Rome to Brewerton, NY

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

043-14.460 N
076-7.920 W

Ahoy from Brewerton, NY!

This is just a quick note to let people know that we haven't gotten lost on the Erie canal and are still moving along. In reality the last two days of moving have been relatively boring as we've been moving through straight sections of canal and haven't been on winding rivers. The nicest thing about them is all of the wildlife, as these sections have been mainly uninhabited. There's a tremendous number of birds, ducks and geese along with the occasional otter. Even sitting in the cockpit with the engine running you can hear a tremendous number of birds calling to one another.

A few days ago we pulled into a free dock at Rome, NY and headed out to see Ft. Stanwix, which was supposed to be a must-see attraction in the area. It's a restored revolutionary war fort and is clearly a prime example of congressional pork. City blocks had been built over the top of it and all that basically remained were some fire places. So they razed the new buildings, rebuilt the entire fort and it's, yawn, very exciting for those who are into revolutionary war forts. The best part of the visit was the classic car rally which is held on Friday nights. There was an amazing collection of cars and people there.

On Friday we motored along to Sylvan Beach, which is on the eastern shore of Lake Oneida. This is a ticky-tack local tourist destination complete with carnival rides, bars, motels and what are most likely bad restaurants. They also have lots of free dockage, which is very popular with all of the boaters in the area. These boaters seem to enjoy spending the night rafted up to one another and drinking into the wee hours of the morning, forgetting to use their "inside" voices and deciding to start their go-fast boats for no reason at all. We were rather happy when morning rolled along and we headed across Lake Oneida, which is about 20 miles long, to Brewerton, NY.

We pulled into the Winter Haven marina, which is just on the other side of the lake. It's a nice, new marina and they have 2 courtesy cars that we took advantage of to go to the grocery store, West Marine, get hair cuts, etc. Due to some very unsettled weather, we decided to stay for 2 nights, which was great as I was able to catch up on a lot of work, including generating 2 videos.

Today we're headed further west and we plan to head into the Finger Lakes.

-- Geoff & Sue

---

For the cruiser: There are 2 sets of docks in Rome. The new floating docks on the western end are in nice shape. On the western end the docks are falling apart, but there's power. There's 1 or possibly 2 spots on the western end where there docks are usable.

Sylvan Beach: Avoid on the weekends. Free, but no power.

Brewerton: Winter Haven is a new facility with nice docks and a 70 ton travel lift. The bathrooms are very clean and they have the lowest price fuel on this end of the lake. Dockage was $0.90/ft with Boat US.

Log ID: 1364