We are in a period of ups and downs, the first of which involves our mast. If you ever want to raise your anxiety level, just try watching your 1000 pound, 65 feet long mast float around in the air. Initially a truck crane comes over and raises the mast out of the boat, brings it up into the parking lot, and deposits it on stands. Then the travel lift is brought over. The mast is hung in its slings and lowered on to the support structure Burt has built on the deck of our boat. It is nerve wracking, but goes smoothly, and in a matter of a couple of hours we are ready to cast off. But, just prior to leaving, the yard manager comes down and says that the floods from Hurricane Irene have washed away the boat yard on the Hudson that everyone relies on to re-step their mast. It is the first inkling that this trip may not go entirely according to plan.
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| Before it all starts, the meeting of the minds. |
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| The mast starts the trip up. |
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| Coming down on the mast stands |
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| The travel lift lowers the mast back onto the boat. |
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| The mast drops down on the supports. |
We’re a funny looking power boat now with this long stick atop, and we put-put down the Niagara River to the Black Rock Canal, built to protect shipping interests from the currents and shallows of the Niagara. It contains one lock that we easily take, making us now around five feet lower than Lake Erie. It’s another down and the official exit from the Great Lakes.
A few miles later, we make a sharp turn to starboard where we enter the Gateway to the Erie Canal at Tonawanda. The town has developed a pleasant waterfront with docking along both the north and south walls of the river.
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| Exuberant along the wall at Tonawanda |
Park land and bike trails parallel the walls while an assortment of interesting but low bridges span the river. This is power boat territory as no sailboats can proceed through here unless their masts are down. We stop for the night to avail ourselves of the showers, laundry, and nearby large grocery store and to enjoy the beautiful bike trail that follows the Niagara River back to Buffalo.
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| Vista from the bike trail along the Niagara River |
And we also take the time to investigate online what is happening with the Erie Canal. The official web site is nebulous – the canal is closed in the eastern portion; updates will be available next week. That leaves us wondering, do we keep going or stay put in a nice facility as opposed to finding ourselves marooned further up the canal where things are more primitive.
We opt for the more cautious route as another sailboat with mast down powers past onto the first set of locks. After all, we’re pretty comfortable here. The sailboat has gotten our phone number from the boat yard and gives us a call the next day. According to the lockmaster at the first set of locks, it might be a week before the canal is fully open. We try calling locks in the affected area but calls don’t go through – the phones are not yet operational. Unofficial word is beginning to surface on other web sites that the damage far exceeds anything that the canal commission is admitting. We stay put, other boats begin filtering in and we become part of a small community of distressed boaters. The locals walking the park or coming by in their boats are friendly but seem to know nothing about conditions in the Mohawk/Hudson River valley. We are surprised that media is not covering this catastrophe. Finally, a gentleman who is an engineer on the railroad that parallels the canal seeks us out. He has been past the affected area several times and says there is no way the canal can open this year and perhaps even the next year or so. The damage to the canal infrastructure is overwhelming, and the state will have to have a major bond issue to fund the reconstruction. At the same time, a web site begins to show pictures of the area. You can see these pictures by goggling Waterway Guides and clicking on the NY State portion. Finally, the Hudson River is clogged with storm debris. The Coast Guard warns against navigation down the river due to all the half sunken boats and floating remains of houses and cars.
Reality bites and we experience a downer. The four boats in our little community start formulating Plan B. Two of us are full time liveaboards so a winter in Buffalo is out of the question. The liveaboard trawler from Florida decides to retrace its path, returning to Chicago by a long Great Lakes passage and then heading south by the river system. The Canadian skipper of a Nonsuch, also bound for the Bahamas, and we decide that having the boats trucked to Annapolis is the best option, and we begin to make the necessary arrangements. The final boat owners have a home in Holland, Michigan so they decide to have the boat pulled in Buffalo for the winter and hope to restart their cruise in the spring. Over “medicinal drinks” that evening they say that having to write in their blog that their cruise, a dream for many years, is on hold was one of the most difficult things that they have had to do. No one is smiling but coming to a decision does relieve some of the stress.
It’s now Labor Day weekend. The trucking company will give us a definite haul date after the holiday, and it will be approximately ten days from now. They are working in conjunction with the boat yard, but with holiday hours we don’t have any specific instructions on how to prepare the boat. Burt undertakes some basic tasks in anticipation of removing most of the fittings and structures that extend above the basic fiberglass of our boat. This is not a simple or easy job, and we are anxious to get a start on it.
Meanwhile, it is definitely holiday time in Tonawanda. The walls are packed with docked local boats and the river is alive with all kinds of floating devices – power boats, kayaks, canoes, jet skis, stand up paddle boats, and a sort of bicycle on pontoons that looks like something out of Dr. Seuss. The waterfront bar/restaurant across the river from us is packed. Come dusk the boat traffic increases giving us something of a cross between Put-in-Bay’s B-dock and a 20ish foot power boat version of Annapolis’s Ego Alley. By dark the river is alive with red, green and white lights while on shore, those strolling the waterfront park are donning glow stick necklaces. With a live band playing, blaring stereos, and the revving of cigarette type boat engines, it can only be described as a zoo, albeit a relatively well behaved zoo. We have front row seats and are enjoying the spectacle.
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| Holiday crowds begin to filter in. |
That is until 4 am when one idiot decides to give one more vigorous rev to his engine. The question is, do we take him out with a flare gun or just show up in a couple of hours with an air horn posed above his companionway? An interesting conundrum, but one we can’t act upon as we have no idea which boat was responsible for the disturbance. We still have two more evenings to go, so it could get very interesting.
