Phoenix NY (2014-05-08)

N43° 13.669', W76° 17.944'

Tonight finds us tied to the free town dock in Phoenix NY.  We're now one travel day away from being done on the Erie Canal, and being ready to cross Lake Ontario back to Canada.



We had a good night on the wall in Sylvan Beach, at least once the nearby bar closed and the 'happy' patrons departed for home.  We awoke to a nice sunny and quickly warming day, and by 0900 we were on our way out onto Oneida Lake for a short travel day to Phoenix NY.

Just before we cast off from the wall, our friends on S/V Vita caught up with us and headed out onto the lake.  We leapfrogged with them for the rest of the day, passing them a bit later on the lake, then them passing us in Brewerton as we refueled.  We locked down with them in lock 23 and slid past them on our final leg to Phoenix, but they then passed us as they continued on down the Oswego Canal.  They are looking at catching some favourable winds for sailing tomorrow to do their crossing of Lake Ontario.

S/V Vita on Oneida Lake

While we could have easily made it to Oswego today, we decided to have a short day and reward ourselves with a stop at the free town dock in Phoenix.  We spent three days here in the fall waiting for the Lock 13 opening and really grew to like it here.

Phoenix town dock

If the weather cooperates tomorrow we'll continue on to Oswego.  It looks like the next weather window for us to cross Lake Ontario will be on Sunday.  It's forecast to rain on Saturday, and chances of rain tomorrow.  If the rain doesn't let up long enough for us to get to Oswego tomorrow we may just sit here until Sunday morning, and do the rest of the canal and the Lake Ontario hop in one day.