Brewerton to Little Falls

Travelling with new acquaintances in a 65

workboat beside dredge

It was an earlier start today.  We joined up with a 65’ "Seahawk" with Dave and Lynda that has done this trip many times before and he felt that given the distance today we should start at 7:30  Weather was not great, 18 and overcast but what the heck, a bit of a relief after some of the hot days.  We started out crossing Lake Oneida which is about 35 miles long and then spent the rest of the time in the canal. We did around 62 miles and 6 locks.  Most of the time we and Seahawk were alone but in one lock there was 4 of us.  No problem as these are large locks.  Along the way we saw dredges that they must use to keep the canal clear.  They could still do some more work as we saw lots of toppled trees laying in the water as well as a few deadheads and floating branches etc.

  work boat on the hard

Dredge

There are still some sailboats heading south,  two of them appear single handed and going to the Bahamas. The most interesting was a couple  who were in a 20 foot with no mast and apparently a broken retractable keel.  He said the boat did not come with a mast.  He was on his way back to Lake Champlain and has given himself a month.  Next year he is moving up:  a 23 O’Day.  He lives in Maine and wants to trailer it.

We arrived in Little Falls about 4:00 and got settled in.  A little cleaning as we had to move our fenders from port to stbd and back and boy what a mess you get off the lock walls.  Easy goes it, as we have a booking in New York city for the night of October 1.