Still Going East and Unconditional Love

As you can tell by our sporadic posts, free wi-fi on the Erie Canal is hard to come by. Might be because we are being cheap and stay away from marina's, preferring to spend nights tied along free walls and docks. We miss our nights at anchor, but it's a bit tough to do on the canal. Anyway, things are going well. The weather has been hit and miss, but for the most part it has been sunny and warm.

We have covered about 230 miles since leaving Bath, averaging about 30 miles on the days we are moving. The days are pretty relaxed, the locks are simple to go through and the kids are doing great at keeping themselves busy. The have their chores on the boat, and are also getting quite good a helping lock the boat through. A couple of times it would have been nice to have the dinghy available (it's rolled up on the foredeck right now), just to go out and do a little exploring.

No problems with the boat either, although we did catch a submerged log between the engines just as we came off of Oneida Lake (we were going slow, just backed up and it released). The new engines have been great, we average just over 5kts on one engine at 2/3 throttle. Did a little test yesterday and hit 7.8kts with both engines at around 80% throttle.

We spent 2 days in Conajahorie, home of the Beech-Nut factory (you know, they make gum). Visited a local art gallery and Count Olaf's house (of Lemony Snicketts fame). O.k, it wasn't really the Count's home, it actually belonged the inventor of the train sleeper car. It must have been stunning when it was new, unfortunately it is now in a very sad state of repair. We stayed in a park along the canal, played badminton and hung out.

Today we are sitting in Amsterdam, New York, waiting for mom and Bob to arrive. We'll then drop one of the cars off at the Coxsackie Yacht Club on the Hudson River. We have another 3 days travelling to get there, then we will secure the boat for a month and head home, the first leg of the trip over with. Lisa needs to get the house ready for our tenant and the kids have 2 weeks of sailing camp (as if living on a boat for a year isn't going to be enough sailing for them!?!).

Oh yeah, the unconditional love part?? So I am driving the boat the other day and Mitchell comes up to me and says, "Dad, you have a booger in your nose". He then proceeds to stick his finger in my left nostril, remove the offending booger and flick it overboard!! Thanks for the help buddy!!

Well this connection is acting up so I'll stop now. There is a function on the satellite image here on the Blog, click for a larger image and you can see some more pics tagged for the location taken.

Later,

Us.