WTFR WE? : The Canals Part One: Oswego

Jeff is pretty pleased with his expert cradle construction. The true test has yet to come!

Getting There

So here we sit in a coffee shop in Phoenix, NY, a small town just on the other side of Lock 1, the last southbound lock, on the Oswego Canal. We’re here for the same reason every cruiser in every port on the planet is… wifi, air-conditioning and coffee.

We started out from Little Sodus Bay yesterday, Jeff’s heart in his throat as we motored our last two hour Lake Ontario leg to Oswego, NY.
While Jeff and Schyler, the Little Sodus Bay marina master-of- all-trades marine, did a splendid job building, rigorously reinforcing and testing our mast cradle the question still remained, how would it handle motoring broadside through 1-2 feet waves and higher winds? A new version of an old lullaby came to mind:

Rock a bye Gracie, on the sea top.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

When the “bow” breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come Mastie on solar panels, Bimini, dodger, our heads and All!

Man those old lullabies are SO SCARY!

The Inside Scoop on handling the Oswego Locks

Still intact, we motored into the Oswego Canal and right into Lock 8, the first lock for southbound boaters . No waiting, no phone calls necessary. The Oswego and Erie Canals now primarily service pleasure craft so there is no waiting on commercial vessels as in the Welland. The Oswego River is one of the few rivers in the U.S. that flows north. We are also going upriver and ascending in elevation throughout the Oswego lock system. This means we enter the lock flanked by an average of twenty five foot high walls which slowly decrease to five foot walls as the water fills into the lock and we ascend.

Cockpit view of lock as we approach

Lock information sign inside the lock

Also throughout both canals, the navigation aids are green on our right side, as we are no longer RETURNING to port(red-right-returning), we are heading away from port, out to sea.

The green "can" needs to stay to our starboard (right)

This is one thing we had better get used to quick or you can run aground in a hurry!

I will now give you the lowdown on the advice we received by seasoned Oswego lock goers prior to our trip and what actually happened. Mind you, ascending in a lock is much more demanding than descending because the force of the incoming water pushes the boat against the wall.

Advice: We were advised that each lock either has poles or lines or both that the boater needs to use to control his ascent. Hooking a line around the pole at mid-cleat is the preferred method because its efficient in that you can cinch the boat close to the wall, and have big fenders on the fore and aft beams to protect the boat from grazing against the wall and let the loop around the pole glide up as you rise.

Reality: This was great advice and also a whole lot cleaner. On some of the locks, there were only poles, on others, there were both poles and lines and on one or two there were just lines. On the locks with just lines, I held one slimy line at the bow secured under a cleat, while Jeff held one equally slimy line at the stern that we slowly pulled in as the water level rose.

On the locks with poles, I went mid-cleat and looped one end of the mid-cleat line around the pole. The other end was already secured to the cleat. I then wrapped the line under both horns of the cleat, this formed a loose loop around the pole which allowed the boat to ascend naturally as the water rose while still keeping midship close to the wall. I handed the line off to Jeff who walked the line back to the stern so he could fend off at stern if needed. I manned the bow to do the same.

See that skinny little pole running down the wall and our loop by the toe rail
around it? Also notice the lovely muck-covered walls.

Advice: We were warned that when ascending in a lock the force from the water coming in will push the boat against the wall so we will need to use our boat hooks to fend off.

Reality: In Lock seven, the first deep lock, we did used our boat hooks to fend off but the river soaked walls are so mucketty muck with slime, that it was difficult getting a grip on the wall to push off. After we ascended the locksman that operated the lift came over and gave us the lowdown. He said, NEVER EVER USE BOAT HOOKS, to push off the boat. He’s seen too many people slip and get hurt. Not only that, after several locks we would be thoroughly spent as we were fighting against 6000 pounds of water rushing in. Huh fighting the laws of physics kinda does sounds like a no-win scenario. He said that boats are built to be able to handle and compensate for this type of current and most of the time you can just relax and let the boat do the work. If need be, sit on the boat and push against the wall with your feet to fend off.
This advice made a whole lot of sense to me, especially the relaxing part! I can say without a doubt that this well-kept secret works and definitely needs to be shared!

Here I am happily fending off the wall with my feet.

Advice: Another thing we were told by many boaters was that the lock tie up could be on either the port or starboard side. This was apparently determined by some esoteric phenomena that no one seemed to be privy to. So in preparation, we had fenders, fender boards and lines tied up and ready to go on of both sides of the boat.

Reality: In our case, we were able to CHOOSE which side of the lock to tie off on throughout the entire system. Maybe it was because there were NO OTHER BOATS that went through with us, the entire time. So after lock 3 and three port tie-ups, we moved our starboard fender board and a couple of the fenders over to the port side. Port tie-ups are definitely the preferred side for sailors without a bow thruster because the driver has much more control over the stern using prop walk. Now with two port fender boards coupled with our newfound approach to fending off, we were getting this lock thing down. Fender boards are the cat’s meow! If I had my druthers I’d have fender boards layered on top of maybe a dozen fenders, permanently affixed around the entire perimeter of the boat!