Mon Oct 4: Onondaga Lake to Winter Harbor Marina Brewerton NY

In which all good things much come to a decommission ...

Well, this is it.  We headed off to our final destination: Winter Harbor.  The day dawned grey and rainy but we were like two horses headed back to the barn - there was no stopping us.  We had one more lock, E-23, and about 2.5 hours to cruise.  We let loose the lines, backed out of our slip and headed up the lake and back to the Erie Canal. 

 

My helpful window washer. The weather was actually a bit unpredictable, which gave me a chance to use my Word Of The Day - farrago....a confusing mixture!

The ride was uneventful and we took the time to revisit some of the fun we’ve had since May!  It seems both so long ago, and just yesterday, that we started back on the Chesapeake Bay.  And, even though we were there for it, it is hard to believe that we have been up the coast of New Jersey, past the Statue of Liberty, out the Long Island Sound, up to Lake Champlain and on the Erie Canal.  So many wonderful experiences and people.  I will say that, in our experience, the people of New York have been so nice.  Other than one or two bad experience with jerks (one in Kent Island, Maryland and one brief encounter in Ithaca) we have had wonderful interactions with people.  So many people walk by the boat and say “are you really from Florida”?   One tends to take for granted the traveling we have done, and it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but so many people are surprised that we are from Florida as they try to imagine what it must have been like to get all the way up here. We are lucky, we are blessed - and we are grateful.

Once at the marina we started to get organized for “decommissioning”, i.e., moving all our stuff off the boat!  We got the car and began packing clothes, tools, food, puzzles (we must have about 16 of them) and all sorts of other detritus that we’ve accumulated over the months on the boat.  We started making trips to ferry items to the car and by about 6 pm had about 75% of everything packed neatly into the back of our trusty Honda minivan.  

 

I would not want to be in charge of this Tetris puzzle...  Trying to figure out what boat goes where, based on size, when they come in and when they are going out next spring.  Yikes!

Inside the giant storage facility.

You can see the gaping maw of the warehouse in the distance - boats EVERYWHERE.

Our friends' RV - holding the place for their boat.  It's a big bus, but the boats make it look tiny.

Blue Horizon - waiting for her turn.

One more final dinner on the boat and to bed, exhausted from work, and emotions, as we come to the bittersweet end our the 2021 cruising season. 

From here we will stop being canawlers (people who work on the canal) and become peepers (people who travel to see fall color).  We are going to do some hiking in the Adirondacks, tour Great Camp Sagamore, go through Lake Placid to the Morgan Horse Farm in VT (I was obsessed with it as a girl), ride the gondola up  Killington Mt, collect some sand in Portsmouth NH, tour Salem MA, visit Woods Hole (important to my family), and get to Raleigh NC by Oct 21st in order to see Claire (who is visiting her company HQ). I know we will feel the tug of Blue Horizon - but we will be happy to be home for a bit as well.

Thanks for coming along with us on the adventure.  We will shortly follow up with one final post - the ever-popular Boating Season by the Numbers.

XO

Co-Captains M & R

Final picture of 2021.

Exactly...