Day 7: Amsterdam to Little Falls

August 16, 2021: Cruising in the fog and two weird things.

I was awake very early on Monday morning. I almost immediately set off, in my pajamas, to find a bathroom.

Nano does have a head (bathroom) with a toilet that works. Trouble is, the flusher is extremely loud. It was about 5:30 AM and both Capt Paul and Dianne were still sound asleep. I didn’t want to wake them.

So I slipped on my shoes and walked to the only toilets I knew about: those Port-O-Potties. I was lucky. The one I stepped into was relatively clean.

On the way back to the boat, I took a picture back down the canal in the direction we’d come from. No doubt about it: it was foggy.

The view to the east, back down the canal on Monday morning. It was foggy.

Cruising in the Fog

Back at Nano, my companions were waking up. We did the coffee and breakfast and getting washed up and dressed thing. We went through the check list. Capt Paul put me at the helm. We cast off and I headed, slowly, up the canal.

It wasn’t bad at the first lock for the day, Lock 11. I drove in, Capt Paul and Dianne grabbed the ropes, and we climbed. I drove out the top. But the fog wasn’t any better.

Capt Paul turned on his radio’s digital fog horn feature. It sends a fog horny sound out every few minutes as required by the Coast Guard or whoever makes these requirements. The sound was higher pitched than what you might think a fog horn should sound like, but it did the job.

The fog was light sometimes and very dense at other times. I varied my speed accordingly. It was a lot like scud running in the helicopter, but instead of peeking over the ridge in front of me to see if I could see the next ridge, I was looking for channel marker buoys: red on the starboard (right) side and green on the port (left) side.

I had two navigation apps to help me. One was the built in Garmin plotter, which had typical Garmin low-res map imaging and a boat icon with a line pointing down my current course. The other was Aqua Map on my iPad, which was showing me raster images of actual NOAA nautical charts with a boat icon and course line. Throughout our travels so far, I’d found my iPad and Aqua Map to me more reliable. For some reason, the Garmin plotter tended to indicate a course more starboard than we were actually going.

So Dianne — who was on watch — and I looked for the upcoming buoys in the fog, using these two apps to predict where they should show up. We’d see one and I’d adjust course accordingly. It was pretty easy, as long as we could see the next buoy.

I saw Lock 12 on the chart before I saw it in front of me. It loomed up out of the fog like a phantom. I called the lock keeper and he set up the lock for us and opened the gates. I drove in. Paul and Dianne grabbed the ropes. We rose. The gates opened. I drove out.

It was very foggy at Lock 12.

It was still foggy. In fact, it was worse. We saw a man standing with a fishing pole on a boat at the mouth of Schoharie Creek. Even though Capt Paul had turned on the radar to look for targets, he hadn’t appeared. But he was off to one side and no factor. We continued on. The fog horn did its horn thing.

There was no other traffic —

— until there was. I saw a shadowy blob in front of us, off in the distance in the narrow channel. It was bigger than a buoy. I pulled out the binoculars for a look. “There’s a boat there,” I said. “In front of us. I don’t think it’s moving.”

Dianne didn’t see it at first. Then she did. Around that time, a voice came over the radio. “Westbound boat, do you see me right in front of you?” Before I could respond, he asked again, stepping on my transmission. By this time I could clearly see him: an older man standing in a small fishing boat holding a fishing pole.

I had already slowed down, but now I brought the boat to a stop. I wanted to go around him to the right, but he was pointing to the left.

“You have the whole channel over there,” he shouted. He sounded pissed.

“You are fishing in the channel,” I said flatly as I began to go around him to the left.

“I can’t hear you,” he replied.

I knew damn well he could hear me. “Of course you can’t,” I said sarcastically. He was now just 10 feet away out my starboard side window. “So I’ll say it again. You are fishing in the middle of the channel in the fog.” Asshole. I’m not sure if I said that last part out loud.

And then I was past him and didn’t really care what else he had to say. What kind of shit for brains idiot fishes in the middle of a narrow channel in the fog?

We continued on. I nearly stopped several times, when I couldn’t see the next buoy, but then it would appear out of the fog and I’d keep motoring along. Our top speed was probably about 5 knots.

But it began to clear. The buoys got easier to see until the fog wasn’t a problem at all. In fact, it became a beautiful day.

The Amish Man

We motored on through a mostly straight canal with mostly trees on both sides. We fell into a routine. Dianne took over at the helm after my two hours were up. We cruised, went through a lock, and cruised some more. The conditions were now perfect for boating.

Sometimes, at a lock, a lock keeper would chat briefly to us. Many were collecting information about the boats going through, including the boat name, registration number, and home port. Others just responded to our calls of thanks or to have a nice day, usually telling us to have a good day. Normal stuff.

At one lock, a man with a cane walking on a path along the lock stopped to chat about where we were going and where we’d been. He then continued on his walk, heading the way we’d come.

But the oddest conversation was with a man at Lock 14 who looked Amish to me. (He admitted he was when Capt Paul asked if he were a Mennonite.) I could tell by his clothes. He wore a flat-topped, broad-brimmed straw hat that looked brand new, a loose-fitting button down shirt, and pants with unusual button closures at the front sides of their waistband. He started a conversation about where we were going, mentioning that he’d been up on the St. Lawrence Seaway, fishing (if I recall correctly). While he chatted with Paul, I looked around for his means of transportation and found it parked in the shade of a big tree: an open top buggy with a team of two horses. As we motored out of the lock, I saw the sign where the horses had been parked: Tie Horses Here.

Not something you see every day — at least not anywhere I’ve ever lived. I wondered how many Amish folk visited Lock 14 if it needed a special parking area for horses.

Fueling Up

We stopped for fuel at St. Johnsville Marina. We’d been averaging about 6 gallons per hour and Capt Paul liked to fill the tank when it got below 1/2 of its 100-gallon capacity. Since there was no fuel at our planned stop for the night, we had to stop enroute. St. Johnsville Marina was one of the few fuel stops in the area.

The marina was in a sort of cut out off the north side of the canal. It had a tall concrete wall for docking. There were a few boats there, including a very large cabin cruiser. We saw the fuel pump and headed for it. A young dock guy came out and took the line Dianne gave him. I had already climbed up on the bow to get the line there and since that put me about level with the top of the dock, I stepped over and tied the line myself.

Once I was up there, there didn’t seem to be any reason to get back on the boat until we were ready to leave. So I let Capt Paul hand the trash up to me while the dock guy worked with Dianne to fill the tank.

I chatted with the couple in the big boat that was parked there when we came in. They were going the same way as us, but they were meeting up with another boat that they expected to catch up with them along the way. They were taking it easy. He was washing the boat with a hose from the dock while she just hung out and watched him.

When the tank was full, I got Capt Paul’s credit card and walked up to the office to pay. The building was going through what looked like renovations. But according to the dock guy, the whole marina and adjacent campground had been wiped out in a flood back in 2019. They were rebuilding. I later learned in a review on Waterway Guide that the marina used to have floating docks; they were apparently casualties of that same flood.

I climbed back on board, said goodbye to the big boat couple, and we headed back out into the canal.

Canal vs. River

Most of the time we’d been cruising the canal, it had been running in the Mohawk River bed, which had been dredged for use as a canal channel. But at Lock 16, it left the river for the first time, turning into a straight, narrow, very canal-like waterway.

We buzzed along at about 10 knots, slowing only when we passed marinas or an oncoming boat. Both were rare. The canal had become boring, with a sameness mile after mile. Little did I know what we’d experience the next day.

Miles later, we rejoined the river channel. Over the next few days, we’d leave and rejoin the river a few more times before leaving the river behind near Rome.

Lock 17

Lock 17 was the first lock we visited that had a guillotine-style lock — that is, the single gate door dropped down from above to seal the chamber. We had to drive under this gate to get into the lock.

Lock 17’s metal gate was in the closed position when it was down below the concrete structure.

We waited a long time to get in. There was a boat coming down when we arrived. This was one of those places where the river moved away (to the right) from the canal, so it was plenty wide. We saw water churning from below the gate for a while. Then the churning stopped and, after a few more minutes, the gate started to rise behind the concrete above it.

Here’s a clip from a video segment of the gate rising. I’ll try to put the video online one of these days and link to it here.

The boat inside the lock came out, dodging the floating debris — including a few good sized logs — that was inside it. We cruised in with Capt Paul at the helm. As I’d been warned, the gate dripped on me on the bow. The first thing that struck me was that the lock leaked like a sieve. They all seem to leak a little, but this one had water gushing in from the upper end. The second thing that struck me was how deep the chamber was: more than 40 feet. It was the deepest one on the canal.

Lock 17 leaked like a sieve.

The guillotine gate lowered behind us with all the usual noise. After a while, water started coming in from below. The boat started to rise. It took a very long time. Finally, my head popped out the top of the lock and I was able to get a look around. There was a parking area nearby with a handful of people watching. One woman with a few kids said that every time she comes, the lock’s water level was low and that this was something special. I just suspect she’s never been around when a boat was in the lock.

The opposite gates finally opened and Capt Paul drove out. I climbed back into the inside of the boat. We were only a mile from our final destination: the Little Falls Canal Harbor and Rotary Park.

At Little Falls

Capt Paul steered us up past a pair of guard gates and into position alongside the floating dock at the Rotary Park. Two men were there to meet us. We wound up turning the boat around so we could tie up on the starboard side — Paul’s preference — so we were facing the only four or five boats already parked there. One of the dock guys provided a 30 amp extension cord so we could plug into shore power.

This was — to this point — my favorite stop on the trip. For just $1/foot/night, we got power, water (if we wanted it), wifi, immaculately clean restrooms and shower, low-cost laundry, and a handful of other things. Town was not exactly close, but it was within walking distance. Or at least Canal Place, adjacent to town, was. Downtown was a little farther away.

Not quite willing to walk all the way into town to maybe find lunch — Amsterdam was still on my mind — I had leftover Chinese food for lunch. But I did want a walk and an ice cream. So I put on a pair of socks and my hiking shoes, made sure I had my phone, some cash, and a credit card, and set out on the route Ann in the office had given me to town.

The path into town took me right by the two guard gates between the marina and Lock 17.

I wound up at Canal Place, which has a free 2-hour dock. We’d passed it on the way in. The New York Canal Corporation is really pushing the place in its guide to the Erie Canal, but it wasn’t worth pushing. Consisting of a handful of older factory buildings that had been repurposed, one building housed a restaurant and a handful of shops while the other had a typical “antique mall.” A few shops across the street included a restaurant, a rock shop, and a few other businesses that interested me very little. I got an ice cream in one of the big buildings, bought a rock and some beads in the rock shop, and then browsed the antique mall.

A view of Canal Place from the bridge across the canal and Mohawk River. That’s the river’s “little falls” at the foot of the old factory buildings.

I walked across the small bridge there for a view of the river. If I’d crossed to the island, I could have seen the canal and walked around in the small park we’d seen on our way in. But I was hot and tired and wanted a shower. I figured I’d walked enough. I made my way back, running into Capt Paul by the Antique Mall along the way.

Back at the Rotary Park, I checked out the showers and liked what I saw. A while later, I was scrubbing the dirt and sweat off me and even washing my hair. It felt good to be clean again. By that time, it was pretty late in the day and it was beginning to cool down.

I fetched my drone, set it up, and launched it from in front of the building. I managed to get a few good photos of the area, including these:

Here’s the Rotary Park docks. Nano is the one parked facing downriver (left).

Here’s a nice view of Little Falls, looking downriver. The canal is on the right, the Mohawk River is on the left.

Later, after putting the drone away, when the dock staff had gone for the night, I came back in to use the bathroom. They had given us a key and told us where the drop box was. It was then that I saw the sofa. It would be nice to have a quiet night in my own space, free to read or watch videos or write whenever I wanted to without bothering anyone. And seriously: who would know (or care) if I slept on the sofa?

So later on, I fetched my sheet and pillow and pajamas and set up a comfy bed on the sofa. I watched a few videos on YouTube, trying to catch up with the late night talk show guys I’d been missing. Although I had my laptop with me and was behind on blogging, I was just too darn tired to write. I was probably asleep by 9 PM.

The bulding, which was old, creaked a lot. I heard the refrigerator in a back room come on. Around 11:30, some kind of bell or alarm went off, ringing twice. Was it a phone? I don’t know; it stopped and I fell right back to sleep.