43°1′18″ N 78°52′39″ W

Aug 19 – Tonawanda, NY

The screenshot below shows our location relative to Buffalo & also to Port Colborne, Ontario where we plan to “officially” land in Canada on Sunday afternoon & report in to Canadian Customs.

On Saturday we travelled the last leg of our journey through the Erie Canal. We left Holley at 7:00am & arrived in Tonawanda at 5:00pm with a few interesting events along the way!

As we approached the lift bridge in Albion the operator asked us to tie up along the wall for a while because there was a running marathon in progress & he could not raise the bridge until the last runner had crossed over.

We took advantage of this pause & fixed ourselves a second cup of coffee & watched the runners pass by. We were back underway in less than an hour.

We were now putting the majority of locks & lift bridges behind us. One of the last locks on the canal had a large dry dock at the upper end & there were several workboats & barges stored in it. I would have liked to have stopped & looked around some more but we were anxious to get to Tonawanda before the end of the day.

The last several miles of the canal were also lined with large apple & tender fruit orchards & fields of corn & soybeans.

The final two locks in the Erie Canal system are located in Lockport & they are pretty spectacular. The two locks are back-to-back so after you go up (or down) in the first lock the gate opens to let you directly into the second lock. The two locks combined change a boat’s elevation by 49 feet.

We made it into the first lock OK & were ready for the “lift” as soon as the lockmaster was ready to go.

There were lots of people on the bridges above watching the locking process.

The lockmaster informed us by radio that a local tour boat was in the lock above us & that we would exchange places when the middle lock gates opened.

When the first locking process was completed the captain of the tour boat radioed me & asked that I come in behind his boat before he would start to move. We proceeded into the lock & there was quite a bit of turbulence in the lock caused by water leaking in past the upper gates & the flooding valves. When the tour boat started to move his propeller wash combined with the other turbulence, forced our boat away from the lock wall & we began to turn sideways in the lock. At that point I had no choice except to complete a 360 degree turn & try for the wall lines again. While I was up on the helm flybridge trying to maneuver Catherine was down on the main deck with a boathook trying to figure out what the heck I was doing! We couldn’t hear each other because of the noise from all of the water leaking past the lock gates.

To make a long story short, we finally got the turn completed, secured the boat to the wall lines & got lifted to the next level. I was very lucky to complete a full circle turn with a 34 foot long boat in a 45 foot wide lock without hitting the walls or breaking anything. It would have been neat to have a picture or two of that but my hands were “full” at the time.

When we reached the top elevation I apologized to the lockmaster for the delay & he told me not to feel too bad as I was certainly not the first boat to get turned around like that & would also not be the last one to do that.

It must have been quite a show for everyone watching from above. 🙀

After we left the lock we resumed our journey to Tonawanda. We arrived there about 2 hours later. It rained hard for about 45 minutes while we were underway but thankfully the rain stopped before we reached our destination. We were glad to have the locks & lift bridges behind us.

Next stop – Port Colborne, Ontario.

Cheers!