September 4 – Sept. 7

Anchor Marina

Winds against current = Whitecaps

We spent the night of the 4th, at Keewayden State Park Marina, NY with our friends from “I Think I Can”. The 5th we started out for Henderson Bay about 15 miles south of where the St. Lawrence Seaway leaves Lake Ontario. We did not make it that far but we did make it to Cape Vincent, NY just 5 miles from Lake Ontario. The weather became very windy. The wind blowing from the NE which is the opposite direction of the flow of the St. Lawrence. Any time you have wind against current the waves will get taller or steeper. We were mostly going downwind but this caused the backend of the boat to sashay around as it passed over the waves. Richard said he was getting a little sea sick, possibly. So we started trying to find a marina. Found the Anchor Marina in Cape Vincent NY. We tried to call the marina but got no answer. The other marina in town had no room for us. Since it was getting rougher as the day wore on we decided to enter the Anchor Marina and just tie up if there were any empty slips, or even if we had to tie to another boat. We kind of surfed in and had to make a 90 degree turn to the left after about 40 feet. As we were surfing in toward a concrete wall. We made it with no bumps into walls or other boats, but it was close. There were quite a few boats, but some of the docks were sinking, others already under water. We tied to a dock that was tilting at about 40 degrees and went looking for someone. We finally found a guy who gave us a number to call to get the owner. We called and told him we would be there two nights because of the weather. He said he would come by sometime to get our slip fee. Our dock was tilting but we had power so we could run our little electric heater as it was in the 50’s.

Cape Vincent was a nice small town that was very walkable for groceries, laundry, gas station, and several restaurants. The second day we were in the marina we met some other loopers that were tied to a very exposed city dock. The wind and waves made it very difficult for them to get on/off the dock. We told them they should come over to Anchor Marina where they would be more protected. They were in a 27 ft Nordic Tug trawler called Sweets and the boat owner and captain was a lady. We helped them get off their free dock and tie up in a slip near us. That night we had dock tails together and learned they were from Marco Island Florida. They were also planning to cross Lake Ontario to Oswego, NY to enter the Oswego Canal which intersects the Erie Canal. We planned to leave on Sept. 7 but they were thinking of leaving the 8th. We convinced them that the weather was going to start getting very windy on the 8th and the 7th was the best day.

So the next day the 7th we left at 6:30 to start the 50 mile trip and they left about 8am. We called each other every hour just to see how things were going for the other boat. It was nice for the first 2 hours, then got a little bumpy but only for an hour. It calmed down as we approached Oswego shore. We traveled at about 9 mph instead of 7 in order to shorten the time spent out on Lake Ontario. We entered the Oswego Canal about 12:30 tied up to the canal wall and called it a day. About 3pm Sweets rode by on bikes to thank us for convincing them to leave on the 7th instead of the 8th as it was a good day to be on that large of a lake. Our friends on Syzygy from Big Pine Key Fl also crossed the lake the same day and were only about an hour behind us. We later met up on their boat for docktails and talked about the crossing. Syzygy was staying 2 nights on the wall and we were only staying one so we said our goodbyes.