Not Again!

After getting on our way again following the crash, we mustered up all the optimism we could summon, and continued on our way westward via the Erie Canal. Between the old ruins of the aqueducts and the quaint little towns, listening to us talk, you might've thought we were on a tour of Europe, even passing through towns such as Amsterdam and Rome. We actually ended up stopping in Rome for a couple of nights on the free dock to do some provisioning, and we figured since we were in Rome, it seemed fitting to treat ourselves to a pizza!

Unfortunately while we were in Rome, we received some bad news. My mom called and told us that her 13 year old dog, Jersey, had passed away. That is one thing that can be very difficult in this lifestyle - not always being able to be home when loved ones need you and not always having an easy way to get there quickly, or at all, in times of emergency. My heart ached for my parents, and I admittedly got a little grouchy that we were still so far away because I wanted to be there to comfort them. Since we had to wait so long for the canal to open in the first place, it really put us behind schedule getting back to the Great Lakes for the summer, and we ended up not being able to stop nearly as often as we would've liked to. It was kind of a bummer because some of these towns were so charming and we wished we would’ve had more time to properly explore them.

The town of Sylvan Beach is at the eastern side of Oneida Lake, which is a fairly decent sized lake, spanning about 30 miles. It looked like a lively place, complete with lots of waterfront eateries, pubs, and even a small amusement park!! The other side of the lake was about as far as we could go before having to stop and wait again, as we were waiting on yet another lock to reopen. We anchored near Frenchman Island.

The day was still young, so we hopped in the dinghy and drove around the island and see if there was anywhere to get to shore to go for a walk. We found an old janky pier and decided to try our luck tying off to it for a bit while we went to explore.  We made it about 6 steps into the forest before we were nearly carried off by mosquitoes! The trail was very overgrown and wild and Dustin is very prone to getting poison ivy so I was hesitant to continue on for his sake, but he wanted to, so I zipped my shirt up to my eyeballs to deflect a few bug bites and did sort of a drive by tour of the immediate vicinity before deciding I had seen enough. There was an old rope swing that I stopped and played on for a moment and then made a beeline back to the dinghy. There was also an old lighthouse structure on the island somewhere that Dustin had wanted to see, but given the insane amount of little vampires looming around, I quickly lost interest. Instead, I drove him around to the other side of the island and dropped him off on shore to fend off the little savages on his own while I blissfully tooled around offshore in the dinghy as I waited. He did eventually make his way to the lighthouse and managed to snap a few photos before flagging me down to come rescue him from the jungle. 

We awoke the next couple of days, each a new dawn of insect apocolypse, and finally decided it was time to go. We moved the boat to Brewerton, NY and fueled up so that as soon as the next locks opened, we’d be ready to go. We tied off to a free dock there and had planned to stay overnight, that is, until a group of very loud and obnoxious teenagers decided to set up camp directly next to our boat, blaring obscene music, smoking cigarettes, and jumping in the river so close they could reach out and touch our boat.  Trying to make professional work calls with kids yelling the F word every 5 seconds in the background just wasn’t going to fly, so we again picked up and decided to move up as far as we could get, to Baldwinsville. This was actually a fortunate accident because Baldwinsville ended up being very cute and they had a nice, peaceful free dock to tie off to.

After work that day, we grabbed Bella and went for a walk around town.  The town was very charming and had a lot of cute little restaurants along the water. The next morning, the lock reopened and we were the very first ones through the lock, which in retrospect kind of made us the guinea pigs to see if it was going to work properly or not, and thankfully, it did.

We stopped for the day in Newark, NY along yet another free dock. The Erie Canal is so set up for cruisers! All of the towns have free docks, and some even have free power and water hookups. After spending so much time in Florida and having just come from the Hudson River, this was such a nice change of pace not getting completely ripped off everywhere! It was nice to be somewhere that they actually encourage pleasure boating and make it affordable to do so. Newark was an especially nice stop. The dock was well cared for, the landscaping was well manicured, the facilities were clean, and they even had FREE laundry! We were the only ones on the dock for a couple of days, so we took advantage of the free laundry and washed every article of fabric that we owned. There was also free power and water and it was a refreshing change of pace to enjoy some air conditioning for awhile! We decided to stay the rest of the week since we had such comfy living quarters.

While we were in Newark, I decided to color my own hair one night. I was seriously starting to look like a cruiser by this point and had bleached out ends melding into a sort of reddish sun-bleached tone before finally reaching my natural dark color on top mixed in with more unwelcomed silver strands than I cared to acknowledge. I bought a box of color on my Instacart order from Wal-Mart for $4.97 and decided that no matter how it turned out, it would be better than it was!  I went into the marina bathhouse after 6pm with all of my supplies. We were the only boat on the dock and I figured the office would be closed by then, so my thinking was that I could just use the main bathroom counter to set up shop without bothering anyone else since no one else was there. I had to use what I had on the boat and it ended up being quite the comical scene. I had Bella’s potty pads sprawled out on the counter to protect it from any possible drips of color, a children’s plastic paintbrush set that I also got on Instacart earlier that day, a bunch of hair clips and a Tupperware to put the color in. Just as I had clipped my hair up into 4 equal buns and pinned one of Bella’s potty pads on my back like a cape to protect my shirt, in walks the marina office worker. I felt like such a moron and instantly felt compelled to explain myself to her. LOL. I assured her that the bathroom would be spotless when I finished and not to worry. She didn’t mind at all and soon left me to go about my business. How embarrassing but these are the things you have to do if you want to see the world. Sometimes you have to get a little resourceful. This year has definitely been about swallowing my pride and learning not to care what others think of me, and it’s honestly been very freeing! My hair turned out pretty well, especially considering all it cost me was $4.97 and a couple hours of my evening.

The next day was a Friday and the town of Newark was hosting a free concert in the park immediately adjacent to our dock. Lots of other boats came in that day, including one named “Dustination Unknown” which we found amusing for obvious reasons. We ended up meeting the couple who owned the boat and learned that his name is Dustin and he is also an electrical engineer. How ironic! We had a fun time meeting other boaters, listening to some music and just enjoying a nice Friday night.

The next morning, we got an early start, eager to beat the rest of the boat traffic to the next lock, which we made it through quite swiftly.

We passed through another adorable town called Fairport, NY and seriously considered stopping early into our day just because it was so cute, but ultimately decided to continue on so that we could make some distance over the weekend. As we approached the lift bridge in Fairport, we couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw a trawler to our port which was also named “Trouvaille”. The crazy thing is that we had seen this exact same boat in Mobile, AL when we first pulled into saltwater 3.5 years prior. Unfortunately, both times, the boat had been completely buttoned up with the owners nowhere to be seen, so we still have not been able to meet them. So funny that we would run into them twice at opposite sides of the country!

As we cruised that day, I tried my hand at making us Eggs Benedict for breakfast for the very first time in my life. This entrée has been a favorite of mine since I was 3 years old and I have a funny side story about it. My grandfather took me out to dinner one night when I was a toddler and we went to a familiar restaurant where my parents had usually only taken me for breakfast before. When asked what I would like to order by the server, I very maturely and confidently asked for Eggs Benedict. I think both she and my grandpa had expected me to order mac-n-cheese or a hot dog or something from the children’s menu. The server sadly informed me that they only serve Eggs Benedict for breakfast and I assured her I had ordered it there before. My little mind just couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have Eggs Benedict for dinner and that story has been told and retold every time I’ve ordered Eggs Benedict since. I’m not sure why it has taken me 39 years to try and make it myself, or why I waited until I only had a 2 burner stove to try it, but alas, it ended up turning out pretty dang good if I can say so myself! It was a lot of work to do while we were underway, but was very satisfying in the end!

Soon we reached Lock 32 on the Erie Canal in Pittsford, NY, which meant we were getting extremely close to finally being done with locks for awhile! We locked through like every other lock, and just as we were preparing to exit the chamber, an all too familiar scenario played out, almost like déjà vu. We quickly realized our other prop had fallen off. We looked at each other in complete dismay that this was happening, yet again, but this time we knew how to handle it since we had literally just gone through it a couple of weeks back. We quickly threw lines to shore and hopped off the boat to help guide the boat along the lock walls.  Once we got Trouvaille outside of the lock chamber, we continued walking her on a leash down the walls, which I must say, were quite treacherous at this lock. Large chunks of the concrete walls had fallen out, almost swallowing our large round fenders as we passed by, bringing the sides of our boat to an uncomfortable closeness to the wall. How could this seriously be happening to us again, and why did it have to happen here, in the middle of nowhere? We had just left a perfectly good dock with power and every convenience we might have needed just to end up only a couple of hours up river with literally nothing around. The kicker was that the upcoming days were going to reach record high temps, forecasting 105 degrees, and we would have no air conditioning here. We were both much calmer this time through, but had to tackle the situation from a different angle. We only had one more spare prop and it was unfortunately the folding prop that we had originally taken off in Florida because it had needed servicing. It had been locking up while underway, so putting it back on as is was out of the question. Now before you go assuming that we are complete dunces, we did not do the original prop work ourselves. We had paid a guy to do it in Jensen Beach, FL and I don’t know if he didn’t do it correctly, or if all the traveling just wore them out quickly, but either way, it was super unfortunate to completely lose both of our spare props in the Erie Canal.

We knew we needed to order a rebuild kit, but had no idea what to order, and knew that it could take days to arrive once we figured it out. We communicated with the lockmaster and told him what had happened and he was very nice and accommodating. He even allowed us to use the lock office’s mailing address since we were technically stranded on state owned land and had nowhere else to receive the parts. We pulled out every manual we could find and eventually found enough information to make some headway.  We found a supplier in Newport, Rhode Island and managed to get someone on the phone that day (which was a Saturday), but they couldn’t ship anything out until Monday. Thankfully, we had just fully stocked up on water and groceries, so we were good to go for at least a week or more. We decided to make the best of it, and grilled up a delicious bake of andouille sausage, corn on the cob, onions, garlic, lemon, potatoes and shrimp.

Over the next few days, the temperatures grew warmer and warmer. We waited (impatiently) for the guy from Rhode Island to send us shipping confirmation and finally we received word that our parts had been shipped out. I spent most of the week catching up on the blog, working out on top of the boat, cooking, and just trying to keep from going stir crazy.

In this area, there is a company that rents out narrowboats like you would see in Europe. People can rent them for a few days and travel across the Erie Canal and even through locks if they choose. We watched dozens of them transit the lock as we were stuck on the side of the lock wall that week. Most of them had bicycles in tow and it just looked like a lot of fun. Such a unique way to see the Erie Canal!

We had paid $50 extra to have our part overnighted to us and it arrived Tuesday afternoon, as promised. Dustin got right to work rebuilding our folding prop and soon enough had it looking good as new! Unfortunately, this meant he would again have to jump into the murky waters of the Erie Canal to install it. Everything went well and thankfully, we were on our way again, and just in the knick of time because my sister was coming for a visit!