Mahi Mahi-Sun Jun 22; The Village of Ilion to Lake Onieda.

The plan for Sunday was an early 7am departure to cover 40 miles & 4 Locks (#19/20/21/22).

40 Miles = about 5 hrs at 8mph

4 Locks = 15-20 min/Lock = 1-1.5 hrs

Total = 6 to 6.5 hour travel day.

We woke at 6:30am to a pouring rain. It rained heavy all night. About 7am, the rain let up to a drissle – so off we went. Fire up the Engines, pull in the Power Cables, prep the lines for release While-on-the-Boat. Off we go !

Step 1 = Lock #19 Complete ✔️

In case you didn’t notice in the photo above, after the heavy rains last night the entire Erie Canal was full FULL OF DEBRIS, it was like a mine field of crap in the water !!!

There were several places that we had to go to idle speed, shift to neutral, and coast thru the debris, to prevent potential damage to the props.

So after making it thru Lock #19, and having the entire lock to ourselves, we thought that today was going to be a great day. If you get into the 1st lock of the day by yourself, you usually are alone in the rest of the locks for the day. Even the weather was starting to clear up.

When we arrived at Lock #20 and called the Lock operator for westbound passage, he gave us the BAD NEWS – ALL LOCKS BETWEEN 16-22 are now shut down due to the heavy rains last night.

I guess we were lucky to have even clicked off 16 miles & 1 lock due to our early start, before they shut everything down.

Now we will spend another night on another lock wall, but with no power. Gotta run the generator. We belive it will be only a 1-day delay, based on the feedback from the lock operator.

Here are the surroundings for tonight – it’s just us and a late wall arrival “Sweet Dreams”, with their smiley face bow. They are a nice ole couple who also made it thru Lock #19, after us but before they shut down the canal.

To kill all the free time we now had on our hands, we went for a walk around the lock & played the Mexican Train domino type game.

Here are some photos that we normally cannot not get because we are “IN” the Lock, not walking on top of it. Below is shown the gearing which opens/ closes the lock door & a photo of the lock operators station.

It was a highly competitive game of Mexican Train, I did win of course, but I have the advantage of drinking Tequila most days.

Our plan is to hopefully get thru Lake Onieda tomorrow (Mon) & hopefully make it to Lake Ontario on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading.

Mike, Deena, & Jerry

Mahi Mahi