LNVT’s and the Erie Canal

 

The Erie Canal is ideal cruising for an LNVT. The pace is slow, the scenery pastoral, and the towns welcoming. Currently at Fairport, the dockage is $14 including the wall, electric, water, restrooms and showers. Of course the dockage is offset with the need to shop and dine. This is part of the plan along the canal, entice folks with good dockage and they will engage in local commerce. 

It looks like Fairport will be home for a bit as I received a “Notice to Mariners” about lock closures due to Hurricane Fred remnants. It rained in New York State for about 48 hours, water levels are high and locks 24 - 28B are currently closed. Cross your fingers Hurricane Henri doesn’t bend west or WhimSea might put down roots in Fairport. 

Gotta put the mast down to get through the canal. 

Whimsea 37VT64 Spotted

 

Whinsea spotted sailing into Erie, PA by Dave Forsman.

Whimsea Moving East

This just in from Whimsea 37VT64

Just left Geneva on the Lake this morning. Heading east across Lake Erie to the Erie Canal. Originally planned the triangle in Canada but now planning Burlington VT and reverse. We’ll see how timing goes. I’ll head back to home base end of Sept. I found a great guy who will work on the boat over the winter so need to get it there. It’s so good to have WhimSea moving. She has been extremely popular at every port. I expected that a bit but she is the belle of every Marina.

Barb Robertson, barbandstowe@yahoo.com

A Great Loop Journey of 6,000 miles begins with the first waypoint.

 

After years of just talking about it, WhimSea started her Great Loop journey on 31 July.  The start is about 2 months late but she is finally underway.  The 2 month delay was mostly the yard not having time to work on her. The best work was her spa treatment. In fact, she looks so good after the spa treatment the dreaded credit card melting paint job might be put off a few years. On day one of the Great Loop journey I learned there’s no amount of planning to prepare you for the crazy stuff.  The first crazy was a “No Fix” reading on the Raymarine Chartplotter. No problem I’m running AquaMap on my IPAD, until I left the shore and I realized the IPAD I specifically purchased for navigation, was the wrong one and couldn’t hold a  GPS signal.  Fortunately,  I was in very familiar waters with a lifetime of experience and didn’t really need navigation help. I also had attempted triple redundancy and downloaded all the maps to my iPhone and it worked great. The final crazy was the weather forecast, good waves and wind if you don’t mind a chance of waterspouts. Although only a few nautical miles it feels good to be underway at last.