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Kingston NY to St. Jean sur Richelieu QC

Even after all this time, we're still loving this boating adventure (and each other).

Traveling from Croton on Hudson to Kingston NY. The Hudson River is impressive, especially now that there is no haze or fog! And the views of West Point from the water - wow!!!





  



Kingston is another nice small town we got to visit. We docked our boat at Ole Savannah - Southern Table and Bar, when you eat a meal at their restaurant, you can stay free overnight. So we enjoyed a great meal and got to visit the town.




  



From Kingston, we continued on along the Hudson to New Baltimore NY. Donovan's Shady Harbor Marina, is an AGLCA sponsor, and if you pay for two days, you get a third free (if you are a Looper). A great marina with courtesy car, pool, laundry, showers. It ended up being a good place to be when you have a migraine. I was in denial (it's been years since my last one) - and didn't recognize or admit I had the signs - so I waited too long, and once I took my migraine medication I was pretty much out of the picture for the day... It's a good thing we were not planning on travelling those days.

There were many Loopers at Shady's, many that we hadn't met yet. Some were waiting for the marina's annual pig roast and activities - scheduled a couple days later, others like us, were waiting for the water on the Champlain Canal to lower so that it could open. Papi got to meet quite a few of them, and catch up with Loopers we had already met earlier. (Sorry, no pictures - except one as we were leaving the marina.)

  


Here are a few more pictures of the Hudson River. They really don't show it's real beauty.

   



To get to the Champlain Canal, we had to pass the Troy Lock and Dam, after which, you decide if you are going to go North and do the Champlain Canal - Champlain Lake - Richelieu River - St Laurence  River - ... route, or go West and take the Erie Canal - Oswego Canal - Lake Ontario - ... route. Many boats don't have an option, they have to go West because of the "air draft/hight" of their boats. So we had said our "see you upriver" and "safe travels" to many of the Loopers. We're hoping we convinced a few more Loopers to do the Rideau Canal and the Thousand Islands - if they do, we might see them again!

Doing the Troy Lock - humm, not one of my best line holding examples... We've done so many locks since we started boating and this is the first time I ever "dropped" a line and let the boat loose in a lock as it was filling up (with other boats in the lock at the same time - of course) In this specific lock, you loop one line behind a vertical metal pole (closest to the middle of the boat - mid ship) and hold the boat in place as the water rises. I had doubled (folded) my line and was holding the middle, this way, when it's time to go, you can just pull the lose end of the line and your free - no need to feed the line back. It's always worked fine before, however, they were filling the lock fast and it was creating a lot of current - meaning I had to work hard to hold the boat in place. So I wanted to "finish" looping the whole line behind the pole, but I pulled on the wrong end!!! and voila - Sea Loons was not secured to the wall anymore... Not good! Papi quickly turned the engines on and we tried to tie up again to the same pole with not success - the water was pushing us away from the wall. So we switched sides and tied up to a pole there. Stressed out you say??? Definitely. I don't understand how I could do that... It must have been the left over migraine medication in my system - that's my story and I'm sticking to it!! 

We did a total of six locks that day, before we stopped at Lock 5, on the Champlain Canal. There is a floating dock on the east side at the "top" of the lock which was perfect for us (and free). We managed to do all the other locks without any issues, and enjoyed a quiet evening in a nice park.



  

They didn't complicate things when they named the locks along the Champlain Canal. We traveled through Locks 6,7,8,9,11 and stopped just before Lock 12. The town of Whitehall NY offers a few free docks with power and water, and even more dock space without services. It was the perfect place to stop before we continued on and crossed Lake Champlain. (They even had a couple ice cream place within walking distance! How great was that?) Whitehall was also the last time I needed to report in our new location to CBP!

   





  




It's hard to believe we rushed thru the Hudson River, Champlain Canal and Lake Champlain as fast as we did. We succeeded to travel from New Baltimore NY to Saint Jean sur Richelieu QC in three days. (two days on the Canal and one day to cross the lake) We decided to zip through - but we will be back (not sure when) - we want to do the triangle route someday, and will take more time to explore when we travel the Erie, Oswego, and Champlain Canals. We can travel fast if required - and we did because we have commitments and wanted to be back in Canada to keep things simple. But really, Lake Champlain deserves more than one day! 






We crossed the USA/Canada border on the Saint Jean sur Richelieu River in Quebec. We're glad to be back in Canada and will now slow down our pace for the rest of our Loop. 


Here's a little side note:

Salt water! We had no idea how it would impact our boat. We knew the Chrome and anything not stainless steel would show signs and need attention, but one thing we had not thought of was how our head/toilet would handle the salt water now being used to flush. Turns out, it did not not like salt water at all... It took until we were back in fresh water (so about three and a half months in salt water) for it to start showing symptoms! Am I really going to talk about our head/toilet issues? Yup, because if some one else can benefit from it - good! We thought our tube/pipe going from the toilet to the holding tank was blocked. We could not pump the handle to flush anymore. Our system takes water from outside (river, lake or ocean) not from our fresh water tank, so we knew we could potentially have problems, but we thought it would be something like funky smells. Papi had to take half the toilet apart to realize that there was a solid block of salt on one of the gaskets! It took him a solid two hours to find, clean, try it, clean  and find more salt deposits and get it running like new again! I wisely stayed out of his way. It was a nasty job.. We need to Google and see what we could of/should of done to avoid this. (Humm... no, I have no photos of this either!)

Next up, a road trip home to NB, a work opportunity for Papi, then we start Canada's Historic Canals!

   
We're back in Canadian waters, time to remove the American Courtesy Flag from the bow.

We're not done yet, but we are getting closer to that "gold".

Tina & Papi

"In life, it's not where you go, it's who you travel with" 

– Charles Schultz

Comments

  1. Wish we had researched and read this earlier. Oh well.... We learn something new every day.
    https://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/marine-toilet-maintenance.asp

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