Wed Aug 18: Blain's Bay to Scotia, NY

In which technology keeps us from starving to death ...

The first thing we needed to do was re-provision the boat - but the closest supermarket was a 20 minute bike ride away, and we needed a LOT of stuff.  (Remember that food is a critical piece of the 'cruising/retirement' experience - we are always either eating, talking about what we are going to eat, looking for things to eat, discussing past things we ate, preparing things to eat, or regretting something we ate earlier...) Fortunately my genius husband remembered Instacart.  We put together an online order and voila, 2 hours later we had everything we needed for the next week of cruising.  (I'm sure we will find other, unnecessary, things to buy along the way - like pastries and ice cream.)  The digital world we live in can sure make things easy (as well as hard ). 

We filled the water tanks, stowed groceries and started the motor by 1 pm. The planned cruise through lock 7 up to the town docks between Schenectady and Scotia was an easy one, to get us back into the swing of things. We were tied up tight on the Scotia city docks by mid-afternoon. 

On the way to Scotia we noticed how much debris the river is carrying.  We get an up-close look at debris later on in this saga...

 

The docks are right next to an old time drive in, "Jumpin' Jacks", which is a major draw in the area, offering simple burgers, fried fish/clams/shrimp and great soft serve ice cream (nope - not called creemies here).   The town hosts summer concerts on Wednesdays and we found ourselves treated to a fun-filled evening of swing music, which we enjoyed while we ate our ice cream. (This is back in the days when we were full of hope and enthusiasm for Scotia....and, indeed, for life itself.  Keep reading).

Tropical Storm Fred, which had visited us in Atlanta, made a repeat appearance almost directly over us in the evening.  It was a nice night with rain tap tap tapping on the boat.  It never rained hard but it rained all night long and we (by which I mean Rick) began to worry that it would create problems on the canal.   In July, when we were in Lake Champlain, this section of the Eri closed due to high water, and a few of our friends were stuck for 5 days. I tried to stay awake and help Rick worry, but la la la - the rain put me right to sleep.