On Our Way!

Thursday and Friday were going through locks of the Barge Canal on our way to Oswego and Lake Ontario.  A sailboat has to go through the canal with mast down due to bridges, etc., and then the mast gets raised in Oswego to sail on Lake Ontario.  If you've never been through the locks, here's how it works.  We're coming from higher water returning to lower water in Lake Ontario.  Oneida Lake happens to be in the middle of the canal system.  There is a picture below of the front and back of a lock and a picture of Brian holding a rope to secure the boat while the water is being lowered.  The picture of the back of the lock is one where the lock was "leaking" pretty badly.  As the water is being lowered to exit out the front end, there is enormous pressure on the "high water" side.

On Friday, by the time we reached Oswego, we'd pretty much had it -- the temperature was forecast to be 97 degrees, and we were fried.  Back to Sauquoit and Judy's mother's for Saturday and Sunday, courtesy of a pick up from Brian's son Al to get us back to our car.  The Boilermaker, a 15K road race was Sunday, and Brian ran with Alex -- also in the race was Scott, Brian's other son, Judy's daughter-in-law April and her niece Heather (and Heather's boyfriend Mike).  Colleen, Brian's daughter, took Judy's number for the 5K and ran that.  Warm day but a good time had by all.  Pictures are in the camera that we can't locate right now - might have gotten left in Sauquoit!

Back to Oswego on Monday morning to complete the "stepping of the mast" and then off into Lake Ontario the next morning about 8:10 am.  Here is Brian having our first dinner on board.

We were enroute to Henderson Harbor, Lake Ontario Mariner's Marina and arrived about 2:30 pm after a short stop for a swim just before going in.  The nights have been beautiful, cooling off nicely to sleep.
Our friends, John and Donna O'Hara picked us up to retrieve our car AGAIN from Oswego this time, and we went to dinner at Rainbow Shores, which was lovely and off the beaten path -- good to have discovered that one!  The beautiful sunset made the pictures harder to see, but the sunset over the lake was the main show anyway!

And lastly, since I'm always the one taking the pictures, here's one of me.  Yesterday, about all that we could face doing -- we were SO tired after the preceding days -- was to motor out from the marina about 1 1/2 miles to White's Bay, anchor, and swim.  We stayed here last night, and pretty much all that I did was read, then swim when I got too hot, then read again -- my sailing routine when we're not actually sailing!  Today we'll sail to Long Point State Park in Chaumont Bay, about 12 miles from here -- maybe a 3 hour sail.