Sunday, July 21.

This morning we left Lock 17 dock at 722am. Not too far down the way, we saw the Swan sailboat at the Herkimer Home tied up at a new dock.

You can see the sea smoke this morning, we think caused from the water being warmed from the tower across the canal from us.

The lock tender at Lock 16 said that they, the Swan boat, tried to go through this lock, but with 9′ draft, it hit bottom had to turn around. This is the area of the canal we are entering that was damaged the most from the recent flooding, with dredging equipment first on the south side of the canal and then a little further down, on the north side. I found it interesting how the foot diameter pipes are floated and then connected by a rubber section so it can gradually curve and then end up on and over the shore to dump their contents.

This last photo shows the Dredge with the center pipe area that sucks up the muck.

Lock 13 had a HUGE pile of logs and branches pulled from the canal. Would make good firewood after it’s dried out don’t you think? First coming up to it, it looked big.

But it wasn’t until we were passing it, that I could tell just how big it really was. It is also at least 30′ deep.

Today we had several motor boats going westbound and only a couple sailboats. It was really nice weather, blue skies, a light breeze most of of the time.

Lock 13 also is where one half of the dam was damaged and the water must have gone around the lock on land as we saw roads washed out and new dirt in that area. They made a cofferdam so that they could at some point work on fixing that area..

View now we’re coming in the lock.

Exiting the lock

We arrived at Lock 11, our stopping point earlier than expected, but this area had flooded again and parts of the wall had the concrete cut off.

This area was beautiful last time I visited, and it’s hard to recover when you’ve had two major floods in 3 years.

Looking east bound but which is really South due to curve in the river.

Looking east off the dock

Looking westbound, which is actually North.

Rob of S\V Mandate came to pick us up to visit with him and wife Susan at the cabin on Galway Lake. The lake is beautiful, and the water warm. Even Lorraine swam out to the swim platform. We had a very enjoyable time and a delicious supper. The company couldn’t have been better! We were trying to do some “hold up the camera and take our picture” shots. Then a group photo.

Monday we plan to get to Waterford and stay there a couple days. Rob and Susan are planning on coming out to Caselton Boat Club, of which they are members, to help us raise and step the mast for the next part of our journey down the Hudson River and to Long Island Sound. Our target date to is meet our friends Chet and Carol by August 3, but that is a soft date weather and life permitting.