We pulled off the lock wall just a few minutes after 7:00 this morning. It was cold. I mean really cold. Like frost on the pumpkin cold. Touching the stainless steel steering wheel this morning was like putting your hand in a buck of ice. It was really chilly until about 10:00 when the sun was finally up and in full force and giving us that “green house” effect on the flybridge.
The cold was mitigated by a really nice surprise from Denise. Denise did a sensational breakfast/brunch. This girl can cook with the best of them. After 7 days of coffee and breakfast bars, Denise made us the nicest breakfast you can imagine. It was breakfast in bowl. She had home-fried potatoes, eggs, sausage, onion and spices all put together. It was amazing. It was just what we needed on such a cold day. It was truly brunch in a bowl. Thank you Denise for kick’n this day off on a very high note.
We continued to trudge through the locks and the hurtful 10 mph speed limit on the canal. After we cleared lock 16, the speed limit finally increased to 30 mph. It was nice to finally get the boat up and moving again. However, no trip can be complete without a practical joke. Poor Mack was the target and they got him pretty good.
This boat has an aft control station to drive the boat when you are fishing. After we got through one of the locks, we asked Mack to take the helm. However, we had switched the controls to the aft station. Mack started to drive and then Keith Skipper started to increase the speed from the aft station. Mack didn’t know what the heck was going on. We all played it up as if he had broken something and the boat was now out of control. He got a bit scared for a few seconds before he finally figured out we were putting him on. We all had a good laugh over it. Mack was a good sport about it. The things you do to pass the time on a long trip.
As most of you know, the boating Gods have their own ideas of how things should go sometimes. It never fails, Randy asked me how far we would get tonight as we pulled into lock 12. I told him I was pretty confident that we would get through Lock 8 if everything went right and make it to a marina with a restaurant before the locks closed at 5:00pm. We had just pulled into lock 12 and I had calculated the time to make the rest of the trip for today. I figured the miles and locks and our average time to get through. I told him it was going to be tight, but we should make it. Not less than 5 minutes later, the lock master came over the radio and said he was having a problem with the lock. About 30 minutes later, he was able to fix the lock and we got back on our way. However, it was too late. There was no way we were going to make it lock 8.
We started to backtrack and figured out the best place to stay for the night. Fortunately, it was just down the waterway. There is a nice park and dock in Amsterdam, NY after lock 11. So we finished a bit early today around 3:30. We were all pretty tired and we all wanted to get settled in to see the Presidential Debate tonight.
Now it is off to dinner, a cold beer, some Italian food and then the debate. Every day is a little different on the water. Today is a day I will remember for long time.
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