Well another gray day but it was not raining when we left Albany. For the 6 hours we were on the water, we had rain probably for 5 hours. At least it was a light rain and not a steady, soaking, rain.
We had 5 locks today starting with the Troy NY Lock that is also known as the Federal Lock (Army Corp of Engineers). All the other locks are run by the NY Thruways Corporation. The locks were very good today in that there was minimal turbulence as we were going up in all the locks and they need to fill them with millions of gallons of water. We had the doors open on 3 of the 5 and the other 2 were opened while we approached the lock so our lock waiting was minimal. Probably a lot to be said for the rain.
We had 2 large cruisers with us in the Federal Lock but both of them turned West into the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal bridges allow a 21′ high boat while the Champlain Canal restriction is 17′ and these 2 looked more than 17′. That made it nice because we were the only boat headed north in the next 4 locks.
There is a lot of dredging going on in this section of the Champlain Canal (as it is called). It is really the natural section of the Hudson River and the dredging is to remove PCB contaminated soil for the river bottom. We saw at least 4 dredges on the river besides all the support boats and even a dormitory boat for the crews to sleep. We also saw several southbound barges filled with dredged material.
The river has some development but it might be a stretch to say that 10% of the shore is developed. They have some crazy speed limits in that they show it as 30 mph but also call for no wake when you are near canal facilities, docks and other boats. It would be interesting to see how it is enforced on the weekends. These speed limit signs are at each of the locks for boats going in both directions.
The river banks are heavily wooded in the non-developed areas. Everything is very green and growing around here. They had a bad winter like most other northern states and they are just now getting everything going, about a month behind. I saw on the internet today that Lake Superior is now clear of ice per a statement from the Coast Guard. I do not think there will be a lot of swimmers this year.
It did stop raining long enough for us to dock at the Schuyler (the Y is silent) Yacht Basin. It is a combination of a marina and an RV park for summer residents. It is run by Judy and Phil Dean and they have run the operation for 29 years. Judy admitted that they do not even own a boat but the marina is not that large and the facilities are evenly split between docks and camp sites for the RV’s. The Schuylerville Downtown is 2 blocks from the marina so I will probably visit it tomorrow if the rain lets up.