Ordinarily I enjoy a good summer breeze. It keeps the skeeters at bay and provides a few moments of respite from the heat. When preparing to leave your dock, knowing you will be transiting 6 locks as part of the days journey what I don't want to see is the tops of the trees swaying in the wind. The winds were gusting 14-20 knots, the current was strong, the tide was changing and there were plenty of trip enders (logs of all sizes) bobbing up and down in the chop as if playing hiding go seek. Not a game I wanted to play with exposed props. Once underway we monitored the temperature gages closely as we motored along. The sunshine, and blue sky's as our backdrop with that breeze in our faces were reminders of how much we loved being on the water. I tried not to allow the lurking worrisome thoughts about locking through sneak to the forefront of my brain for the short time we had before our first lock. Troy federal lock in downtown Troy would be our first challenge. Only a rise of 14 feet so it can't be that bad, right? Unfortunately all the self talk wasn't working much. As I paced in the fly bridge Tom kept saying it will be fine. Not sure what that means but if it was to calm me, it wasn't working! This lock and those on the Erie Canal do not have the large floating bollards that we had traveling down the rivers. On the rivers Tom kept the boat near the wall with engine adjustments and I looped a line around a bollard and up or down we went. These locks have long ropes hanging on the wall that you catch with your boat hook and hold onto for dear life!
We tried the same technique that worked going down the rivers. I caught the rope and Tom would use the engines to adjust. After just a few minutes of trying to hold the boat in the wind with one line it was obvious that it was more than a one man job. Holding a rope at mid ship caused the bow to head for the wall and the stern to float out.Tom ran down from the helm to catch a hanging rope at the stern while I wished I still had my crossfit arm muscles to hold the #%$& line! There was a small boat with us that I am sure did some head shaking. A few minutes after leaving the lock, when I stopped shaking, we talked about our little circus act of locking through. My big mistake was forgetting to loop my end around the cleat and let it do the hard work not me!
We had a few miles to calm down and regroup before the Waterford flight, a set of 5 locks, oh joy!
A floating bollard on the river system from several years back.
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