We left the dock in Brewerton, NY at 7:45 am and passed through Lock E-23 (drop of 7.1feet) on the Erie Canal before we reached the start of the Oswego Canal about 8.7 miles away. The Erie Canal continues west to Lake Erie near Buffalo, NY. The photo at the right shows the junction with the Erie Canal going to the upper left and the turn north to Oswego on the upper right.
We will return to this junction in a couple of weeks to continue west to Lake Erie. However, in the interim we are going to visit my brother and sister-in-law (Hank and Joan) who live on Little Sodus Bay. The bay is on the south shore of Lake Ontario about 17 miles southwest of Oswego, NY. Should be lots of fun! The photo does do justice to the beautiful weather with clear skies, temperature in the 70s and a very light breeze.
Today was the warmest weather that we have had since late last summer traveling in the Atlantic Intra Coastal Waterway in the Carolinas. This was also the first day that we have had all of the windows in the flybridge enclosure open, and I was still sweating away... (I know that is unattractive but it is true...)
Many ducks and geese were out in force with swimming and feeding lessons, including this one family with an "ugly" duckling. The one duckling looked like a Mallard but was definitely yellow in color. No big deal, just a little different sight.
The locks in the Oswego Canal lowered us a total of 118.6 feet, but the canal itself has a fairly high gradient, which resulted in a 2+ mph current. I kept the engines running 2 to 300 rpm less than our normal cruise at 1500 rpm, and we still were going over 9 mph with the current. Well, that was nice, but when we come back going against the current we will lose that advantage.
The canal is so steep in places that there is a separate channel for the canal (left in photo) while the Oswego River (right in photo) flows swiftly along its own separate rocky channel.
We tried something new today. We stopped in the town of Fulton for a lunch break. We tied up along side the free canal wall and walked about a third of a mile to the Blue Moon Grill. Not only was the walk refreshing, but the food was really very good. We had met a couple on the Erie Canal who did this most every day, and as they pointed out, it "doubles" the number of places (e.g. small towns and parks) that they visit along the way. Obviously, we were lucky to find an excellent restaurant, but we do plan to try this concept of taking a mid-day break again. The photo at the left shows Lucky Us "resting" while we went off to Fulton for lunch.
Fulton is an old manufacturing town that had several gun makers as well as other industries. The view from the waterfront park is really nice, and the town has a nice shopping/dining area right along the waterfront. The picture at the right shows the town marina at the bottom. The lock is at the right center with the dam in the middle and a hydroelectric plant at left center. There is also a bridge in the background, which completes a very busy view.
The lock above is O-3, and here is a picture from inside the lock when we reached the bottom. We came down 27 feet, which is the biggest drop of the 8 locks that we went through today. I must give some high praise for the lockmasters on the Oswego Canal. We had been averaging a half hour or more on the Erie canal from the time that the gates opened for us to enter until the gates opened for us to exit the lock. On the Oswego Canal the locks were open as we arrived, and the whole process was about twice as fast. Thus, we saved several hours today during the locking process.
The photo at the right shows the beautiful dam at Lock O-6. The photo was taken from Lucky Us inside the lock before we went down another 20 feet. Being from Aggieland, where we hear all of the Aggie jokes, we felt somewhat at home on the Oswego Canal. We passed though locks 3 and 5 without going through lock 4... Indeed, there is no lock 4. It seems that at some point during the construction of the present version of the canal they decided that they did not need lock 4 so they left it out but never changed the numbering. Go figure...
Tomorrow is a day of rest at the Oswego Marina. Please note that "rest" includes a certain amount of boat cleaning as well as the movie "Maleficent". Oh Yes, food -let's not forget good food!
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