Captain Bligh was up at 6:00, so the rest of us followed shortly. It was a beautiful morning and we planned to do all the rest of the locks and get into the Hudson River.
We got to the first lock off the day very quickly and they just kept coming. We did seven locks before arriving at the "Waterford Flight", a series of four locks in a row that each drops about 35 feet. We finished the "Flight" at 14:00. The day was sunny and had gotten very warm. Who would have thought we'd be in shorts and bare feet on October tenth! The only lock left was the federal lock right after we got into the Hudson. We were a happy crew.
(Insert the theme from "Jaws"). This blog was getting a little boring and this IS a Roth trip. We had to wait for a large tourist boat to exit the lock and turn around and then we were to follow it in. As we entered the lock, it looked nothing like the other 34 locks we had done. There were no fixed cables to loop a line around and no weighted hanging lines to hold onto as the boat is lowered. I watched the boat behind us and discovered we were supposed to loop a line around a large pipe located in an indentation in the wall. In all the other locks we had used a line in the front and a line in the back but the pipes here were so widely spaced that we could only have one line in the middle of the boat. While we rushed around trying to move lines and position boat hooks, the current was pushing the boat crosswise in the lock. At this point the mast, which on the cradle, sticks out four feet beyond the front of the boat, got stuck in a railing at the top side of the lock. I climbed on top of the pulpit and was able to extricate the mast while everyone else was getting the boat pulled over to the wall. In the meantime, they had already started lowering the water. It was a hairy situation but we came through it in undamaged.
We continued down the Hudson heading for a marina that was supposed to have a still functioning pumpout station. The search for a place to pump-out had taken on overtones of Jason and the Golden Fleece. We decided we had somehow missed the marina and turned around to go under a bridge and backtrack when we went solidly aground on a rock. We got the dinghy in the water, put the motor on and Don took our secondary anchor out so we could kedge off*. This maneuver has never failed........ until today. Nothing we tried worked. We saw a large tugboat coming down the river so we hailed them to see if they could help. They said it was too shallow but not to worry - high tide was only six hours away. After about an hour, the tide began to slowly rise and we were afloat once again. We continued on without incident and docked at the Albany Yacht Club. There were some huge, classy yachts docked there but the facilities were so-so. Regardless, we were happy for long, hot showers - Deb
*Note: Warping or kedging is a method of moving a sailing vessel, typically against the wind or out from a dead calm, by hauling on a line attached to a kedge anchor, a sea anchor or a fixed object. In small boats, the anchor may be thrown in the intended direction of progress and hauled in after it settles, thus pulling the boat in that direction, while larger ships can use a boat to carry the anchor ahead, drop it and then haul.
(Insert the theme from "Jaws"). This blog was getting a little boring and this IS a Roth trip. We had to wait for a large tourist boat to exit the lock and turn around and then we were to follow it in. As we entered the lock, it looked nothing like the other 34 locks we had done. There were no fixed cables to loop a line around and no weighted hanging lines to hold onto as the boat is lowered. I watched the boat behind us and discovered we were supposed to loop a line around a large pipe located in an indentation in the wall. In all the other locks we had used a line in the front and a line in the back but the pipes here were so widely spaced that we could only have one line in the middle of the boat. While we rushed around trying to move lines and position boat hooks, the current was pushing the boat crosswise in the lock. At this point the mast, which on the cradle, sticks out four feet beyond the front of the boat, got stuck in a railing at the top side of the lock. I climbed on top of the pulpit and was able to extricate the mast while everyone else was getting the boat pulled over to the wall. In the meantime, they had already started lowering the water. It was a hairy situation but we came through it in undamaged.
We continued down the Hudson heading for a marina that was supposed to have a still functioning pumpout station. The search for a place to pump-out had taken on overtones of Jason and the Golden Fleece. We decided we had somehow missed the marina and turned around to go under a bridge and backtrack when we went solidly aground on a rock. We got the dinghy in the water, put the motor on and Don took our secondary anchor out so we could kedge off*. This maneuver has never failed........ until today. Nothing we tried worked. We saw a large tugboat coming down the river so we hailed them to see if they could help. They said it was too shallow but not to worry - high tide was only six hours away. After about an hour, the tide began to slowly rise and we were afloat once again. We continued on without incident and docked at the Albany Yacht Club. There were some huge, classy yachts docked there but the facilities were so-so. Regardless, we were happy for long, hot showers - Deb
*Note: Warping or kedging is a method of moving a sailing vessel, typically against the wind or out from a dead calm, by hauling on a line attached to a kedge anchor, a sea anchor or a fixed object. In small boats, the anchor may be thrown in the intended direction of progress and hauled in after it settles, thus pulling the boat in that direction, while larger ships can use a boat to carry the anchor ahead, drop it and then haul.
Great pictures
ReplyDeleteOh boy! I knew things were going too smoothly! Glad you got out unscathed in the end! And, I'm assuming the long-awaited pump-out finally happened???
ReplyDelete