Erie Canal

t turns out that we weren’t on the Erie Canal after all. We were going through locks and traveling west on water, but that water was the Mohawk River. Yesterday we actually traveled on the man-made canal, but it didn’t look or feel much different from the river.

And it turns out that going through a dozen locks hasn’t been boring or repetitious. Going through a lock is actually pretty simple: you position the fenders (a LOT of fenders), you enter the lock, you grab on to the vertical pole or line (wearing gloves), and you use your boat hook to fend off the concrete wall as the boat rises in the box. When the opposite gate opens, you move out. But each lock has its own personality, and you don’t know what it will be until you get there. The locks have provided adventures - there was the adventure of the fast eddies, the adventure of the island of debris at the gate, the adventure of suddenly being pushed to port, the adventure of treading water at the gate, the adventure of the nine boats in the lock, and the adventure of the 40 foot lock. Maybe once we’ve done a hundred locks, it will be routine, but now it is still new and we’ve learned that we need to be alert and a little bit apprehensive every time.