Freighters along the way

The Welland Canal exists for commerce. Pleasure craft can use it but have lower priority to commercial vessels. Here is a ship that our flotilla had to allow to pass. These ships are unbelievably big.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medina

Image
Today was much less adventurous as yesterday. We got to the demasting facility at Wardell's early and waited for him to open the shop. Masting went well as the bad weather held off. Our original mast cradle was too low to  allow for the dodger, the blue canopy, because we had lower bridges last year when we went to Oswego on Lake Ontario. This part of the Erie Canal allowed us to put the mast higher so we made some cradle mods while at the masting dock and put the dodge back up. It also allowed the mast to clear my head without ducking when passing underneath. We had a leisurely cruise down the Erie Canal. We tried to stop for lunch but when trying to dock at the side of the canal had difficulty because the points that we could tie off were too far apart so we missed out on visiting Lockport and we ate lunch on the boat. Otherwise it was uneventful on our way to Medina. There were several farms, mostly corn but other crops as well, on the way. There were also several residences. Th...
Read more

Tonawanda

Image
The threat of rain and thunderstorms got us going this morning. We took down the sails although it was a bit windy, it was dry. Removing the sails went quickly with three people. We started out to try to get to Tonawanda early in the hope of being demasted today. Without sails, motoring was our only option, but it would have been a decent sailing morning. Things went very bad went we missed the entrance to the Black Rock Canal that bypasses a bad part at the start of the Niagara River. We ended up going under the wrong part of the Peace Bridge. The next bridge was clearly too low for the mast and we turned to go back. But the current was so strong, we spent close to an hour going almost nowhere. Just before we were going to call for help, a US Coast Guard boat showed up and asked if we were OK. We said that we needed a tow and they obliged. It took them quite a while to pull us back to Lake Erie, close to a half hour. We then motored to the Black Rock Canal and went through a draw brid...
Read more

Frankfort day 2

Image
After checking the weather for the next day, we saw that the winds were going to be very high. We were pretty sure that we would not be able to sail the next day. As it turns out the forecast was correct. The wind and waves were very high. There was a small craft advisory all day. I'm not sure whether our boat is a small craft, but there was no advisory the first two days and there was some miserable sailing and motoring in the afternoons. When we went to the beach to check out the waves and get pictures, the wind blew the sand so hard that it hurt and embedded in your skin. The sand was blowing across the parking lot like snow snakes on the road in winter. It was a good call not to leave, but it puts us a day behind. You don't get to see all the waves, but you can see the splash on the break wall compared to the lighthouse. The flags at the VFW were all straight out. The water was calmer in the evening but still big splashes on the break wall. Nothing new on the marina or rest...
Read more