Life keeps rolling on in Tonawanda. The Labor Day holiday passes without much more commotion, our fellow distressed boaters move on with their plans, and we sit canal-side waiting for instructions and a date from the trucking company. The neighborhood people who stop by daily for updates are our main company. They kindly give out suggestions for occupying our time in Tonawanda. Towards the end of the week, we hear that the truck will pick us up on Monday, the 12th, but then late on Friday we get word that they can’t get a wide load permit due to all the flooding on the Susquehanna River. We cancel all the plans we have made including the rental car that will take us to Maryland. The weekend sees us feeling pretty down.
We are totally convinced that we have made the right decision to truck the boat. Make no mistake; the Erie Canal is not reopening anytime in the near future, although the canal commission has not yet made that announcement. You might want to check out www.timesunion.com/news/slideshow/Erie-Canal-damage-strands-boaters-30826.php. Bear in mind that many of the pictures you will see are a week or more after the hurricane strike. Our new friends from Holland, Michigan have pulled their boat and are now back at home. We follow the path of the trawler on SPOT (a service that allows you to go online and see a boat’s position on a map), and see that they are struggling to make way towards Chicago with the challenging weather that the Great Lakes can produce this time of year. While we feel fairly frustrated with the turn of events, we are actually quite lucky. People in the Mohawk Valley have lost their homes, businesses, and, in a few cases, lives due to the flooding. We have been inconvenienced and have incurred an unexpected major expense.
Mid-Monday afternoon we get another call from the trucking company. We need to be at the yacht yard Tuesday morning. The only problem is that we are ten miles downstream of Buffalo and the slog back is against the swift current of the Niagara River. Burt immediately takes off with the boat as we no longer have any running lights and will thus need to be docked before dusk. I, meanwhile, get on the phone and begin lining up a rental car before the agency closes. Miraculously it all works out. I negotiate the maze of Buffalo highways to arrive at the dock in time to catch Burt’s docklines.
Our night is not spent in the yacht yard as they do not have any spare docks available. Instead, we tie up nearby at the Buffalo Naval Park’s recreational boat docks. It’s off season, and we are the only small boat there. But, we are still in good company. Off our stern are a decommissioned US Navy Ballistic Missile Cruiser, a Destroyer, and a good sized Submarine. Exuberant is the small fish in the pond.
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| Tied up at the Buffalo Naval Park |
That night, after dinner, I am in the head taking a shower when I hear five horn blasts from a very large boat. Five blasts indicate immediate danger so I quickly look out the port. There I see the bow of a freighter a hundred or so feet away, pointed right at us. It is one of those “deer in the headlight” moments before I realize the freighter was in reverse and backing out of the commercial harbor. Yes, we are definitely in the land of the big boats as freighters are coming and going all night.
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| Freighter in the Buffalo Harbor |
The next morning we get the call from the yard that the travel lift slip is vacant and we can head over. In a short time, they remove the mast from the boat and put it on stands which gives us a little more time to tie and pad the shrouds that we couldn’t reach while it was on the boat. Right on schedule, Kevin appears with the truck and trailer, along with the news that they still don’t have the wide load permit. Up goes the boat and we place it on the trailer for the night.
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| Exuberant gets ready for the highway |
The next morning we finish up securing the boat and preparing the mast. All of a sudden, at noon, we get word that they have a permit. We take off, deciding not to wait for the escort car to show up – I am so nervous I don’t want to see this huge rig careening down the highway. Without us, Exuberant takes off as one of those wide loads you hate to see in front of you on the road!
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| Off to the Chesapeake at 65mph |
We take a slight detour to stop at Letchworth State Park in western New York. I remember going here a number of times as a child and thought it would be fun for Burt to see this incredible gorge. Besides, we need a break and opportunity to do something fun after all the stress and work of the past days. The park did not disappoint – we hiked along the trails, enjoyed the vistas of the three large waterfalls on the Genesee River and the deep gorge of slate cut by the river, and the lovely park architecture and landscaping dating from the days of the CCC. That evening we drive as far as York, PA, knowing that the boat was now about a half an hour behind us.
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| Letchworth Gorge |
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| Middle Falls, Letchworth State Park |
It is now Thursday morning and we have about a two hour drive to Galesville, MD where the boat will be launched. We get to the yard in time to make the necessary arrangements and then we see the escort car turn the corner into the driveway; we know the boat is not far behind. In short order the boat is up in the travel lift slings and the mast is unloaded on to stands in the yard. We all take a short lunch break, Kevin heads back to Buffalo, and we splash the boat down into the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic watershed – we’re where we want to be, albeit by a very different route than expected.
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| The Chesapeake, at last |
Galesville is a very small town on the West River that feeds into the Chesapeake, about 15 miles south of Annapolis. It consists of two boat yards, a couple of marinas, three streets, two restaurants, and a post office. But, it’s a good place for us. We have a nice, inexpensive dock at the marina next door to the yard and enjoy the view out on the waterway. This is the land of sailboats. The ratio of sailboats to power is probably the inverse of Lake Erie. We enjoy watching them ply their way through the channel – Hinckleys, Aldens, large ketches, and race boats abound – it’s truly eye candy for sailors. The shore line is dotted with an assortment of homes; some are quite modest and others definitely in the estate category with long piers extended into the water and lovely boats tied up.
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| Waterfront home near Galesville |
Now the work begins all over again as we reassemble the boat. It’s no surprise there are a few issues to resolve. The outboard for the dinghy refuses to run so it’s quick off to a repair shop before we need to return the rental car. Ethanol is the culprit, and we are told that we need to get used to having the carburetor serviced regularly. The mast and boom are filthy, scuffed, and scratched. The scratches in the paint are our fault as we missed a few places that needed padding and securing. The dirt disappears with a good scrubbing and waxing, so all in all, they look better than before. Burt over tightens one of the fittings for the spreaders so it needs a trip to a welder for repairs. We think the mast will go up on Monday. But no, Monday morning we get word that the crane the yard would normally use is now on its way to help in the reconstruction of the Erie Canal. The yard contracts with another crane operator that will come on Tuesday. It seems we just can’t get away from the Erie Canal.
Tuesday is our mast raising day. A huge truck crane is rented – definitely overkill for the job at hand but the only one available on short notice. Up goes the mast, again a nerve wracking experience for us, but things go smoothly, and we are delighted to once again be a sailboat.
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| Oversized fork lift brings the mast down to the water |
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| Giant truck crane has no problem with the mast |
Boat yards are dirty places and we’ve seen our share of boatyards over the past month so some serious cleaning is in order. We also mount the radar dome on the mast, something that couldn’t be done until the mast was up, and finish up the installation of the wind generator with some help from a boat docked near us.
We are finally ready to do what we have been setting out to do along - go cruising. And tomorrow we will cruise to our first destination, a whooping two miles away. We plan to attend a Seven Seas Cruising Club Gam. A Gam is an old-fashion term for a gathering of sailors. We will socialize with others, many of whom have traveled in their boat all over the world, and attend some informational seminars. So, while Bob Marley may be jammin’, we’ll be gammin’ for the weekend.
