Waterford Visitors Center, at the confluence of the Erie Canal & the Hudson River

Waterford Visitor's Center, where all the boats stop
to prepare for travel either west along the Erie Canal
or south down the Hudson River

Confluence?!?  That’s a mighty big word for a retired person!  My prolific prolixity gets carried away sometimes.

We have been at this place by car many times over the years when we visited my brother & his family, when they lived right here in Waterford.  We have walked the dock, watched the locks, and talked with boaters many times in preparation for the time that we finally brought our boat here.   Well, we finally made it!



At Waterford, we made it under this bridge!

We had spent the past week just north of here, technically on the Champlain Canal, at a marina that was a “work in progress”.  The dock was shaky, the shore power only had 106 Volts (try running all your appliances on such low voltage), and very little water pressure.  On top of that, they wanted $2/ft for overnight dockage, which in our case totaled $96/night.  But it was very convenient to my sister-in-law’s home, where I spent evenings enjoying her fabulous cooking while Sue flew down to Nashville/Chattanooga to care for her mother.

Besides, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow & we needed to get under the low bridge before the canal water levels came back up.  I spent the past week taking down several light posts on the boat, as well as the dinghy davit, to lower our height requirement by 8”.  As we went under the bridge this morning, I climbed out onto the dinghy deck to see if we were going to clear.  We did, but only by about 9”.  As we passed underneath, I reached up & touched the bottom of the bridge steel.

We traveled the short 4 miles to Waterford & got a space on the floating dock.  Good thing we arrived when we did.  A short 30 minutes later, 6 boats showed up & took all the remaining space.  Dockage is free at this place, and a one-time fee of $10 will buy electric for as long as you stay.  And the power is a full 120 volts!

Friend Gail, sister-in-law Cindy, and us enjoying dinner
inside a castle near Canajoharie

Central New York has had excessive amounts of rain the past 2 weeks, to the point that the Erie Canal is closed about 100 miles west of here.  Won’t open for a couple more days, making a 10-day closure IF there is no more rain!  So we don’t need to be in a hurry to leave here.  We’ll have 20+ locks to pass through along the canal, so at some point, we might get good at it.  This next segment of our trip takes us to Oswego NY, on the shore of Lake Ontairo.  Then down the St Lawrence River to the 1000 Island area.  More photo ops than you can shake a stick at!