Albany Yacht Club, Albany NY to Schenectady Yacht Club, Rexford NY – June 4, 2013

We waited until almost 10:00 to get underway today because we did not want to fight the tide for the last tidal area on the Hudson River.  We only had approximately 8 miles
to the Troy, NY lock and that will end the tides and the salt water for the trip.

The Troy Lock is run by the Army Corp of Engineers and is considered Lock 1 for the Erie Canal. All the other Locks on the Erie Canal are run by the State of New York.  After the Troy Lock there is still about 2 miles before you turn to port, leave the Hudson River and enter the Erie Canal.  There is a large sign that points to the Erie Canal to the West and the Champlain Canal to the North.

I was somewhat surprised that there was not more traffic than there was on the canal.  We were locking thru with about a 38’ Mainship that the Captain was taking to Buffalo
with his brother.  The boat will be his Looper boat but he has one more year to work then he retires.  We passed 2 other boats going eastbound on the Canal so traffic was light.

The wind was blowing pretty good out of the northwest and made locking a little more difficult until I realized that I would let the wind help and we did a port tie in each lock.
This let the wind hold us against the wall.  The Mainship on the other hand did a starboard tie in each lock and they had a hard time holding the boat against the wind.

The locks for the most part were ready when we got to each one.  The first 5 locks are a series of locks less than ½ mile apart and the lockmasters all talk and they know what is
coming.  You are not allowed to stop between the locks in this first series. We did one more lock after the first series and then stopped at the Schenectady Yacht Club for the evening.

The Schenectady Yacht Club is not what you might call your
preconceived idea of a Yacht Club.  They
do not have a large club house but rather a 2 story old building that looks
like at one time it could have been a residence.  They are strung out along the river for maybe
¼ mile with a nice river park setting on the shore where you can drive up to
where your boat is. There is one long dock that parallels shore and the boats
are in slips along this dock.  They also
have a small inlet with a canal back to where they can launch/retrieve
boats.  They have storage facilities that
are pretty well hidden and not readily apparent.  We are all the way on the west end by the
fuel dock.

After the long day of locking we decided to
order pizza and have it delivered.  The
place was recommended by the dock master.
Well it took over 2 hours from the time we called till the pizza finally
arrived.  While the pizza was good, even
though it was marginally warm, it was hard to get over the disappointment of
the long wait.