Canajoharie (Free dock)

Monday June 1, 2015
42 54 584 N
74 34 150 W

Another cold and wet morning. Aloha Friday decided to stay put, Tide Hiker and Cavara were underway at 8 AM because we had miles we needed to cover. It was another cold and wet day, but at least not too windy. When underway we huddled in the wheelhouse with the heater on, but we had to be outside in the locks.

Talking about locks for a moment. Deidre and I have a pretty slick system. There are two ways to secure the boat in the lock:

A. By "holding" lines that are draped down the side - usually one on the bow and one at the stern. The lines are typically cold, wet and very slimy. As we approach Deidre stands outside the Pilothouse door and "calls" the distances to the target line. When I stop the boat adjacent to a line at the bow, she runs forward, grabs a boat hook, snares the weighted line and drops it on the bow deck and heads aft. At the stern she calls directions and distances till she can snare an aft line with a boat hook. Then I run to the bow and secure that line and she does the same on the stern.

That is the easy bit. A slimy 20' - 40' almost vertical rope provides very little leverage "advantage" to hold a 35 ton boat in place. We need to be very careful to keep fingers and feet safe from the strain on the lines. And when its windy and raining...........

B. Some of the renovated locks have installed structural pipes recessed in the side of the locks. Deidre guides me to line up our mid ships haws-hole with the pipe. When roughly in place she threads a heavy line around the pipe and back thru the haws-hole and secures it on the horns. That holds the boat in place and all we have to do is keep the boat parallel with the sides of the lock.  This is a much better system but is only available in about 20% of the locks.

Tide Hiker secured midships in the lock. 

Barb on the bow tending her lock line

Today we made it to Canajoharie where there is 150' of city floating dock with free power and water. We have been here twice before and remember the volunteer "dock master" - David Johnson and his son "Nick". We called him a few miles out and he met us at the dock. The quid pro quo is to spend some money in town - we went out to dinner at the local Italian place.

It seemed to rain all night.