Day 2-224 in Oswego, NY -"lowering" the air clearance

It is nice to have a "catchy" title for each blog, but today is not one of those days. We entered the Erie Canal from the Hudson River and traveled west to the Oswego Branch Canal, which we took north to Lake Ontario. As we traversed that portion of the canal the minimum clearance under fixed bridges was 20 feet. Our air draft or vertical clearance is about 18.5 feet so we had no worries. When we leave Oswego in the morning, we will take the Oswego Canal south to rejoin the Erie Canal and head west to Lake Erie. After we re-enter the Erie Canal, the last fixed bridge for the day has a clearance of 15 feet. This is a problem that we knew about in advance, but today was the day to take things down.

Today we took down the radar mast which has a large aluminum hinge. That reduces our air draft to just over 16 feet (see photo at right). The radar dome is in the lower left corner and you should also be able to see the mast with the hinge at the bottom. We knew that we could lower the mast easily since we had the hinge custom made to our design and installed it ourselves. In the picture you can see that the side panels have been removed from the flybridge enclosure. The top, which is called a bimini, is still mounted on the stainless steel frame. The frame has about four hinged arms or supports on each side. In order to lower the whole frame without completely removing it, we have to remove 2 set screws on each side. Then we can fold all of the cross bars together along with the (blue) bimini top and lower or swing the whole thing toward the stern. We successfully lowered the top once without any problems, and this reduces our air draft down to 13 feet 9 inches. However, it took a lot longer to put is back up since the bimini is tightly stretched when all of the set screws are replaced. So, the first three set screws were easy, but the final set screw was difficult to get threaded... We will probably want to raise and lower the bimini often, since the bimini provides a lot of protection from the sun and fairly good shelter from rain.  However, we will try to find an easier solution.

The Port of Oswego was pretty busy today so we have plenty to see while we worked up on the flybridge. At least 5 boats came out of the canal and into the marina while several others either moored on the free canal wall (no electricity) or went on out into the lake. There was also one tug and a huge barge unloading at the Port Authority. The picture at the left is of the tug Margot which came out of the canal with a barge. The tug was moored on the canal wall in order to raise its radar mast, light and antennae before entering Lake Ontario. We also saw two sailboats that had come out of the canal yesterday get their masts re-stepped today. Like I said, it was a busy place here today...