur, a boater himself, had inquired if we were "the big boat in the middle of the bay." A number of people who follow us had jumped in and outed us before I even saw the discussion.

We always seem to anchor in the middle of sailing school. This photo got posted to the Great Loop group on Facebook after we arrived. Photo: Amanda Miller.

We weighed anchor yesterday morning for the two-hour cruise to Sackets Harbor by way of Guffin Bay. Sackets was our very first port of call (aside from Oswego, where we entered) in the Great Lakes on our first trip through five years ago. Things were a lot busier on this visit, between it being later in the season and the water level being more normal. We dropped the hook in almost the exact same place (map). Just as then, we found the bottom to be rock, claims to the contrary in the cruising database notwithstanding, but we got enough purchase to be comfortable with a pile of heavy chain out.

The weeds are a theme here in the lake.

The village has just installed brand new visitor docks along the park seawall that formerly was a free day-use bulkhead. The visitor docks are also day use, with the village charging $10 for four hours, effective this month.  That dissuaded us from trying them, and we landed the tender instead at the little-known public dock adjacent the Sackets Boathouse restaurant. To get ashore from this dock, one walks through the Boathouse's dining patio, leading us to initially think it was their dock, and so that's where we ate. It was fine, but there are better choices in town. Later we confirmed the dock is public; I remember using it on our last visit when this restaurant was closed. The public dock sign was under water at the time.

This sign was underwater below the dock on our last visit.

After dinner we took a nice stroll through town, refreshing our memories and stopping at a park stand for ice cream. We walked over to check out the new city docks, and that's when we learned that the new pumpout is not yet working, and the village is not yet collecting fees. We found the water working on the docks, and so we hatched a plan to return this morning, fill our tank, and do some laundry. On our way back to Vector we sounded the long face dock and found plenty of depth.

Another Vector view from our dinner table, this time at Sackets Boathouse.

And so it was that this morning we weighed anchor and were tied up at the city dock by 8am. We spent a little over an hour filling the tank, which takes longer when simultaneously running the washer, and while that was happening I hoofed it down to Chrissy's Beanz for a couple of breakfast sandwiches. The place was packed with participants in the girl's lacrosse tournament going on in town, the 1812 Shootout.

Vector on the new face dock in Sackets Harbor. Smaller slips in foreground.

Update: We're tied up to the guide wall between locks O-8 and O-7 in Oswego, NY (map). I had to stop working on the blog about an hour from the harbor so I could rig everything for lowering the mast. Once we reached the harbor we dropped a lunch hook off-channel, lowered the mast, and then proceeded into the Oswego Canal. There are places along the bulkhead to tie downstream of O-8, too, but one of the waterfront hotels manages them and charges $1 per foot. This spot is free.

The line, and the array of tempting pastries, at Chrissy's Beanz.

We are here a couple of days earlier than planned, and we would have loved to spend those days still in the Thousand Islands. But the lake will be a miserable mess tomorrow and beyond; as it was, we bashed into two-footers for half of today even though the forecast was for one footers. Our mail is already enroute to Fulton, upriver from here, and if we got pinned down in, say, Henderson Harbor for a few days, we could easily miss the three-day window that the UPS Access Point will hold it.

We scooped this 3' tall Mylar "S" balloon out of the lake under way today.

Now, of course, we have to slow-roll a bit to not be there before the mail, so we'll stay right here for our full two-day allotment. I'll use the time tomorrow to get some errands done. Tonight we wandered to The Press Box sports bar, one of the three joints in walking distance that is open on a Sunday evening.

Back in the Great Lakes after 50,000 nautical miles

Happy Independence day, everyone. We are under way across the southeast corner of Lake Ontario, en route to Cape Vincent, New York, and the start of the Thousand Islands region. The lake is glassy, with a gentle one-foot swell on our port beam. It was calm enough when we left Oswego that we once again opted to raise the mast underway, rather than drop the hook in the outer harbor.

What 50,000 nautical miles looks like on the chart.

Last Wednesday was errand day in Amsterdam, and we raised the mast, deployed the crane, and put both scooters on the ground. I had carefully planned out how to fit two 5-gallon pails of motor oil on my floorboards, and as I prepared to head off to Walmart to go get them... the scooter would not start. After lots of fiddling I diagnosed it as a dead battery, and even with a jump it was too weak to keep the bike running.

Damage to the snubber from the tree episode in Coxsackie. I will replace this today.

Not wanting to fritter away the entire errand day working on scooter problems, I measured Louise's floorboards and determined I could get the oil on that, so off I went. She was out of fuel so I filled it up at the Sunoco on my way to the store. I texted her that I had put 1.6 gallons in, and she reported back that the bike has a maximum 1.1 gallon tank. Hmm.

Louise obeying the signs.

The only thing worse than being ripped off at the pump for fuel is getting bad fuel at the same pump, and a short time later the bike sputtered to a stop. To shorten the story, I nursed it through all the day's errands with a lot of extra throttle at stoplights, but it appears I will need to drain the tank and fill with fresh fuel and a dose of carb cleaner. I made it to UPS, Home Depot, and two separate Walmart runs.

One of the canal's snag-collecting barges, and snags already offloaded ashore. Dodging these is a daily occurrence.

That second Walmart run was supposed to be Louise's, but it died on her halfway up the big hill to the store. She turned around, coasted back downhill, and gave the infernal thing to me. In the meantime my battery had charged up down in the engine room during my first outing, so she took my more reliable steed and I rode ahead of her on hers. With two of us, we were able to fill out the provisioning list. We ended the day with a nice dinner on board. Unlike the previous night, when we were all alone, tonight there were three other boats with us.

Vector and her mate at Lock 14, Palatine Bridge NY.

Thursday we had conference calls scheduled in the afternoon, and so we made it a short day to Palatine Bridge, a familiar stop, where we tied up at the upper guide wall of lock E-14 (map). I attended to the somewhat overdue main engine oil change, and I also changed the heat exchanger anodes. I ended up having to pull both end caps off the exchanger to clean out bits of old anode and other debris; I found some scale partly occluding the stabilizer cooling supply, so it's good I took the end cap off.

Vegetation hanging from this "guard gate" looked like it was going to graze Vector's top. It just cleared.

Just by sheer coincidence, we arrived at lock E-14 exactly as our odometer ticked past 50,000 nautical miles since we bought the boat. I was keenly aware of this because we needed to "catch up" our odometer by nine nautical miles, the result of instrument issues over the last 10k miles, and so I was watching it tick up to 9,991 so I could reset it to zero when it crossed. While that might not sound like a lot -- a modern automobile is hardly middle-aged by 50,000 miles -- on the water, it's a ton.

Lock 17, Little Falls. Tallest on the canal.

Friday we ran the gauntlet of big locks, including E-17 in Little Falls, the tallest on the system, with Lock E-19 finally depositing us in the vicinity of Utica, where we once again encountered the shallowest stretch on the canals. Last time through we plowed the mud for a hundred yards not long after coming out of the lock; this time we were just grazing the bottom, but we did manage to hit an enormous log that was apparently embedded in the bottom, popping it up behind us like an enormous tiddlywink. Surprisingly, hitting a log that big on the bottom does not sound much different from hitting a concrete wall.

This little tug lives at Lock 20 and we remember it from our first visit.

We were locking up through E-20 right at 5pm, and we stopped for the night on the upper guide wall (map), not far from where we stayed on our first time through, five years ago. Long-time readers may remember I was in downtown Utica when a tug and barge arrived to lock down, leaving Louise scrambling to possibly move the boat on her own. The tug ultimately made it past Vector just where she was. This time, there were two other boats even closer to the lock than we were. Little did we know that tragedy was unfolding just two miles away, as a Utica police officer shot a 13-year-old who had pointed a very realistic toy gun at him.

Vector at Lock 20, tucked up next to a deck barge with snags on it.

The upper pool between E-20 and E-21 is the "top of the hill" for our journey, an elevation of 420' above sea level, and it would all be downhill from here. Saturday's leg brought us down through two more locks and to the summer vacation hot-spot of Sylvan Beach, on the eastern end of Lake Oneida. Normally we would dread ending up here on a Saturday, and both of our previous Saturday arrivals landed us at just about the worst spot on the bulkheads, across the channel in Verona Beach and exposed to the fetch of the lake. But today was cold and rainy all day, the amusement park was closed, and we snagged the perfect spot at the east end of the north bulkhead (map). We did get drenched, though, docking in the pouring rain.

Top of the hill. Yes, there is tent camping at these lock parks.

As it happened, the rain was mostly done, down to just an occasional sprinkle, by dinner time, and we walked to the closest joint, the Crazy Clam, for dinner. They have a phalanx of draft handles, and I got my fix of the Utica-region staple, chicken riggies. After dinner I had a pleasant walk around town, with the rain now done, and I scoped out breakfast and dinner options for a possible second day, with the lake forecast to be uncomfortable on Sunday, and me needing a down day to organize Coast Guard paperwork.

Vector at Sylvan Beach. Power cat in the foreground was moving quite a bit, being just that much closer to the lake.

As it happened, the morning forecast improved overnight, but westerlies would likely push lake chop right up the canal in the afternoon, and so we dropped lines after morning coffee and made our way across the lake, pushing against short-period two footers that were more annoying than uncomfortable. At least all the spray coming over the bow was fresh and not salt. We were in Brewerton before 1pm, and we could easily have continued to Phoenix, except I had Amazon packages coming to a locker in Brewerton, where we had expected to be on Monday.

We have seen many ducklings on this trip. These are in Brewerton.

We tied up to the free bulkhead north of the canal (map), a familiar spot, which is technically in the community of Central Square. Unlike our last visit, this time we found the 50-amp power outlet to be working, and we ran 100' of cable down the dock to plug in. I still had most of the afternoon to work on my paperwork, which has to do with renewing my Merchant Mariner Credential. We were not far from here when my original credential arrived in the mail five years ago. We walked a block east to Jakes for a casual dinner and draft beer, and I ended up hoofing it a mile to the Amazon locker in the evening when one of two packages arrived. The other was delayed to July 2, so I waved it off.

Lots of Loopers in Brewerton, but they all stopped at the marinas. We had the free dock mostly to ourselves.

Just as on our last two passes, after dropping lines Monday morning we traveled just a mile to Winter Harbor marina to take on fuel. Unlike on those visits, we're planning to come right back through here in a month, and so we only topped up the center tank, a bit over 100 gallons. We also took on water and pumped out our waste tank. We were passing Phoenix by mid-day, and we stopped for the night at a familiar spot on the wall in Fulton, between locks O-2 and O-3 (map).

In addition to the birthplace of Nestlé Crunch and Toll House Morsels, Fulton was also home to Hunter Arms, nowadays mostly known for ceiling fans. Industry here was powered by the dammed Oswego Falls.

Fulton was another two-night errand stop, and it proved more than up to the need. I was able to squeeze in a follow-up eye appointment for the scare I had a month ago, get a drug test for my CG license renewal, and finish the provisioning at the Aldi and the Price Chopper in town. I also stopped at two hardware stores, and the Amazon locker for the item they somehow could not deliver to Brewerton. I got rid of five (of seven) gallons of used motor oil, and mailed off the oil sample. We ate at Mama Gina's pizza, just so-so but they had draft beer, and Tavern on the Lock, which was good and we remembered from last time.

We woke this morning to glass calm on the canal, a stark contrast to the roar of the rapids just the other side of a thin concrete barrier.

Wednesday morning we walked to the Dollar General, just a block from the boat, for a couple of last-minute items before dropping lines for the short trip down through four more locks to Oswego, where we tied to our usual spot along the free wall just before the final lock, O-8 (map). We're short one wireless smoke detector, which nobody seems to carry any longer, and after striking out in Amsterdam and Fulton I took the e-bike down to Walmart and Tractor Supply for one last try, but still no dice. Amazon carries them but will not deliver to a locker. We walked over to Azteca for dinner, which was OK for being a long way from Mexico.

It's almost impossible to capture sea state in a photo, but this was Lake Ontario for the first half of today's cruise.

This morning was The Day for a lake crossing, and we dropped lines to make the first lockage at 8am. We have our sights set on Cape Vincent because there are two docks and a backup option there, and it appears there will be no fireworks or other shenanigans there tonight to interfere. I enjoy fireworks, but the navigation restrictions can be a challenge.

Below our fenders here you can see the concrete outcropping on the seawall; we needed to be sure the fenders were fat enough to hold us off.

Update: We are in Cape Vincent, New York, tied up to the harbor breakwall (map). This is a concrete wall that rises vertically 25' from the sea floor; there is a small "step" just at the water line that required careful fendering before we came alongside. We arrived to the harbor to find our "secret" spot on the fisheries pier occupied by our friends April and Paul on their lovely Dutch canal boat Parnassia. The other dock was also full so we came here. I have a skirt steak marinating for dinner aboard, but I might drop the tender and go over to say hello later.

Vector tied to the harbor breakwall. There are harbor entrances at both ends; this wall is not connected to shore. We're tied to two bollards that are further apart than Vector is long.

Back in fresh water

We are under way northbound on the Hudson River, making good time toward the start of the Erie Canal. Once in the canal I won't be able to type under way and so I am taking advantage of this last stretch of relatively open water (the Hudson is wide and deep) to get this update out. [Update: I didn't make it. We're already in the canal and I am wrapping up here in Amsterdam, New York.]

Vector and her reflection at tonight's digs, the canal bulkhead at Erie Canal Lock 11.

Tuesday after I posted here, seas finally settled in the last few miles before the cape. We pressed against the current through the Cape May Canal, high tide making the sometimes skinny transit more comfortable. We arrived late enough in the day that we found the anchorage mostly full, but with lots of experience here we squeezed in behind a green channel marker (map) and had the hook down before 5:30.

Sunset from our Cape May anchorage. That's a looper in the foreground.

Right across the channel from this spot is a restaurant with a dock, which has become something of a regular landing for us. On this visit we were surprised to learn the Harborview closed since our visit just last fall and literally re-opened under new owners and a new name, Port Marina, the day we arrived. Only the deck, completely renovated, has re-opened, while the inside spaces are still being refurbished. The soft opening was just a day earlier and they are still going through some teething pains, but the refresh is welcome, even if the new menu is higher-zoot, with prices to match.

We took a brief walk after dinner, past the parking lot, packed for the grand opening, and sticking our noses into the very casual H&H Seafood stand next door, an option for dinner on a future stop. Wednesday morning I took the tender a mile and a half to the boat ramp in town, hoofed it a half mile to the Wawa for a half gallon of milk, and then dropped into Sea Gear Marine, a well-stocked chandlery that caters to the local fishing fleet. Louise had pre-ordered a pair of A-4 fenders for our upcoming locking extravaganza, and by sheer lucky Sea Gear had the best price nationwide, with the bonus of not having to pay shipping.

We found these arch bridges under construction at the port of Coeymans. They'll be taken by river to their installation site.

We got lucky and the forecast improved over night, and we made ready to weigh anchor at the 9am start of the ebb. Part of my start-up procedure is to transfer the day's fuel into the day tank, and less than five gallons into the transfer, the transfer pump system stopped, complaining of a plugged filter. No problem, I carry a spare, so we should be back in business in just a few minutes. Ha.

I could not find the little plastic loop atop the filter that is normally used to remove it, and after poking around and shining a flashlight in there I learned it had disintegrated, with little bits of plastic all over the filter media. When I finally managed to pull it out by the pleats, I found more disintegration, involving the gasket, underneath. I ended up having to disassemble the separator bowl and clean the whole assembly out before I could put the new filter in. We did not get the anchor weighed until 10:15, an hour after we started.

Some of the current we fought today. This is not a bridge; the trusses pull the dam below them up and well out of the water after navigation season ends, so the Mohawk can flow unimpeded in the winter.

We had such perfect conditions offshore that we were very tempted to continue past Absecon Inlet and run all the way to Barnegat Light. But the late start meant we'd be hunting for anchorage there right at sunset, and in such a tight area with hazards all around, that's a recipe for trouble, and so we stuck to an Atlantic City stopover. We were dropping the hook in our usual spot (map) before 4pm.

Gardner's Basin has re-opened since our last visit, although we can't tell what "improvements" were made -- they appear to be the same dilapidated docks, gates, and ramps -- the dock-and-dine policy is still in force. So we landed there and walked over to the Back Bay Ale House, an old favorite of ours, for dinner and excellent local drafts; the lobster and shrimp roll was particularly good. While the rest of the northeast is in the grip of a heat wave, it was pleasant enough to sit on the patio; in fact it was a downright chilly 60° when we left Cape May.

Faded sign at Gardners Basin. The wait staff gives you the gate code.

We had figured to be pinned down in Atlantic City for a few days, but we decked the tender when we got back from dinner, "just in case." When Louise got up in the morning to check the weather, she judged it to be just within limits, and she roused me for an early start. We weighed anchor on the ebb at 7:10 and had decent conditions for the first half of the trip. Seas started building in the latter part of the day, but we nevertheless bypassed bailout options at Manasquan and Shark River inlets to make it all the way to Sandy Hook.

One of the things I did while we were under way offshore was to work on planning routes, fuel requirements and stops, including the tide and current timing for the portion of the trip up to Troy, New York. I also worked on planning errands that we need to get done before reaching the Great Lakes, which includes groceries, ten gallons of motor oil for changes on the main and gen now due, an eye doctor appointment, and the upcoming renewal for my Merchant Mariner Credential. There are not a lot of places between NYC and Oswego with access to services; I finally determined we'd have to run most of our errands in Amsterdam, New York.

This sign on the lock a short walk from where we are docked gives the stats.

We had dinner in the pilothouse just before making our inbound turn into the Sandy Hook Channel. Rounding the hook, the air temperature went from 70° on the Atlantic side to 80° on the Raritan Bay side, and the water temperature likewise jumped from 67° to 74°. We had the anchor down in a familiar spot just west of Sandy Hook Light (map) by 6:15. There's a bit of rocking here from the wakes of the high speed ferries, which pass about a half mile away, but they tail off and stop for the night.

From here at the southern reach of New York Harbor all the way to the Federal Lock at Troy it is a game of playing the tides. The difference for us between running on a fair tide or an adverse one is literally as much as a factor of two in boat speed over ground, from a little more than 4.5 knots to a little less than 9. Getting it wrong can mean many more hours at the helm, and a lot more diesel fuel to go the same distance.

Vector at Lock 11 Park. We have the place to ourselves.

I very carefully plotted a fair tide transit all the way from Sandy Hook to our next stop at Dyckman Landing at the upper end of Manhattan, and Friday morning we weighed anchor right at 7:40 to have fair tide at both ends. But as Burns wrote, the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley. This time, for a happy reason, rather than yet another setback.

A friend of ours is a tugboat skipper here in NY harbor, and I've been stalking him on AIS, mostly in the hopes of just waving at him in passing and maybe snapping a couple of photos. As we came up through the narrows I was lamenting that we had just missed him crossing the harbor by an hour; his boat was already back at base and out of our line of sight. We texted back and forth a little and he was watching us on AIS.

Vector steaming up the Gowanus Canal. Photo: Tim B.

When we were within spitting distance he reached out to ask if we needed to offload any trash or take on any fresh water, and as it happened we had just been discussing earlier in the day where we might next find a place to take on water. We had to hem and haw a bit, because diverting to have just a quick visit while he was between assignments and take on water meant losing our fair tide, but when we realized he was really looking forward to seeing us, and his chief engineer was as well, we decided to just make that our gig for the day.

Captain Tim takes our lines.

We had a really great time catching up with Tim, and meeting Keith the engineer, who wanted a tour of Vector (we had Tim aboard when we were in the boatyard), and paid particular attention to the engine room. That seems like a busman's holiday to me, but we were tickled to have them aboard. We got a full tank of water, with the 200 or so gallons we added lost in the noise level of the 8,600 gallons they had aboard. The only trash we needed to offload was the old scooter tire, and we all joked about them using it as a tugboat fender, but we forgot to leave it behind when we pulled away.

The happy looks of a serendipitous get-together.

As we were pulling back out into the harbor we were inundated with Sécurité calls on channel 13 about "foiling sail catamarans" pulling out of Liberty Landing and running race patterns between Liberty/Ellis Islands and Governors Island -- practice day for the New York Sail GP. A tugboat called in to Vessel Traffic to ask if they could get through and were basically told they'd have to go around. We looked at the prospect of having to give way to sailboats traveling at 30mph and decided we, too, would go around, and so we pushed our way up the Buttermilk Channel to the East River and then turned west to The Battery, missing the sailing entirely before continuing up the Hudson.

Distant shot of high-speed sailing cats and some statue.

The adverse tide meant it took a full two hours to make it from The Battery to Dyckman Landing, our planned stop north of the George Washington Bridge. We had the anchor down in our usual spot, across the river in Anchorage 17 (map), around 2pm. We usually have this side of the river to ourselves, but today we spotted a couple of boats doing the Great Loop anchored a half mile upriver of us. We're in the tail end of the "Loop wad" and we've been leapfrogging with the same loop boats since somewhere in Florida.

With our "free air conditioning" long astern of us, we enjoyed air conditioning aboard until dinner time, when we splashed the tender and headed across to Manhattan. We paid the $3/ft, four-hour "dock and dine" rate at the marina, saving five bucks over the daily $35 dinghy landing fee, dropped off our trash, and had a slow walk in the heat to Tryon Public House, our local favorite in the neighborhood, for dinner and drafts.

Six-story bird condo. There are occupied nests on every level. Mid-Hudson.

While we were at dinner we noticed it was getting a little breezy, which was welcome cooling as we walked a few blocks after dinner to the local grocery, Fine Fare. Coming back out of the store we were confronted with blow-your-hat-off wind, not a good sign. It did not abate on our walk back to the dock, where we found the Hudson a choppy mess, with winds out of the north at around 25kt, in opposition to the incoming tide.

We got in the dinghy, headed out into the river, and promptly made an about-face. We retreated to a park bench at the marina to check the weather forecast and maybe wait it out, but the forecast now said the wind would not lay down until 11pm. We opted to wait for an apparent lull in the worst of it and then made a run for it. By mid-river I was manhandling the tender through steep three-footers, and it took nearly ten minutes to cover the half mile back to Vector, as I had to angle away at better than 45° to take the waves on the starboard bow rather than the beam. Things were a lot better on the west shore, and the downwind leg back to the boat was better, with the waves behind us. We pressed the ratty life vests we keep in the dinghy into service for the trip.

Harvest moon rising over The Cloisters, with the George Washington Bridge.

I was soaked through when we got home, but we made it safely. Fortunately, the river was unseasonably warm, at 80°. As forecast, the wind laid down at 11pm, and shortly thereafter the river was flat calm. We would have had a nice ride home if we had just walked next door to Hudsons and danced to Latin music for four hours, but I'm not sure our ears could handle it. We heard the music all night a half mile across the river.

I like this view of the Manhattan skyline under the bridge. The river is calm now.

We had a comfortable night and awoke to a calm river Saturday morning. We decked the tender and weighed anchor at the turn of the tide, which gave us a fair tide all the way to Poughkeepsie. We dropped the hook in a new spot for us, in the alluvium in a small indentation on the west bank, south of the bridges (map). This is right across the river from Shadows marina and restaurant, where we stayed a couple of years ago, and we figured to splash the tender and head across to dinner. But as we were setting the hook, weather alerts were coming in for severe thunderstorms, and, mindful of our experience the night before, we opted to just eat aboard.

Our consolation prize for thunderstorms pinning us on the boat.

We had to run the generator for some air conditioning in the evening, and Louise went into the engine room to pop some clothes in the dryer. That's when she noticed the washing machine tub full to the brim with clean water -- a mystery. Either the machine is doing something wonky, or she unknowingly had pulled all the wash out between the spin and the rinse cycles. On the chance the last load had never been rinsed, she stuffed it all into the full tub and ran it through to the end of the rinse cycle. We could detect a slight smell of burnt rubber, pointing to more issues with the drive belt.

This carnival was going on right next door to Shadows restuarant.

We woke Sunday morning to a calm river, the storms having passed through almost unnoticeably, and I used the couple of hours before the turn of the tide to open up the washer and have a look, while Louise ran a small load of rags through. I did not solve the mystery of the full drum, but the drive wheel is wobbling, probably the sign of a failing bearing, and that's the likely culprit for the belt wear. I'll need to take it all apart to even know what parts to order.

20' or so log in the Hudson near Hyde Park. I steered around it.

We again were able to ride the fair tide for the whole day, dodging a passel of sailboats in Kingston and stopping just before dinner time in a new spot for us, behind Coxsackie Island near the eponymous town (map). We immediately dropped the tender and headed in to the Reed Street Historic District in the town of Coxsackie, which provides free visitor docks, and walked to Che Figata for a nice Italian dinner. The food was good and they have nice drafts, but we should have skipped the cake, which was too heavy and a bit stale. We raced home just as the rain was starting. The forecast storm, which had us in the anchorage rather than the very flimsy visitor docks for the night, never materialized.

Lock controls for the downstream gate here at Lock 11.

Sometime around 9:15pm we noticed a lot of clunking from the anchor chain, and when we went up front it was hitting the boat. This is strange, as normally it is hanging straight down due to our snubber arrangement. We spent about an hour fiddling with varying amounts of chain slack, maneuvering the boat, and pulling the chain in until the snubber was above the water, and still we could not figure it out. We finally concluded that the chain slack was being dragged into the boat by the strong current as the boat was horsing in the moderately strong wind, picked an amount of slack that would minimize the clunking, and called it a night. We knew we already had come chain rash from the episode.

There was no way to have any fair tide on the final leg from Coxsackie to Troy, but we knew we'd have less adverse current with a later start, and so we went ashore in the morning for the walk around town that we missed on account of the rain. We stopped in to the cute Coxsackie General Store, which is true to its name inasmuch as they stock several essentials and have refrigerated cases of dairy, vegetables, and other groceries, but in a space that is more boutique than c-store. We shared one of their breakfast burritos.

Fresh veggies at the boutique General Store. Other cases had dairy, frozen foods, and beer.

We came home and decked the tender for the final time until Lake Ontario, and then rigged up the winch and lowered the mast for our transit through the canals. The process of lowering the mast and adjusting all the antennas and electronics took 45 minutes, after which it was time to leave and we started weighing anchor. And that's when we learned what the problem was with the chain: we had wrapped it around a very large tree, which the 2,300-lb windlass dragged through the muddy bottom and heaved up to the surface. Fortunately, in nearly two knots of current, the anchor was still firmly set when the tree broke the surface.

Our chain wrapped around a tree branch. Not visible: the other 20' of trunk, below the surfaces alongside our hull.

With the dinghy now not easily accessible, the simplest solution of going out there with the reciprocating saw and hacking the tree to pieces was unappealing. Instead we managed to get a line with a chain hook onto the chain below the obstruction, and using the windlass and a boat pole we were able to worry it out of the loop of chain with the help of the current. The whole ordeal took about 25 minutes and then we were off. We should have known better the night before: when the boat is moving funny at anchor, always weigh the anchor completely to find the cause.

Our anchor plot. Top is normal, bottom mess is indicative of wrapping something.

Even with the late start and the current against us, we made it all the way upriver through the Troy Federal Lock and onto the start of the Erie Canal, stopping for the night at the free bulkhead in Waterford, New York (map). We were tied up just as the rain was ending for the day, and we walked to dinner at McGreivey's pub. They had a nice selection of drafts and the server was friendly, but the food leaves much to be desired. Waterford is something of a wasteland when it comes to dining.

The tree episode, mast work, and driving had taken its toll, and I did not drag myself out of bed until quarter to eight this morning. Thus I was mid-coffee when the first batch of boats was lining up for the opening of the locks at 8am. We looked at the line of boats and the lock emptying at 8:05 and decided we had just enough time to start engines, drop lines, and make the first lockage for the "Waterford flight" of five locks.

In the conga line for the 8am lockage at the start of the Erie Canal.

And so it is that tonight finds us at the bulkhead on the upper pool at Lock E-11 in Amsterdam, New York (map), a familiar stop. There are pedestals here with 50-amp power, whose voltage is so marginal that we're having to do power management, but it's hard to complain about free. We were tied up just before dinner time, and we walked over to Russo's Grill, a local Italian joint that we remember fondly from our last visit.

Russo's has been here forever, and is the only joint near the lock.

Today's cruise brought us through ten locks, which, with no waiting at any of them, we transited in record time. My log shows we spent less than three hours locking and another five and a half hours under way. We're now at 267.4' above sea level, courtesy of the power of the Mowhawk River.

Vector approaching Lock 10. Photo: Joshua R.

We'll be here two nights, with tomorrow being an errand day. We need to raise the mast so we can put the scooters on the ground -- the first run for mine since the great tire replacement debacle. I have two five-gallon pails of motor oil waiting for me, and we need provisions, hardware, and a UPS store. Now that we're here, we can relax the pace a little, and I expect it to take another week to reach Lake Ontario from here.

Tonight's sunset over the upper pool at Lock 11.