Baldwinsville, NY - In the morning, we locked through lock
24 eastbound. Listening on channel 13, we heard another 
vessel, City of Syracuse, call the
lock heading westbound. The lock operator knew that the other
boat was an excursion boat owned by MLN. It was the only time
we were announced by name as the boat already in the lock, no
doubt because the lock operator knew the connection between the
boats.
Nick, piloting the Syracuse, called us to see if there was a problem since we were heading back so soon. Ironically, we did have a problem, but we didn't know it yet. More on that later. Nick and crew were bound to a nearby town to pick up a school group for an afternoon excursion.
We dropped Jen off at Cold Spring Harbor and then used our car to make another Wegmans run for a few groceries.
Now, what to do? We had interest in heading to Oswego, but a previous skipper who had been there, done that, wrote in the log book if you really want to see the canal, head west. So we turned back west.
We were held up for a time at lock 24 as a very large commercial craft was locking eastbound. The lock operator was a big help as he cautioned us in a series of radio transmissions "don't be in a hurry, we've got commercial traffic" ... "you might want to hang back as this thing will want the whole river when it makes the turn" ... " this thing is really big " ... " why don't you tie up at the lock wall as far from the lock as possible until it passes".
At 6 mph, it wasn't until 1750 that we finally broke into new territory as we continued west past the Cayuga-Seneca Canal junction. Shortly after, we locked through 25 then continued about another hour to lock 26. In both cases since we radioed them as we approached, the locks were ready and waiting when we arrived.
We asked at 26 if we could tie up for the
night. We went to
the far end of the sea wall past the lock,
and
docked.
That night was the first we had dinner on board. We brought
makings for 2-3 dinners with us, but so far on the trip we had
enjoyed restaurants for dinner. The boat was equipped with a propane
grill for use on shore, and this night we grilled dinner in the
solitude of the lock 26 grounds. The solitude was broken a few
times as freight trains rattled by on a nearby although unseen
track. We saw a lot of that train line the next day, and apparently
we had crossed under it a time or two already.
