Moving in a southerly direction...

To see a video of Lock 17 on The Erie Canal click below.

Lock 17

This is the compass at the helm. If you notice we are heading south for the first time since this trip began. We left Waterford at 9:00 a.m. It was raining and cold, with a lot of wind. We were thinking about staying in Waterford for another day...you can stay moored to their wall for 48 hours, but with the weather being bad we decided to head down the Hudson River to Catskill, New York...about 40 miles. We will have the mast stepped at Hop-O-Nose Marina. The Hudson River was rough today, and for the first time we needed to be concerned with tides. The Hudson River is tidal all the way to the Federal Lock at Troy.We locked through at Troy about 9:30 this morning.  High tide occurred at about 4:30 a.m. So the tide moved down the Hudson until about 11:30, at which time it began to move back up the river, and we were fighting a 2 knot current. The tide ebbs and flows twice a day. Riding the outgoing tide we were cruising at 8 m.p.h. at 2250 r.p.m. I know you are supposed to run diesel engines at a higher r.p.m., but to me 2250 seems like the sweet spot for Little Big Man.

This is a picture of the chart plotter. As you can see our GPS speed is 8.1 MPH. Our water speed is 6.0 MPH. We are benefiting an extra 2 MPH from the outgoing tide. When the tide was coming in we lost about 1.5 MPH. We were doing 4.5 MPH GPS speed. Our cruising will now have to be planned around the weather, as well as tides and currents. The boat on the plotter represents our position. The dotted line behind is our track. You can see the channel clearly marked with the dotted lines on each side of the boat. You can also see the red buoy marker on the left side of the channel in the middle of the picture. The depth of the water is in the lower left corner, and our position is in the lower right corner. Our compass heading is in the top right corner.
Tomorrow Serenity will be a sail boat again. We will step the mast and Shirl and I will attach and tune the standing rigging, install he running rigging, and run up the sails.