About 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning we left our free dock in Sylvan Beach along with Sweet Pea to begin the crossing of Lake Oneida. Lake Oneida is about a 20 mile stretch of open water. It tends to be a little much when the winds from the west kick up. The waves gather on the eastern shore which is where we would be beginning our journey. However, again we had a "perfect" day for it. The weather was calm with no wind. The waves were pretty non-existent. Along the way we had to stop and watch this fisherman bring in this huge walleye. Mike is just dying to do some fishing. He's done a little along the way, but nothing big yet. Maybe in Canada……
Since the crossing of Lake Oneida went so well, we were able to make it to Winter Harbor in Brewerton in just a couple of hours. Winter Haven is a good place to stop and replenish you galley and liquor department before heading to Canada. They even have a courtesy car – so no walking this time! We spent most of the day just chilling. This area is a lot calmer than Sylvan Beach. Although we loved it there, we also like the peace and quiet too. For dinner we all went to dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant. It was a really cool place that I would expect is hopping on weekends. Even on the day after the Fourth of July they still had a pretty good dinner crowd.
The next day both Jim and Mike changed to oil in the boats. While they were busy doing that, Dale and I took a car to the grocery store. Now this was a pretty cool store. There were lots of "extras" including an olive bar. I bought several things that really looked good - but I'm not even sure what they are! Now we're learning that every state has different laws when it comes to alcohol. How I miss Missouri – where you can buy what you want, pretty much when you want it. In New York they sell beer in the grocery store. Nothing new there, right? But we also wanted to get some liquor. We had to find a "wine and spirits" store for that. Since we were going to the "wine and spirits" store anyway, we waited to get the beer then. But oh no – the "wine and spirits" store sell just that – wine and liquor. They are not allowed to sell any malted beverages – no beer – no coolers. What's with that? Anyway, we spent about two hours going to the different stores. Finally when we got back, I found that Mike was still working on the boat. Oh, he had finished changing the oil, but he started another project. Finally we cooked dinner on the boat and just relaxed. We had planned earlier to leave when we were done, but we later decided to stay another night here.
So on Thursday, after topping off on fuel, we headed up the Oswego Canal. First we had to lock through our last lock of the Erie. Then it was up the Oswego Canal. Well, we were going north, but we're locking down the Oswego River. We were only going about 25 miles, but we had to lock through 7 locks. Lock #23 and then Locks 1-7. (There's no lock #4 – don't know what happened there) At about Lock #5 near Phoenix NY there is a great little park and a good size wall to tie up to. Also there are the "Bridge House Brats". These are young kids that volunteer to help boaters. We had to pull over to the wall to wait until the lock was ready so we got to experience it first-hand. Here they came – with lemonade in hand – helping up tie up and anything else we needed. They even offered to deliver us lunch from the local restaurants. Hard working kids! We were only staying there about 25 minutes so we opted out on the lunch.
Finally we made it to Lock #7. This is where we had to wait until 6:00 p.m. for it to open. They were working on lock at scheduled times. We had hoped to get there in time for the 2:30 opening but missed it. We had a nice little break for about 1 ½ hours. Finally at 6:00 p.m. sharp – the gates opened up. We locked through to Oswego NY where we tied up to a free wall. Gotta love those free walls! Here along the wall were several other boats. One was a brand new 541 Meridian. We talked to the captain who was delivering it to Canada from Florida. He was a Canadian and had several good tips for us as to where to go in Canada. Mike went over to the boat and visited with the captain, Lang, and the owner of the boat. I guess it might have been a touch nicer than ours…. You think?
After dinner we rode bikes to town to check it out. A nice little town with a lot of neat looking restaurants. AND a Hershey's Ice Cream shop – oh yeah, we stopped!
Friday morning we tried again to find charts. No was seems to have them. I guess the Loopers ahead of us are buying them up. Anyway we really didn't need them since we had the GPS, but we really like them for backup. About 10:00 a.m. we parted company with Sweet Pea for a while. They wanted to cross Lake Ontario directly to Kingston about 55 miles. We had planned to go to the east a bit and check out some of the other towns along the way. We headed out to Sackets Harbor. Lake Ontario is huge! It's about 200 miles long and over 50 miles wide. At one time we were in water over 300 feet deep! Again, we had great weather. The Lake was as calm as it could be. We made it to Sackets Harbor and stayed in the Navy Point Marina. We planned to check out the town in the morning.
Till next time!
Admiral "C"
No comments:
Post a Comment