Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Day 16

Departure 730am. Toaday we officially completed the Erie Barge Canal!
We missed the first lock this morning because we noticed our 10day passes for the locks had expired and we needed to talk to the lockmaster in order to get a new permit. He told us that he was unable to take cash or payment at this lock and it was a lot of paperwork to fill out and then we’d need to mail a check in to pay for it and it was too much of a hassle but he believed the next lock would be able to take cash and he’d move us through under the condition we’d buy a pass at the next lock. Well we dropped the 14’ and headed to the next lock to find that the lockmaster here was unable to take cash aswell so he let us through under the same condition. Well we completed the locks today dropping 14’, 27’ and then passing through some medieval looking floodgates that dripped all over us and the boat >_> and then the rest of the locks were all together, you went directly from one to the other, dropping 33’, 33.3’, 34.6’, 34.6’, 33.6’, and 14’ and every lockmaster until the last lock passed the buck and couldn’t sell us a permit lol. It seemed rather pointless to get the pass after completing the last lock but oh well we’re done!
We arrived in Waterford around noon and there was a ton traffic on the water! We haven’t seen so many boats in such a long time it was like we were the only ones lol. It was hard to find a pace to tie up and we circled for quite a while until Larry backed into a spot and then caught Grace C and tied her to the wall and helped us raft off of her. The wall was huge. I wouldn’t have been able to climb up if it weren’t for dicks make shift ladder lol… Although Grama and I were desperate for a hot shower so we would have found a way up!

Niki

1 comment:

Sammeh said...

haha I could imagine you find a rope and hauling it up there until it attached to something to get up :3