Leg #8 — 6/5/14 to 6/15/14 — Albany, NY to Chambly, Quebec, Canada

We flew into Albany on June 4, rented a car and headed for the Albany Yacht Club Marina in Rens­se­laer across the river from Albany.
While Ken worked on some boat issues—the air con­di­tioner is flip­ping the breaker, I went to the gro­cery and hard­ware store.  We both always seem to miss look­ing at that list of things to buy and bring from home.  Ken wants rub­ber gloves that are fit­ted around the wrist.  I don’t find those at the gro­cery so instead I buy two pairs of house­hold rub­ber work gloves.  Then I go to the clos­est hard­ware store….of course, right across the street, where­upon I find great gloves for han­dling the lines through the locks.  I also buy two more pair, one for me and one for Ken when he loses the expen­sive pair.  I paint mine with pink nail pol­ish on the fin­gers so that I know which pair is mine.
We have not spent any time check­ing out Albany so we head down­town to see some of New York State Capi­tol sites.  “The Egg” is a huge arts and cul­ture space.  The state capi­tol build­ing is beau­ti­ful.  There are a lot of great build­ings down­town though the city looks like it is strug­gling.  We drove down Lark St. since I had read that it had a lot going on…..well, we didn’t see that part though you can see where they are try­ing.  We didn’t get out and walk and didn’t find a restau­rant that we wanted to go to.  We did find a lit­tle pub on State Street and stopped to have a late lunch/early din­ner.  Then back to the boat.  We went up to the club for Happy Hour and talked to a cou­ple of mem­bers.  We went down to talk to Bill and Amy on Mar­cat, a Looper out of Hert­ford, NC, who I had seen on the AGLCA Loca­tor App.  They are doing a sec­tion of the Loop over on the Erie Canals.  Back to the boat for me to relax and Ken to take the car back to the airport.

Uncle Sam — Sam Wilson

In the morn­ing, we head out around 7:30 and stop in Troy, NY around 8:30am.  Ok, this was a sur­prise to me.  Ken had known that he wanted to stop but it never came across my wave­length.  We stopped for break­fast !  It was good to get a glimpse of the city and we did find a nice break­fast spot.  Troy, NY is the home of Uncle Sam—Sam Wil­son.  Troy has a large statue of Sam and has also done the smaller depic­tion of Sam by var­i­ous artists located along the streets.  Back to the boat (after buy­ing large trash bags to cover the round fend­ers to keep the slime off as we tra­verse the locks).

On to the Troy Fed­eral  Lock.  Our first lock since the Oka­chobee Water­way in Florida!  This is the only lock run by the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment instead of the NY Canal Sys­tem.  All went very smooooothly.
When we hit Water­ford, NY, the deci­sion for every Looper is now.  We are head­ing North on the Canal while a great many Loop­ers turn west on the Erie Canal.  It’s a deci­sion based on time, boat height and which area you want to explore. 
On to Locks 1 through 6.  All went well, most quite quickly except Lock 6 where we had to wait a good hour for a barge to go in (and take up the whole lock), pick up some­thing and come back our way.
A storm was in the sky and we did not beat it in to Fort Edwards.  As usual, I am the one who ties up the boat in the very heavy rain.  This one should have been in a video because the wall was quite high so there are lad­ders to climb up the wall…but instead I just crawled up.  Great visual.  I accom­plished the nec­es­sary very quickly and back in the boat.  We are safe, sound and sit­ting still.  Hur­rah !  A long day and 7 locks.  Tomor­row we will have Locks 7 thru 12.  Din­ner was in a his­toric restau­rant a short walk away—not noteworthy.

That is the bot­tom of the bridge at the top of the page–the the top of the boat pictured.

After a morn­ing walk and, of course, break­fast at 2Momma’s, we headed out of Port Edward to Lock 7 at 8:00am.We had to wait on another barge to lock through before us and we came out of the Lock at 9:00am.  Now Locks 8 through 12 (there is no Lock 10) are “down” locks.  By 1:00pm, we are in White­hall for a brief visit.  We walked around Whitehall—not much to com­ment about.  We did take a pic­ture of the 1812 Ticon­deroga pieces of the old wooden boat. White­hall, NY is the birth­place of the U.S. Navy and the gate­way to the New York Canal Sys­tem.  Back on the boat and in to Lock 12.  Most of the locks have been sim­ple and fast.  When you have to wait for another Lock through, it prob­a­bly takes a half of an hour.  The bridge height on this canal is 17.5′ mean water depth–which to me means on aver­age.  Our boat is right at 16′ so the squeeze under a few of them brought us both to attention.The scenery between Locks 8 and 12 was beau­ti­ful.  After Lock 12, you really were see­ing the Adiron­dack Moun­tains but with spec­tac­u­lar marshes in the val­ley.  You might think you were in Geor­gia except for the moun­tains.  The chan­nel was very sim­i­lar to the Dis­mal Swamp in width and was serene.  We have only seen a cou­ple of plea­sure boats since we left Albany.  Three of them were head­ing south and one locked through with us in C12.
Yeah !  We ate on the boat after leav­ing C12.  The food now can’t all go to waste.  The scenery north is beau­ti­ful to spec­tac­u­lar.  When we reached the lower part of Lake Cham­plain the area opened up with moun­tains on each side.

Crown Point Lighthouse

This feels like the North­west cruis­ing we did on Sev­enth Sun II.  We ended the day at Van Slooten Marina which despite its’ glow­ing web­page, does not have all the ameni­ties known to man.  What it did have was a beau­ti­ful view to the Ver­mont side of the lake.  We had a bit of dif­fi­culty tying up to the short fin­gers in the wind and chop but finally man­aged with the help from the marina owner.
We trudged into town to look around and get a bite to eat, then ice cream, and back to the boat.  All of these lit­tle towns have Amtrack access and it appears that it would be a beau­ti­ful ride right next to the water.  We met a cou­ple of Cana­di­ans who had just bought their sail­boat and were return­ing to Que­bec  that evening.  They will come back and head to the Erie Canal, Oswego, TS and Geor­gian Bay when they come back in a cou­ple of weeks.
The next morn­ing, we left for West­port Marina, only 10 miles away around 7:30am.  We went slowly along the coast and into a few of the bays look­ing for eagle nests.  We spot­ted one who gave us some beau­ti­ful shots.
We need a new part for the air con­di­tioner and Ken arranged for them to order the part and put it in.  We arrived and refu­eled before Larry came aboard to look at sev­eral other small repair items.  We decided that since were going to come back here when the part arrived in a cou­ple of days that we would head to Ver­gennes, VT.
It was a long (8 miles at 5-6mph) and lazy wind­ing trip south­east on Otter Creek to the very charm­ing town of Ver­gennes, VT—Vermont’s old­est city.  The town dock is very small and the south end of it had room for us.  A group of peo­ple were work­ing on a wooden canal boat on the west end and their leader helped us dock.  The cur­rent runs a con­stant 1.5mph and the dock has large metal poles jut­ting out.  I later found out they don’t put the float­ing docks in until the first week of June and I should have called ahead.  I didn’t, so we dealt with what was there.  I was very grate­ful for the help as I could see those poles scrap­ing the side of the boat if things didn’t go well.  We tied up with­out inci­dent.  Ken spent some time on the bat­tery sit­u­a­tion.  On the way here, we had no 12V out­lets work­ing.  That means no recharg­ing phones or com­put­ers which con­sti­tutes a great deal of our being able to know where we are.  It’s not just a case of talk­ing to peo­ple or read­ing emails, we use the com­put­ers for nav­i­ga­tion besides our GPS Nav installed on the boat.  Both com­put­ers shut down because they were out of bat­tery.  The out­lets must have been off for sev­eral hours with­out our knowl­edge.  This is a big issue if we can’t get it fixed soon.
Ken spent some time read­ing and look­ing for the elec­tri­cal prob­lem and finally asked the boat behind us if they minded if we ran our gen­er­a­tor for a lit­tle while.  What­ever he did, the lights on the board for the out­lets lit up and we had juice to the out­lets.  I plugged every­thing in quickly to get all the bat­ter­ies charged.  Now we are good !
We have a beau­ti­ful view from the boat of the falls.  We walked around the park and up the hill to town at lunch at 3Squares.  I looked in a few shops and Ken went to the bak­ery for sweets and we met back at the boat for a very relaxed after­noon.  We took another walk through the park and up the stairs along the water­falls to inves­ti­gate the old his­toric pump house.  We had a very nice din­ner at the Black Sheep Bistro and then went to Anti­dote for a drink and a lit­tle music.  Since we’ve been get­ting up around 5:00am, only because the sun is up, it’s get­ting hard to stay lively very late.  We walked back to the boat and I headed to bed to read before crashing.
We left early the next morn­ing and headed to Burling­ton.  We got a slip at the Burling­ton Boat House Marina right at the bot­tom of Col­lege Street.

Front Row Seat at the Boathouse Marina in Burlington

Lit­tle bal­leri­nas enter­tained us on the dock

A mural of the par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory and suc­cess of Burlington.

Staff was avail­able and helped us dock—I’m almost get­ting used to this ser­vice.  We didn’t have this amenity while boat­ing in the NW and often times it causes a prob­lem in my rou­tine.  Since we started in Florida, it seems a very com­mon require­ment of most of the East coast boaters.  One of the big rea­sons that we bought this type of boat was the ease of get­ting on and off for con­stantly dock­ing in dif­fer­ent situations.
Burling­ton is a very nice city.  There are a lot of his­toric build­ings and it’s clean and vibrant.  Ethan Allen lived in this area so you see many ref­er­ences to him.  These two char­ac­ter­is­tics have been miss­ing in the towns we have been hit­ting since we left the lower sec­tion of the Hud­son.  We walked up to a diner for break­fast and walked Church St. where they have made a pedes­trian walk­way for four blocks. We took a free bus north up to the hos­pi­tal and stopped at Church street again on our way back to lis­ten to some music.  There was a music fes­ti­val going on so there were var­i­ous per­form­ers along the street.  I bought a CD of Sweet Remains and took it back to the boat to relax and lis­ten.  We walked to the Ice House for din­ner.  It was in the mid 80”s today, and remem­ber, we are wait­ing on a part for the air con­di­tioner.  It was time to think through how to get air into the boat with­out the bugs, which are very small gnats that can get through the screens, com­ing in.  We used the screens and read in the dark.  Luck­ily, we have screens that light up.   Hop­ing to switch our sleep­ing pat­tern, we stayed up a lit­tle later and didn’t get up until 6ish.  It gets light at 5:00am so it has been our wake-up time.  Between the lock slime and the bugs, the boat is filthy…mostly insect bod­ies.  Ken washed down the out­side that he can reach today while I sit and record our movements.
We’ve had a great stay in Burling­ton and would highly rec­om­mend this stop.  We changed our deci­sion to return to West­port  to have the AC part put in.  Instead, we are head­ing north and will either ship the part or drive down by car and pick it up.  The weather and our sched­ule have played a part in this direc­tion.  It does make it eas­ier since the lock sit­u­a­tion at Saint Jean sur Riche­lieu is restric­tive on the times that we can go through and time consuming.
We headed out on Lake Cham­plain around 6am head­ing to the Cana­dian Cus­toms stop just over the bor­der from Rouse’s Point.  Ken’s direc­tions  to me to try to get a 6 month cruis­ing per­mit didn’t sit well with the offi­cers.  They wanted a def­i­nite time that the boat would be out of Canada and my eva­sive hand move­ments didn’t make them com­fort­able.  I finally was able to explain that we would like to cruise as long as the weather per­mit­ted so they gave us until Nov. 1, 2014.
We fol­lowed a trawler north on the Riche­lieu River into St. Jean and tied up on the east wall.  The trawler, Phase II with tied in front of us.  They were Cana­di­ans bring­ing a boat that they bought in Florida back to their home near Ottawa.  They wanted to get through the locks that day so they sched­uled to go through at the 12:30 open­ing.  We went and watched the pro­ce­dure of 1 lift bridge, 1 swing bridge and then the very small lock.  There is a suc­ces­sion of 9 locks and they have a pro­ce­dure for each boat to go through.
St. Jeans is a nice town with plenty of restau­rants and his­tor­i­cal build­ings.  I took a nice walk in the morn­ing and was able to take in a lot more of the area.  Like a lot of towns these days, there are too many empty build­ings, but the town felt fairly clean and safe.  We met another Looper on Le Hooker from Florida.  They will be lock­ing through in the 12:30pm two­some.  Six boats were wait­ing to go through the Locks.  Four will go today and two will have to wait until 9:30am tomor­row morning.

In the morn­ing, we are told to lis­ten to the radio for instruc­tions at 8:30am from the lock and bridge ten­ders.  The radio didn’t buzz until after 9:00 and we didn’t get out of Lock 9 until 9:40.  We were the first boat in and we will go through all 9 locks to arrive at Cham­bly around 1:00.  These locks have room for us and a 40 ft. sail­boat.  In each lock we fol­low the same pro­ce­dure and the sail­boat fol­lows us closely the entire 12 miles.  The lock ten­ders were very nice and help­ful with their instructions.

Other boats lock­ing through the Cham­bly step locks.

We arrived at Lake Cham­bly with the Cham­bly Marina just a few yards away.  We were tied up within min­utes.  Of course, we took a walk and found a big, late lunch before Ken called a cab to go pick up a car.

We spent the evening qui­etly hang­ing around the boat.  It was rainy and chilly so it was nice to cud­dle down in the boat.  We have inter­net !!!  It is so dis­gust­ing how addicted we are to hav­ing access to communication.

Aus­able Chasm

We took the car down to pick up the AC pump in West­port.  The drive south was very inter­est­ing and pic­turesque. We stopped to take photo’s of Aus­able Chasm an absolutely beau­ti­ful set of falls.  We looped around Crown Point and crossed over to Ver­mont to head back north.  The whole area is very rural and lush with green­ery.  We went through Ver­gennes on the way back and stopped for cof­fee and choco­late.  It was too hot to buy any the last time we were there—it would have melted on the walk back to the boat !  Another AGLCA boat was tied at the docks but it didn’t appear that any­one was on board so we ate and drank and headed back out to drive back to Chambly.

We are right next to Fort Cham­bly which sits where the RIche­lieu River con­nects to the Cham­bly Lake.  We have seen, and vis­ited, our share of inter­est­ing forts all along this entire jour­ney.  We passed Fort Ticon­deroga in New York and Fort Ile Aux Noix in Canada. Cham­bly is a very nice small town about 20 min­utes from Mon­treal.  The small towns are not as bi-lingual as the larger cities so our lack of French has made it more difficult.

We drove into Mon­treal on our last free day to check out the two mari­nas down­town.  It was a dreary, rainy day but we accom­plished our tasks.  We suf­fered some map dis­func­tions on our way home and it took us much longer than the 20 min­utes to get back.   A lot of plan­ning these legs is get­ting back and forth, fig­ur­ing out the repro­vi­sion­ing (with or with­out a car), and when we can head out.  In this case, we have a lock with lim­ited open­ings on up the Riche­lieu River to con­sider on our way to Montreal.