CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED (PART 1): GETTING A RISE OUT OF LOCKS

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED (PART 1): GETTING A RISE OUT OF LOCKS

In the last two days we went through Locks E-2, E-3, E-4, E-5, E-6 and E-7 of the Erie Canal – twice! It was just about a thrill a minute in each of them. And it was a lot of work. My arm muscles are sore, but I’m working on developing “Michelle Obama” upper arms, so all the physical activity grabbing cables and lines with my hands and holding on to them for dear life, while the waters rose (or fell) 30 plus feet in each lock, was worth it. There were no mules named Sal, dear Cathy, no mules at all in fact, so the Admiral and I had to do the heavy “lifting”. And just like the famous song about the Erie Canal, there was a really low bridge. We put our antenna down and made it under, just barely. The lock masters who open and close the lock gates and run the millions of gallons of water in and out of the chamber were really helpful. They were all men of varying ages; wonder if there are female lock masters. Let’s check into this.

But I want to begin at the beginning of this awesome, terrific, extraordinary experience. On Saturday, August 31, we approached E-2 from our place on the seawall at the Waterford Welcome Center. There was one boat in front of us, called “Sweet Time”. The name was perfect, in that the couple aboard this trawler took their own “sweet time” doing everything, from entering the lock, to snubbing their boat inside the chamber, to getting a pass to travel through the locks, and to traveling from one lock to the other. Thank God they were the only other boaters in the six locks, as we passed through them. There was nothing like the traffic jam in E-2 the day before. And with a boat named Slow Motion, we know what it means to take your time. However, is it too much to ask that you purchase your pass the day before you enter the lock? They sell them everywhere. If you do that, the other boaters don’t have to wait inside the chamber holding on to their line attached to the snub cable – forever – while you get out of your boat and walk with the lock master to his office to fill out a lengthy form and pay for the pass. Really! Is this a buzz kill or what? We were in the first lock; four more locks awaited us in the Waterford Flight, and after that, there was E-7, our last lock of the day. I am not a patient person, nor is the Admiral, to say the least. Nevertheless, we tried to enjoy our unnecessary wait inside E-2 by holding on to the rush of adrenalin caused by being raised in a 38,000 pound vessel for 33.55 feet over a period of just minutes, with water pouring in from below at an unbelievable speed. And we did pretty much. Nothing, and no one, was going to spoil our Erie Canal Lock Extravaganza. Here ends any further description of the actions of “Sweet Time”, except to say that this boat meandered all over the Mohawk between E-6 and E-7, often heading straight for a shoreline, then turning sharply to run over a buoy. Fun to watch – not!

The key to success in a lock chamber is to grab the vertical cable or the vertical line as quickly as possible, once you are situated well away from the closing gates. At the first lock, we didn’t have much room between our stern and the closing gates, because, well, you know, Sweet Time, acted like it was the only boat in the lock and just stopped less than halfway into it. That’s all I’m going to say. The lock master asked us if we felt we were out of the way of the gate – he had a good view from outside the chamber looking down. We said we were comfortable where we were, and we did not intend to back up. He said: “Okay. I just didn’t want you to get freaked out, when I close the gates.” Well, the closing of the gigantic, powerful gates is pretty exciting, but no “freaking out” occurred aboard Slow Motion. I held my line firmly around the cable. In each lock, as in Lock E-2, you had a choice of wrapping a line around a fixed vertical cable – fixed at both ends – or grabbing two slimy, age old lines that hang down from the top of the chamber. I opted for the fixed cable as we headed east through the locks. The cable was slimy enough, and thanks to Cindy, I was wearing my Ace gloves to avoid contact with this ancient, filthy metal cable. I needed to wrap the line around it as quickly as possible and bring the line back to the boat to snug it down on a cleat, so that Slow Motion didn’t bob and weave all over the chamber, or crash into the concrete wall of the chamber (equally slimy and filthy).  

Are you getting the picture? We were holding Slow Motion, a behemoth in her own right, next to a concrete wall with one slim line wrapped around a cable and snugged down to a cleat on Slo Mo. Yep, that was our “lifeline” which kept us from lurching backward to crash into the gates or careening forward to sink “Sweet Time”, or bouncing sideways to hit the concrete wall on the west side of the chamber. This is my idea of fun. Really. It’s quite a challenge, and you have to concentrate fully to make sure that neither the bow nor the stern of your boat is scraping against the concrete wall. You have to hold your line tight, but not too tight, or “scccrrrrape” – and the Admiral is not happy. The Admiral had purchased two new round red fenders – beach balls – for the very purpose of keeping Slow Motion intact in the lock chambers. And they worked well. They are wider than our other fenders, so they kept Slo Mo a little farther away from the concrete boat-eating monster – The Wall.   

And we had to repeat this harrowing procedure 6 times as we headed through the five locks of the Waterford Flight (E-2 through E-6) and E-7. The first five locks in the Flight come in rapid succession. It would have been even faster, had we not been behind Sweet Time through all the locks. But at least they heard me shouting “Move farther ahead” as they entered Lock E-3, and they did just that, so we were not dangerously close to the gates. Once we entered Lock E-3, the Admiral moved closer to The Wall, so I could throw the line around the fixed cable. The difficulty for the Admiral was that he could not see the location of any of the fixed cables, so I had to shout up from the deck to the flying bridge: “Twenty more feet!” to get him near the cable. And he had to slow down the forward motion of Slo Mo as we approached the cable, so that I had time to reach out and around it with the line and pull the line back to the cleat to snug it up. Again, Slow Motion has no brakes, so the Admiral had to use the forward and reverse gears imaginatively to get us anywhere near the cable. People with bow thrusters on their boats can move sideways. Slow Motion has no bow thruster, and therefore, no sideways movement. It’s only the boat handling of the Admiral that got us close enough to The Wall and to the cable to allow me to encircle the cable with our line. Ah, the great feeling of stopping 38,000 pounds with a single line. This could explain why my shoulders are a little bit sore. Once I had the line secured around the cleat, almost immediately water started rushing in from below in an eddying pattern that pushed Slow Motion toward the Wall. This made my job a lot easier, except that I had to switch gears from pulling the line tighter to loosening it up and pushing against The Wall to prevent Lock Scrape.

I’m here to tell you that Slow Motion escaped damage in E-3, as well as in E-4, E-5, E-6 and E-7, as we headed west to Schenectady. The fenders got pretty dirty. The beach ball red ones no longer looked new when we finished “locking” for the day. They had been slimed by The Wall in each lock. But they were not badly scraped. The gloves I wore were really slimy by the time we got through E-7, and the line was filthy in the area that rubbed against the cable as we rose to the top of each lock. No lock was a cinch, but as we progressed through each one, I felt more confident about getting the line around the cable without falling off the boat. And the Admiral became more adept at getting close enough to The Wall in each lock, so that I did not even have to stretch out fully to get the line around the cable. In one lock, the line got hung up in the housing at the top of the lock, and I thought we were going to either rip out the cable (not likely) or rip off Slow Motion’s cleat (also not likely). But something had to give, and fortunately, it was the line, which finally came out of the cable housing as we lurched away. From this near disaster I learned to loosen the line before it reached the housing and never to let it get caught up inside the housing again. I keep asking myself: “What good was law school? It never taught me about the hazards of going through locks.” Actually, it didn’t teach me much about the practice of law either, but at this time in my life I could have used a much stronger foundation in mastering locks. I had the best law professors on the planet: Fritz Kessler on Contracts, J. Willie Moore, who wrote the book on Civil Procedure, Fleming James (Mr. Tort) and Lou Pollack – well, three out of four was not bad. Where was the Professor of Lock Law? Maybe that useless third year of law school can be used to teach courses for life, such as negotiating locks. Just a thought.

Lock E-7 stands alone, and right next to it is a magnificent dam, which had a powerful flow of water heading downstream. We had already risen nearly 170 feet going through the Waterford Flight. The exact “rise” for each lock is:

E-2: 33.55 feet

E-3: 34.6 feet

E-4: 34.5 feet

E-5: 33.25 feet

E-6: 33 feet.

The “rise” in E-7 is not shabby; it’s 27 feet. It takes about an hour to get from E-6 to E-7, especially when you’re traveling behind a slow, erratic boat. So the anticipation was building, as we passed some incredibly lovely scenery along the Mohawk between E-6 and E-7. We knew we were also battling time because of a predicted thunderstorm in the afternoon. The thunderstorm appeared sometimes on the radar, sometimes not, but with our luck we knew the rolling claps of thunder were just around the corner. And we wanted to be tied up at the Schenectady Yacht Club in Rexford New York before we saw the lightning bolts. It was close, really close, but we got out of the chamber of E-7 without incident, thanks to Tony, a really great lock master, and we made it to the Schenectady Yacht Club a full hour before the lightning shot through the sky and the thunder shook the earth. This marina is so down to earth. Both owners met us at the dock. We had told them of our intent to get diesel fuel, always a money maker for the marina. So they were happy to see us. Although it was Saturday of the three day Labor Day weekend, there was not a lot of boat traffic at their place. The “party place”, Crescent Harbor Marina, was chock full of weekenders out for a rollicking loud time. We passed them and silently thanked God for not choosing that marina.

But the Schenectady Yacht Club was downright homey. When we told the owners that their marina was our destination, that we were going no further west on the canal, they were flattered. They said we were the first boaters who chose their marina as the final destination along the Erie Canal. Then they spent the next hour helping us fuel, then moving Slow Motion back from the fuel dock, then moving Slow Motion back to the fuel dock to get more fuel, then moving Slow Motion around to tie up on the starboard side. We fueled a second time, because the first time we had taken on only 28 gallons, but we had intended to take on 60 gallons per tank. Once the mistake was discovered, we pushed and pulled Slow Motion back to get more fuel, then the Admiral did a 180, and the marina owners helped us tie up again. All through these maneuvers they were cheerful and helpful and very competent with the lines. You cannot ask for more from marina personnel. The price was right too -- $75 for the overnight dockage. Did I mention that they also helped us pump out the waste? And that was a mere $5. When you see or hear the phrase, “yacht club”, probably a hoity toity place comes to mind where people where navy blue blazers and white captain’s hats, while puffing on vintage briar pipes. The Schenectady Yacht Club is just the opposite – no airs whatsoever, just good people running a small business helping boaters come in to a safe haven for a night or two. They keep their bathrooms clean, their office (in a tiny a frame) air-conditioned, and they even offer a well-kept pool to their customers. The thunder storm kept me out of the pool, but thank you, dear folks, for being so user friendly. Your Wi-Fi worked too! Miracles never cease.

By the time we hit the sack on Saturday, we were already excited about the prospect of returning through the locks on Sunday. Lock E-7 opens at 7 a.m., and the Admiral had told Tony that we would be back for the 7 am opening. Tony told us he would be ready for us by coming a few minutes ahead of time. This meant that we had to leave the marina no later than 6:00 a.m. to be on time for our date with Tony. It was another night of getting to bed by 9 p.m., but lying awake for another hour because we just couldn’t stop the adrenalin from flowing through our bodies after our first day ever of  climbing the Waterford Flight and beyond. I still get excited as I write about it. Ready for the “fall” of the locks? Read on in Part 2 of Chapter 100 about our return to Waterford – first I have to write it down. But now, it’s 9:20 p.m. on Labor Day, and I’m beat. Thanks for coming on this adventure with us. Next time, we want you there in person. You’ll love it!