Seneca Falls to Brockport, NY

Thursday, July 8, 2010

043-12.960 N
077-56.220 W

Ahoy from Brockport, NY!

We've been slowly making our way down the Erie canal towards Buffalo. I'm actually looking forward to getting to Buffalo and putting the mast back on the boat so that I can stop having to answer:

• Is that a sailboat?
• Where's the mast?

I realize that they're reasonable questions, but it gets tired answering the same questions over and over. Speaking of being tired, this heat has just been sapping all of our energy. We leave at about 7 AM, which is when the lock and bridge tenders start their day, and then try to pull into a dock by 1 PM just to get out of the heat. We've been having 90-100 degree days for 4 days now, and I can sure do without this. When we get in we tend to disappear into the boat where the AC is running to try to stay cool. We've actually gone to running the AC via the generator while we're underway to keep the cabin cool, but that only works so-so as the AC can't keep up with the intense heat and the heat of the engine and the generator.

As you may recall, we were last in Seneca Falls where we spent 5 days exploring the area via car. I almost felt like I needed a vacation after all that we did! We left Seneca Falls on Monday morning and we quickly had a problem with weeds clogging the engine water intake, but luckily I was able to quickly clear the clog. Then we went through the 3rd lock and I could immediately tell that once again we weren't getting any cooling water. We quickly turned around and tied up to the lock wall and I was able to blow the weeds out of the intake with a water hose. The lock operator stopped by to see if he could help and explained that there had been a bass fishing tournament and the high power boats that they use really chop up the weeds and they all end up at the locks and our engine intake.

We then headed on to Newark, NY which had a nice new boater center with free dockage, free power and get this, free laundry! It seems that the state provided many of the towns along the canal with grants to help the towns attract boats and their associated money. "Wow" is about all that I can say! Unfortunately it was so hot that we really didn't explore Newark very much.

The next day we headed to Fairport, NY which was about 30 miles from Newark. The days of the free docks and power were over...they charged us $11 for dockage and power! What is this world coming to? :-) Fairport is a really nice little town with lots of shops and restaurants to explore.

I got to explore more of it that Sue did as I decided that I needed to replace the radiator cap on the generator (it was leaking) at 4:40 PM and the nearest auto parts store was 1.25 miles away. So, in 95+ degree heat I walked as fast as I could to the auto parts store, only to find a clerk who had no interest in helping me find a replacement part. I took a different way back and stumbled upon an auto body shop (which was within view of the boat) which located the radiator cap on a wrecked radiator. $5 later I was happy and hot. That evening we headed across the canal to a classic car rally and saw some very well maintained cars, including one that had an engine that was amazingly clean!

Yesterday we pushed on down the Erie to Brockport, which is another little town with a great set of docks, power, showers, WiFi and only charged $8 for a 40' boat! They also had an architectural walking tour of the town. While it may go a bit overboard in some of the details, I was amazed at how much wonderful architecture the area had. Clearly at one time there must have been quite a bit of money in the area.

We're almost though all of the locks on the Erie canal as the next one is probably 50 miles from here. Instead we've traded locks for lift bridges, and they are prolific. Luckily they open on demand, so we don't have to time our arrival at them. Unfortunately they're so low that we can't make it under them without having them in the up position. Many of the bridges use a roaming tender who operates more than one bridge. If you're lucky, he'll be at your first bridge, open that one, and then drive to the next bridge and open that for you. If you're unlucky, he's either at the other bridge or in between. We visited with the bridge tender in Fairport who gave us a tour of the workings of the bridge and provided a lot of history.

Today we're headed to Mendina, which is about 26 miles away, but we've got 6 bridges to go through.

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For the cruiser:

For those of you who haven't tried ActiveCaptain.com, I strongly suggest checking it out. It allows cruisers to create, rate and provide details on marinas, anchorages and points of interest. We regularly update information on locations that we visit and use it extensively for planning. In addition, there are plug-ins for navigation software (I use Coastal Explorer), which combines this functionality with the navigation package, making for a very powerful system.

Log ID: 1366