STUCK, STUCK, WE’RE STUCK
So, let me recapture, for a moment, where we’ve been the
past three weeks. I left Oxnard and flew
to Camden, North Carolina. I spent four
days there, getting the boat organized and hanging out with my friend Arnold
before heading north to Norfolk/Portsmouth for bottom paint. I was able to leave Camden a day or two
earlier than anticipated so I spent a couple days at Waterside Marina in
Norfolk just chillin’ before moving the boat across the river to the boat yard at Ocean Marine
Yachting Center.
While Abreojos was in the yard, I had a wonderful visit with
my friend Robert who came down from Deltaville to visit. We drank a hell of a
lot of beer and talked for hours. The
following day, I left for points north.
Specifically, I ran all day, all the way up to Sandy Point on the Great
Wicomico River and anchored for the night.
The next day, I ran all day and all the way up to Annapolis where I met
Brian at the Annapolis Yacht Club.
The following morning, we left and cruised all day and all
the way up to Delaware City near the intersection of the C&D Canal and the
Delaware River. There we stayed for two
nights because the weather was beginning to stink. After two nights in Delaware City, we had a
window of opportunity to move on and thus we headed down the Delaware River to
the Delaware Bay and into Cape May, New Jersey where we bunkered fuel and
anchored for the night.
The next day,
the plan was to run about half way up the Jersey shoreline to Barnegat
Inlet. However, as we approached
Barnegat Inlet, we decided the weather was too good to miss, so we pushed on to
Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, a 115 mile day, and anchored just as it was
getting very dark. The following day, we
boogied all the way up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie, New York. We wanted to go further, but between the rain
and the setting sun, we called it a day at Mariner’s, a restaurant on the
Hudson that offers free dockage to diners.
In the morning, it was still raining, so we made our way up to Kingston
and spent a day there doing some provisioning thanks to the generosity of
Chelsea, the daughter of the marina owner who happened to have a car and not a
whole lot of better things to do than to shuttle a couple tired cruisers to
WalMart in search of rain slickers and windshield wipers. Having accomplished all that, we left the
following morning, in the rain, for Waterford, with a stop in Albany to take on
more fuel. While in Waterford, we met
Wayne and Rhonda, and rekindled a relationship with friends at a pub called The
Angry Penguin. This is where everything
went sort of sideways.
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| This is Brian doing his best immitation of a bow thruster. |
After a leisurely walk through town, breakfast on the wall
at Waterford, a stroll through the farmers market, we left Waterford around noon-ish
and headed a short way up the river to the town of Amsterdam. We tied up at a park called Riverlink. It was a beautiful little park seemingly in
the middle of nowhere. We made a call to
the number posted on the power pedestals and were given instructions by the “dockmaster”
as to where to find the key to the “boater’s entrance” which gave us access to
showers, laundry, etc. Also, we made
payment for the dock by depositing cash in an envelope and dropping it in a
sealed mail slot – It’s all on the honor system, you see. We then took off in search of ice.
Our hike took us into the older part of Amsterdam, not far
from what once was a factory of some kind.
Now, the windows are largely broken out and the factory floor is
silent. Most of the downtown area was
completely silent and deserted. However,
we found a “Stuarts” in relatively short order and made our way back to the
boat, ice in bag.
We had a nice dinner and left the following morning. I knew there was a nice little village up the
line a bit with a free dock and power.
So, we left for Canajoharie, a short, three hour run. No sooner did we leave than it started to
rain.
It rained, and rained, and rained. It was not really that on and off sort of
rain, nor was it that kind of misty wet rain.
This was practically downpour, and it lasted for hours and hours. It never stopped. Locking through in the rain sucks! Getting through a lock requires that both of
us get out on deck to manage the lines.
It’s a good thing we got the slickers in Kingston. Did I mention that the slickers were located
in WalMart on the clearance rack and cost only $7.00 a peace? Brian’s is “genuine South African Vinyl” and
looks like it came out of the Eddie Bauer Catalog. Mine is 100% Polyester and, wearing it, I
look like a Cal-Trans worker, it being bright yellow, and all. Moreover, mine leaks like a sieve at the
seams. (I fixed that yesterday with some
waterproofing spray.) I think I got the
shitty end of that deal. Oh well, it
fits. So, back to the cruise.
The first night in Canajoharie, we walked into town (yes, in
the rain) and had Italian food for dinner at a great place on Main Street. We met the owner, chef, head waitress. Her name is “Sasha.” First, let me say that the food was
amazing. Sasha is a very good cook. However, her story was rather interesting.
Sasha and her family left Montenegro and came to New York
around 13 years ago. Her husband was the
chef in the family and they bought a restaurant with a building attached to
it. They worked it together for several
years when her husband decided he was done and left. Yes, he left.
He disappeared. Sasha became
alone and had to fend for herself. She
did a fine job. However, the years of
running a restaurant by herself are coming to an end and she is planning to
sell the restaurant and the building and move down to the city where she can be
closer to her children. She is concerned
about the expense, but she is a very resilient woman who, no doubt, will be
just fine.
The following morning, it continued to rain and rain and
rain. We planned to simply move on.
However, after the engine was running, but before leaving the dock, I
was completely unable to make contact with lock 14. Brian was out on the dock getting ready to
untie the lines and speaking with a guy named Jeff, the Superintendent of the Canajoharie
Water Works. Based on their conversation,
at least what I overheard of it, I shut off the engine. It became clear that we were not going
anywhere; the canal was shutting down.
Jeff had actually come down to the dock with an electrician to
pull the power pedestals and to and inform us of the approaching flood. They were pulling the pedestals so they
wouldn’t be lost. He even pulled the
trash cans out of the park so they would not get washed down river. Ok.
Then, we met with Dave, a Canal Maintenance Supervisor. He told us that, in a relatively short period
of time, the water level would rise substantially and the ramps to the dock
would be flooded and we would be stuck on our boats. Moreover, he advised that the river flow was
going to substantially increase as well as the volume of debris that was
slamming down river. Obviously, when
there are trees and chunks of all sorts of this and that flowing in a river
that is basically controlled by a system of locks and dams, there is a significant
concern that there will be damage to the hardware. Well, as a precaution, Dave told us the Canal
Authority was pulling wickets and would be allowing the river to run its course
so as to prevent further damage to villages along the river due to flood. Finally, we were visited by the Chief of
Police. He came down to make sure we
were all fine and had everything we needed.
Everybody was super supportive and friendly. So, we would spend a second night in
Canajoharie.
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| Here you can see the water rising. The ramp to the dock was at a 30 degree downslope when we got to Canajoharie. |
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| Now, clearly the ramp is at an almost 30 degree up slope from the park which is underwater. You can't really see the debris in this photo, but believe me, it was good to be behind that bridge piling. It offered protection against the trees that were running downstream with a pretty ferocious current. |
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| This was taken the following day, after the Authority pulled several dam wickets and let the water levels recede. At least we were able to get off the boat. We had no power. |
While stuck in Canajoharie, we met some new friends. We met a guy named Steve who lives up the
river in Rome, New York. He was
travelling alone along the canal in his very small sailboat. I decided to nickname him “Intrepid.” We also met Anne and Tim who live and cruise
aboard a very nice Ocean Alexander called “Ivanhoe.” They are younger folks and are a lot of fun
to play with. We also met the guy we all
call “Dockmaster Dave.” Yes, his name is
Dave and he is the dockmaster in the Canajoharie area. He is employed by the Canal Authority and it
is his job, no, it is his life’s function to make every boater who comes to
Canajoharie feel at home. Dave has been
a rockstar of stellar proportions. He
comes down every few hours to check on us and make sure we are doing ok. He shuttled several of us to the store for
groceries. He has offered to bring
portable generators, water tanks, and mobile pump-outs. This guy is superb.
Actually, everybody has been superb. The following morning,
I needed a little help with my generator, so I called Dockmaster Dave and asked
for a referral to a diesel mechanic. He
not only made a referral, but when he called me back, he advised that the
mechanic was en route and would be there in about 15 minutes. On time, a mechanic named Marcel arrived, who
got right to work. Note that throughout
all of this, the rain continued to pour.
Now, I’m not sure Marcel is actually a diesel mechanic, but he took a
look, made a bunch of calls, and the problem got solved. He charged a fair price, and everything is
good, electrically speaking.
Before Marcel could finish, however, Dave came down to the
boat and advised that the Canal Authority was strongly suggesting that we all
move our boats up the river to the land cut beyond lock 16. The reason stated was that the Authority
would be pulling the dams and allowing a free flowing river, packed with high
speed currents and a lot of debris.
Furthermore, once the dams were pulled, and the water was allowed to
flow, there was a grave likelihood that the water levels would drop to “winter
levels”, i.e., no water, and that we would be stuck in the mud. So, with that, and with the assistance of the
operators of locks 14, 15, and 16, Ivanhoe and Abreojos made the 10 mile move
up into the land cut. We would be safe
here because the land cut is an area of canal that acts as a bypass of the
Mohawk River. There are locks at both
ends thereby working to control both the water level and the amount of debris.
After a couple hours of moving in the pouring rain, we got
tied up to the south wall, just west of Lock 16. There were some interesting sights along the
way. We were running behind
Ivanhoe. Between his prop-wash and the
pouring rain, visibility was difficult.
Several times, we had to “zig-zag” around large chunks of tree that were
floating down the river. We spotted a
couple deadheads that would do serious damage.
It was interesting to watch the chart plotter as we went along. The charts are drawn generally based on the low to average water level scenario. The water level was so high, that even though we were running in what appeared to be the middle of the river, the chart plotter showed the position of the boat over land!
When we got to Lock 15 however, the narrow choke point on the Erie
Canal, we saw that it was all choked up with debris. Behind the dam, there was a canal barge with
a crane on the front of it. While tied
up in the lock and waiting for the lift, we saw this mariner inch his barge up
to the edge of the dam, literally powering back hard enough to prevent the
barge from slamming through the wickets, an event which would have killed him
and his crew, sent the barge through and over the dam, and shut down the canal
arguably for the rest of the year. I
recall thinking to myself that this guy had the biggest pair of brass nuts of
any human I had ever known. So, he
inches the barge up, and an operator sitting in the crane on deck throws the
steel clam-shell bucket into the water and it sinks deep. Followed by a billowing belch of black smoke,
the bucket came back to the surface with a tree that had to be 100 feet
long. (Later, Brian measured the
diameter of the lower section of that tree at 17 inches.) With the tree locked in the jaws, the barge
slams it into heavy reverse and backs away from the edge of the dam. That was truly impressive and made the
otherwise tedious time in the lock anything but.
So, we are still here at lock 16. It’s been a couple days and everyone has been
great. The Authority keeps checking up
on us and the locals come by and offer us a ride here or there or wherever we
might need to go. We’ve all decided to
dub ourselves, the “Lock 16 Yacht Club.”
We have been keeping each other company and enjoying being stuck. We grilled last night on the grass under the
trees. It was beautiful weather and we
decided we could not waste it. Although
the weather seems to be improving, we still have no word, officially, as to
when we may be able to start moving again.
However, officially unofficially, it looks like we may be able to get
under way Sunday or Monday, and more likely Monday.
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| The Lock 16 Yacht Club |
Brenda will be here on Sunday and I’m sure we will be moving
again. So, for the time being, this is
M/V Abreojos signing off.
Out.
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