Open Sesame!

After a month and a half of impatiently waiting for the Erie Canal to open, we finally got word that the problem child locks were going to open! Hallelujah, thank you Jesus, that was music to our ears! I cannot tell you how swiftly we packed up our work stuff right in the middle of the day, called our bosses to let them know we were out, and then started up the boat and headed up the river! We were not about to miss this chance to get on with our journey after so long of waiting!

When we arrived at the first lock, the Troy lock, we were surprised to see how much sludge and debris was still loitering outside the lock doors. We had to straddle some of the bigger logs in hopes that they would go in between the hulls and not touch the engines or props. This lock is not technically part of the Erie Canal, and is a federal lock in between the Hudson River and the canal systems. It was an easy lock through and such a relief to finally have made it into the lock system, and hoped to make a few more that day before they closed for the evening! However, immediately upon exiting the lock chamber, the US Coast Guard flagged us down and instructed us to tie up along the wall for a mandatory safety inspection before continuing on. We had to wait for the boat in front of us to be inspected first so in the meantime, we gathered all of our documentation and safety gear that we knew they would want to look at so that we were good to go when it was our turn. We didn’t want to waste any time. Our inspection was quick and easy, and we passed with flying colors. The guys were even kind enough to let us take a photo of them!

The next 5 locks were considered “a flight” because you leave one lock and go right into another several times. Once a boat starts the flight, it has to finish them all because there is no place to tie up in between. Many of the locks stop operating for the night at 5pm, so they do not allow boats into the first one starting about 90 minutes prior to that time to ensure that vessels can get all the way through before closing time. This section is called “the Waterford Flight”. Through this series of 5 locks, boats are raised a total elevation of 169 feet in only 1.5 miles until you reach the Mohawk River. After we exited lock 2, we were officially in the Erie Canal! 2025 celebrated the Erie Canal’s 200th anniversary, so it was kind of a neat year to transit it. We saw some of the original locks, aqueducts and ruins along the way! The history in this area is so interesting! All of the locks have very well maintained parks at them too and a beautiful bike trail that runs along the entire Erie Canal (over 300 miles). Runners and bikers camp in these parks along the way as they travel from Albany to Buffalo (or vice versa) and I think it would be a whole different kind of fun adventure to experience the Erie Canal this way too!

Somewhere in the beginning of the Waterford Flight, it started raining pretty hard! Unfortunately, we broke the zipper on our bimini directly above the helm, so Dustin had to get creative and had to hold an umbrella above the bimini in order to keep his head and the electronics dry. We had planned on stopping at a marina in Schenectady, but decided last minute to keep on going because we had found a place to anchor for free a little further up in a small town called Scotia. When we started across the Erie Canal, we really didn’t know what to expect and had heard that there are limited spots to anchor along the way. Most Loopers do not go the full Erie Canal due to heigh limitations of just over 15’ and rather choose the go the Canadian route, which still requires some travel on the Erie Canal, but then connects with the Oswego Canal up to the Trent Severn Waterway. Bella is not allowed out of the country due to being allergic to vaccines, so we only had one option, and that was to transit the entire Erie Canal.

Thankfully, the anchorage we found that night was lovely! It was tucked out of the way, just off the main river and hidden behind a little island called “Isle of the Onondagas”. Not far away, there was a nice little park called Scotia Landing that has a dinghy dock with easy access to town and restaurants. There are also slips for larger vessels with power hookups and they charge a nominal fee of somewhere around $30/night or so. We were ready for a little privacy, so we opted for the anchorage nestled into nature! That evening, we laid out on the trampoline just relaxing, talking and enjoying watching the wildlife. A beaver was busy building a dam, Baltimore Orioles were flashing their vivid colors all through the air, and that night we got to see the beautiful Strawberry Moon. We enjoyed this anchorage so much that we ended up staying a few days. We weren’t in any hurry because lock 8 was closed due to high water levels from all the rainfall, so we couldn’t go very far.

The second night in Scotia, we took Bella up to the park and let her run around. It had been quite awhile since she had gotten the chance to run around without a leash in such a big open grassy area so we let her run free and she had a blast! While we were walking through town, we noticed that they have a small old time movie theater downtown, much like the one in our hometown, but even smaller. The new Lilo and Stitch was playing so we decided to take Bella back to the boat and then hurried back into town for the only showing that night. It was fun having a date night and just being big kids. It had been so long since we had watched a movie in a theater and there is just something fun about that! After our movie date, we stopped for ice cream on the way back to the dinghy.

We had planned on staying at this anchorage through the week, however, the next day we were notified that the nearby lock that had been closed due to high water would be reopening. So, once again, we called and got permission to leave early and took off midday so that we could get through the locks. Dustin’s company had been waiting on him to get back so that he could come into the shop in person to help out for awhile due to some staffing changes, so they were more than happy to let him take off work to make some more progress on our journey home.

As we approached Lock 8, there was a ridiculous amount of current coming at us from all of the water that was gushing over the dam. On the river systems that we transited from Chicago to Mobile a few years ago, there are dividing walls that protect boaters from the water coming over the dam. That was not the case on the Erie Canal and we quickly realized that the closures due to high water had been very real potential hazards to boaters!!! On top of that, the sludge of sticks, logs, mud, and other debris was so thick and widespread that we had no choice but to just drive right through it. Dustin had to pull out some grand prix moves to captain our boat through the madness and it was not a job I envied! I stood at the bow with a boat hook trying to fend off the logs and push them aside as we slowly and cautiously plowed through.

Just as we were approaching the lock gates that had opened for us, our boat started to spin sideways in the current. Most of the lock chambers in the Erie Canal are about 45 feet wide. Our boat is 38 feet long and 21 feet wide, so that does not give us much room for error if it starts to spin. I ran to the port bow and only by the grace of God, managed to use the boat hook to fend us off from smashing into the lock gate. We narrowly avoided chaos! Shaken up a bit, we proceeded into the lock chamber. The lockmaster even congratulated me on such a good save!

After the lift, we untied our lines and pushed off the wall, just as we had done dozens of times before. However, this time, our port prop had zero propulsion. You might be thinking “so what, you have two motors, just use the other one”. Well, because our boat is so wide and the motors are so far apart, when one of them isn’t working properly, our boat just begins to spin a circle. The lack of propulsion combined with the swift current entering towards us from the higher elevation of the canal quickly put us in a very difficult position. We only had fenders on one side of the boat and started spinning towards the other side. We started running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to frantically move fenders, tie extra lines, and try and regain control of the boat. Thankfully, we were the only boat in the chamber for this lock through, otherwise we definitely could’ve hit another boat. Eventually the current was just too much without control of both engines, and our port bow ended up scraping up against the lock walls. It was heart wrenching to experience. We managed to throw 2 lines to the lockmaster and one of his crew and then Dustin jumped off the boat to assist with a third line. We managed to line our boat up with the wall and had to manually walk it down the length of a football field, while I held fenders in between the sugar scoops and the wall until we were clear of the lock chamber and out of the way of any oncoming boat traffic. We tied up and then just sat there in shock trying to figure out what had just happened to us and how bad the damage was. After some troubleshooting, Dustin finally determined that the port prop had completely fallen off. We don’t know if it was due to the strong current or possibly hitting some kind of debris or to a faulty install from the guy who put it on for us down in Jensen Beach, FL 2 months prior, but either way, it was gone! The lockmaster gave us some numbers of divers to try to get ahold of but it was towards the end of the day and we could only get ahold of one. This part of the country doesn’t have a surplus of underwater divers like the southern states do, and the Erie Canal was pretty cold and murky with a ton of current and hazards like logs this time of year, so the diver we called wanted to charge a hefty price for his services. Left with no other choice, we agreed and scheduled him to come out the next morning. He also wanted us to pay for his travel time and fuel to get there, which was just icing on the cake! That night, we soaked our sorrows in a glass of wine and prayed for the best outcome the next day.

The following morning, Dustin and I got up around 530am. We did not have loads of extra money to blow on this ordeal, so Dustin summoned all the courage he had and bravely decided that he was going to try and tackle the problem himself. We still had the diver scheduled to come, but he wouldn’t be leaving to drive to us for a few hours yet, so we had time to try ourselves first. The locks did not open until 8am, so he had a couple of hours before the current would get stronger and before boat traffic would start coming by. He put his wetsuit on, lined up all of the tools and parts in order of which he needed them so it would be easy for me to hand them to him while he was in the water, and then hopped in the cold water with nothing but a snorkel mask. We do not have dive equipment, so Dustin had to hold his breath off and on every time he went under water. He had near zero visibility in the water so had to rely on feeling around and praying that he was removing the correct components and that he wouldn’t drop any screws, tools, or parts in the process. I sat on the back steps to spot him, keeping a lookout for other boats, and anxiously waited for him to surface each time. He confirmed that the prop was indeed gone. Thankfully, the prop that had fallen off was our spare prop, as we had taken the expensive folding props off down in Florida for servicing. The bad news is that the props had not been serviced yet, so we had to put them back on as is. One of them was fine but the other was sticking a bit and needed to be greased. We took the better of the two and decided to put it back on. The current made it very hard for Dustin to remain stationary while he was attempting to install the new prop. He ended up having to cram himself between the wall that we were tied off to use it as a brace to hold himself still. After what probably felt to Dustin like a million trips down under the boat, he finally managed to get the new prop on securely and all in time to call off the diver! He saved us over $500 by doing that himself! I felt so bad for him when he got inside. His lips were turning purple and his back and shoulders were all splotchy from the cold water. It was only about 60 degrees! Oh and I should probably mention that behind us was a waterfall to a dam, so that added a certain thrill factor to the whole situation too! Luckily, after assessing the damage on the port bow, it was all above the water level and was able to be patched up quite easily to make it watertight until we can properly fix it. All said and done, this could’ve been way worse!

Later that afternoon when we finished working, we continued on our way, thankful to have lost only a day of travel on this debacle! I have to give serious “props” to Dustin for fixing this situation. Ba dum dum dum. LOL.