In which Mel is no longer a cash cow ...
Melanie officially ended her job on August 31, 2021, but she needed to ship her company computer back in order to be completely free. Therefore, the destination for today was Utica (You-tica), NY where there is a UPS store conveniently close to the dock. We dropped our lines and headed off towards Locks 16-19.
I had been curious to see Lock 17 from the water, as it's entrance mechanism is not two doors but rather a 'guillotine' that slides up and down. It's also, at 40', the deepest lock we have been in. As we locked through 16, all alone, I mentioned to Mel that it might be fun to lock with other boats for a change - the last time we did that was long ago in the Troy/Federal Lock. Well.....someone was listening and when we got to Lock 17 there was a boat behind us and another boat W-A-Y behind that one, running to catch the lock.
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| On approach to Lock 17 - the door was interesting... but UNBELIEVABLY slow to raise. The whole lock cycle was 45 mins of our lives, whereas a normal cycle is about 20 mins. |
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| Mel had to get us as close as possible to the front, so that there would be room behind us for the other two boats. But not so close as to have to stand in a shower for 40 mins. In fact, later at Lock 22, the chatty Lock Master told us that a sailboat, on this same day, had a problem with its steering mechanism on the way into this lock and accidentally ended up under this waterfall. It was instantly battered with 3' of water and almost sank. Somehow it was able to back up and then pump the water out in time. Yikes...I'm glad we didn't know that story until after we did this lock. |
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| The boat behind us was NOT happy to have to wait 15 mins for the slow trawler behind them to catch the lock. But we have no real life so we didn't mind. Although it was cold and damp down there at the bottom! After this lock we told the fast boat to go ahead and not hold the next lock for us, as they have a long way to go today. |
We arrived at Utica to find the “town dock” - actually a very tall wall that was next to the patio of an Italian restaurant, Aquavino. The wall was at least 10 feet high, and we were lower than normal due to the pool being lower than normal. We had to position ourselves next to a ladder in order to be able to climb up and out. Putting out the mooring lines was a trick as we had to climb up 6 feet above the deck to reach the cleats on the dock. We are always learning something new! We finally got tied up and Melanie grabbed her computer and took off walking for the UPS Store as it was getting late and she wanted to make sure they wouldn’t close before she could get there. In the meantime I hooked up the electricity, organized the lines and floats and paid the dock fee in the restaurant.
Mel was back in 30 mins sans computer - so now she is OFFICIALLY RETIRED! Wait, if she isn’t working how are we going to pay for the boat???
We decided to save you from pix of the wall view that we had from inside the boat. It wasn't a smooth wall, but rather covered in pipes, rubber bumpers and spiders. So. Many. Spiders.
We were tired and wind blown (even though the weather is cooler, the sun and wind tend to take it out of you) so we decided on takeout. Mel refused to climb back out of the cellar, so I walked a couple of blocks down to Babe’s restaurant to get a pizza and some spicy shrimp. (Yes - we were literally docked IN an Italian restaurant, but it was too expensive.) Once back on the boat we had dinner, watched a little TV and then went happily off to bed. The days get about 2 mins shorter every day as we head toward fall.
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| No spiders on this side of the boat, so we tried to only look here. |
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