I can hear the banjos…

9/21/2014
Sylvan Beach, NY; Position: 43 11.825N, 75 43.310W
Posted by Bill

We put in a long day today. Leaving our terminal wall in Weedsport at 7:10 we set course for Sylvan Beach, NY; on the east side of Oneida Lake. We motored through a nature preserve and a really remote area of the canal. At one point I could here the banjos playing Deliverance.

DSC_0117 cmp

Kudos to my wife. She cooked an amazing breakfast as I piloted the boat through Deliverance country. You just don’t know how wonderful it smells and tastes when you are hungry in the morning and driving the boat. She is the bomb. As we entered Brewerton we stopped for diesel fuel and a pump out. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the pump out, it is the process of sucking out the piss and crap that was pumped into the holding tank through regular use. Not the pretty side of boating. On a normal live-aboard boat you need to do this weekly. We stopped at Ess-Kay marina to complete this task. Amazingly the lady who owns it went to Ohio Wesleyan college in Delaware Ohio, just north of Powell where we lived for 18 years. Also, our eldest daughter went to school there. I was amazed.

After that we crossed Oneida Lake. Oneida can be very rough when winds have a west component and it takes 2 1/2 hours to get across in a sailboat. When we started out the weather was pretty good but it deteriorated rapidly. Thunderstorms and rain, like cats and dogs, for the last 1/2 of the trip. We got back into the canal before the west wind kicked in and started raising the waves. We stopped at Holms marina which had pretty good ratings on Active Captain. Again, I hear the banjos.

Rain and more rain, so Tricia is cooking vs. us going out. Lucky me!

I am guessing 3 more days in the canal. We are at least 2/3rds of the way through.

Sunrise today.
DSC_0156

Tug boat passing.
DSC_0171 cmp
DSC_0200

Leaving lock 24.
DSC_0173 cmp

Leave a Reply or Subscribe