Kerm here,
The Hudson and Mohawk rivers and the Erie Canal are beautiful beyond description . It's just too bad that most city and town areas on the river a so depressed. 100's of millions of square feet +++ are vacant with broken windows and obvious signs that they have been abandoned for quite awhile. The towns we stopped in are equally depressed with most stores boarded or just plain abandoned. We in the mid-west have NO idea of how broken things are in many parts of the country. I have my opinions but this blog ain't about that. I just thought it's a situation that we all might think about...
I can drive for hours and hours and seldom get bored as I'm always curious about what's around the next bend . But I'm not sure I would like to do the trip several times as many of the people we have met have done. There are other adventures, plus the same adventure over and over are not adventures.
We miss Linda. She was a great crew, helmsMAN and guest.
Sister Mary and Cecil are coming next for the Trent / Severn. We are looking forward to it.
The boat is running well but there is a new oil leak in one of the oil cooler hoses. It's a JIC swivel with an internal o-ring and apparently the ring is going bad. At some point we are going to have to sit still long enough to have some new hoses made up by a hydraulics shop. I never liked this type of fitting although #88 (my old race car) has at least 6 of them that I always worried about. Sorry Greg, it's your problem now. If we ever put the 'Belle' on the hard for any length of time there will be a lot of refitting with updated hardware. When I go to bed at night I think about a new modern diesel with all new hoses, electronics, etc.
15 locks over the last 2 days and we're doing better and better. We seem to have the process down but tomorrow will be the big test as we will have a port tie for the first time. Belle does not like port ties as regardless of where the rudder is it will not pull the back to the left when you hit reverse. Also, I can't see spit from my starboard steering location plus I'll have to run half way around the boat to grab the stern line when we are near the wall. We did this routine once before on Lake Okeechobee and it was a disaster as we left some teak splinters on the incoming lock door. Chris was going to try to push off and I said with a loud, no very loud voice something like don't touch the xxxxxxxx wall. No I screamed it. Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will go better.
So here we are for 4 hours at the small town marina on the beautiful Mowhawk and the only boat we have seen was a mondo SeaRay in for diesel. The St. Croix it ain't. By the way, the SeaRay had twins plus bow and stern thrusters and still had a difficult time getting into the easy peasy gas dock. We did nail the most difficult spot in the marina when we came in I might add. Yes, yes sometimes you get lucky. Where is everybody?
Kerm
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