We ran the full gambit of weather today. We started out of Port Dalhousie this morning onto Lake Erie with cloudy skies and no wind. The weatherman hit the forecast dead on today. Light rain on Lake Ontario and flat calm seas. Got to love a boat with a lower helm on days like today. We ran the boat from the flybridge for the first 45 minutes, but saw on the radar that the ran was coming. So we stopped; came down to the lower helm and keep on going. We ran 140 miles on Lake Ontario today and came into Oswego, NY at 12:15pm. The rain was off and on until about 11:00 then the sun popped out. Again, on a scale of 1 to 10, the lake was an 11.
We needed to stop and clear customs which we did. That took all of about 15 minutes thanks to the video phone they had at the marina. After clearing customs in Oswego, we started down the Oswego Canal in beautiful sunshine and temps in the low 80's. Almost a postcard kind of day. We traveled through the first 5 locks on the canal before the skies began to get ugly and we knew we were in for some heavy weather. Within about 20 minutes, the skies opened up and we had a gully washer for a solid 20 minutes. It rained so hard we couldn't see the edges of the canal and the canal was only 75 yards wide. That will make you slow down in a hurry. We were surprised how little pleasure boat traffic was on the canal today for a Sunday. We had expected to wait at the locks, but we went right in at most. It was about as an efficient day as we could have hoped for.
It continued to rain all the way to Brewerton, NY where we are tied up tonight, but the rain did let up and we had no trouble the rest of the way. We are some wet boaters, but we accomplished exactly what we needed to today. The boat continues to run great and Steve is getting more comfortable with all the systems and handling the boat in close quarters.
The weather for tomorrow is more of the same; light rain throughout the day with light winds. We plan to stop at St Johnsonville tomorrow for diesel fuel as they have the lowest price within 300 miles. We may stop for the night or try and cover some more miles before we run out of daylight. We will have to see what tomorrow holds in store for us.
Thanks for all the positive feedback on the posts. I really appreciate it!
Steve took this picture of me clearing customs in Oswego on the video phone.
Second Lock on the Oswego Canal
Steve driving from the lower helm on the Erie Canal
Tied up in Brewerton, NY
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