Today was a rather long day as we traveled through 8 locks and completed the journey through the Oswego Canal and entered into the Erie Canal. It was a bit blustery and cool but sunny.
The locking experience went really well except for 2 locks we went through with a couple from Toronto, in a sail boat, who were new to locks. The first lock we went through with them, they were already settled into when we joined them. As the lock filled up, the wife started making some high pitched screeches as the turbulence of the water made their boat drift. The lock master was very courteous and talked to them and explained that he only had the water going in at about 1/3 speed and asked if they wanted him to slow it down. They said no. The wife screeched a few times more and the lock master came over and talked to us and asked us to leave the lock first so we could be the first in the next lock (about .5 miles away). Being the first in the lock is where the most turbulence is but we were OK with that. So we got into the next lock and got secured and the sailboat came in on the opposite side of the lock and behind us. For some reason the wife didn't pick up one of the lines from the wall and they started drifting sideways in the lock. They nearly missed hitting their mast on the side of the lock (you have to have your masts down in the Erie Canal because there are some bridges that are fixed bridges under 20 feet and having the mast down adds to the overall length of sail boats. Our mast rests on our aft deck when it is lowered.) They ended up drifting over to the wall we were secured and almost hit us with their mast. The husband scrambled all over the boat trying to get fenders over to the other side of their boat, as well as steering. The wife finally got a line to hold them steady but one of the fenders fell over board, as it was unattached. There was much screeching and swearing (some of it in Japanese so we weren't privy to the full content being spewed at the husband) and the wife finally rescued the fender. All in all it was very entertaining and exciting.
As we were faster than the sailboat and the next lock was 6 miles away, we were able to get into the next lock and the doors were closed and the water was rising in the lock before they arrived. The husband called the lock operator 4 times when we were in the lock to ask him to open the lock and the operator finally lost his patience with the last call.
We went through our first lock on the Erie Canal (and our last lock for the day) and secured our boat on the dock wall of Brewerton.
Brewerton is a very small town and there were some kind of sketchy characters hanging around the dock wall so we stayed put and had dinner and an early night.