Lock 25, somewhere on the Erie Canal - We were headed back past the starting point, so we agreed to meet Nick, jack of many trades and mechanic, at their marina around 1330 the next day. He stressed that he would meet us anywhere to fix the problem.
An important feature of these boats is the impressive design
and execution of such important stuff as the electrical system.
There are two alternators on the diesel engine. One supplies one
battery that only serves the engine. The house electrics are totally
separate so you can't drain the starting battery. The house battery
consisted of three huge RV type deep discharge batteries in parallel.
It appears that we never had a working house alternator from the
start. Thus, the house battery ran the refrigerator, pumps, lights,
fan, etc. for three
days
before becoming drained. We had been running on stored charge
from Monday morning when we disconnected from shore power in Seneca
Falls. There's even a fifth battery in the bow to run the
bow thruster. It is isolated from the engine and house batteries.
At the right is a photo looking down into the engine room from the rear deck. Everything is immaculate, well labeled, and easy to check from topside. What's not apparent is the fact that the alternator on the right side doesn't work. Darn.
To make things more interesting, as we were docking in MLN's marina, the below-the-water-line shear pin failed on the bow thruster. We docked successfully anyway in the tight confines of the marina, backing into the slip.
Nick replaced the house alternator, and that fixed the charging problem. He offered to try to fix the bow thruster, but the shear pin inside the boat was fine. It's the one underwater that needed replacement, and that wouldn't happen until they could haul the boat the following Saturday. So Nick went with us for a short while to give us some additional pointers on improved maneuvering without the bow thruster.
Cold Spring Harbor, 1540 hours - Armed with our new improved boating skills, we headed off towards Oswego. At 1650, we hung a left at three rivers where the Oneida, Seneca, and Oswego rivers meet and headed down the Oswego Canal.
At Phoenix we locked through Oswego lock 1 after a brief delay. While waiting, we were adjacent to the Phoenix town docks with a grocery just across the street. We considered asking the lock operator if we had time to run for a quart of milk, but thought better of it.
We motored for nearly an hour to lock 2 at Fulton. Lock 3 is just a short distance further on, but given the time of day, the lock 2 operator asked if we were going through 3 as well so he could forewarn them; we weren't.
We tied up at the lock wall between the two locks at 1830. One of our fleet mates, the Honeoye, was also docked there, heading back from Oswego.
It was quite hot, and we set off in search of an air conditioned restaurant for dinner. We quickly found the Lock 3 Restaurant nearby and had an excellent dinner with superb service. Plan to take away a doggy bag.
