The Three Rivers junction gets its name from the confluence of the Onieda River, the Oswego River, and the Seneca River. From this three point junction, the Erie Canal continues westward with the Seneca towards the Finger Lakes, Rochester, and eventually to where it meets Lake Erie at Buffalo. We needed to go due north towards Lake Ontario on the Oswego Canal.
Lock 1 on the Oswego Canal is in the town of Phoenix. The town name turned out to be prophetic. We had not experienced any engine problems since we started up the Hudson from Sandy Hook. But we were about to see those concerns get resurrected.
There is a cantilever road bridge 10 feet north of the lock in Phoenix. It has a very low clearance. The lockmaster told us he thought we could make it under the bridge without him having to stop traffic and raise it up. Once the lock had emptied its water and the gates were open to the north, he advised us to exit slowly under the bridge. The bridge slopes downward into the town from port to starboard, so I asked Niki to keep us as close to the port seawall as possible as we exited the lock. We made it under the bridge safely, but there was a huge pad of water plants and debris crowded up against that port seawall. The debris got caught on the rudder and we immediately lost most of our steerage. Worse yet, a lot of the material got sucked up into the raw water intake that keeps the engine cool. The impeller stopped pumping water and we could smell burning rubber out of the exhaust.
We coasted slowly away from the seawall into the center of the channel. By putting the prop into reverse several times and backing the boat against the current, we finally cleared the debris off the rudder, and were able to steer effectively again. We knew we had not completely burned up the rubber impeller, as we could once again see water coming out of the exhaust. We continued north through the drizzle up the channel towards Fulton.
About 3 miles north of Phoenix the engine overheat buzzer went off. We needed to stop the boat to investigate. Our primary anchor locker at the bow was partially covered over by the bow crutch holding the mast above the deck. We couldn't access that anchor. We scrambled to get our secondary anchor out of the stern locker. We nudged Broad Reach over to the east side of the channel, set anchor, and shut the engine down. Just as we got the engine cover off the motor, it began to hail small pellets of ice. We could not see anything in the raw water filter, so we decided that the impeller was partially comprised. We let the engine cool in the gathering wind and falling ice. When we restarted the motor, it seemed to run OK as long as we kept the RPMs below normal at around 2200. This would slow our progress to Oswego, but we were back in motion once again.
The wind began to build as predicted out of the northwest. This put it directly on our nose. With a compromised cooling system and lower thrust, we made creeping slow progress north. Locks 2 and 3 in Fulton presented no problems at all, but we were getting concerned that we might not make it past the last lock in Oswego before nightfall. The dropping temperatures made it pretty cold at the helm. Niki commented that at least the hail rolled off our shoes, instead of soaking them through like the drizzle.
There is no Lock 4 on the Oswego. The original design of the system called for a total of 8 locks, but they were able to alter the design slightly to avoid building number 4. Rather than renumber the plans, the engineers decided to build the system as originally numbered. They just left number 4 out of the final numbering scheme.
Lock 5 sits high on an exposed bluff in the town of Minetto. The winds coming off of Lake Ontario were completely unobstructed as they screamed up the river valley to the bluff. By the time we lumbered around the corner at Red 122 the gusts were gusting hard against us at something like 30 MPH. At least the clouds had parted and the precipitation had stopped. It took us a long time to pull into the lock. The boat was pushed back and forth whenever the wind was not directly on the nose. Niki struggled with the wheel to keep us lined up with the seawall as we approached. We thought that the high winds would stop pushing the boat around once the water was lowered and we were down inside the lock basin. We were badly mistaken. The wind actually formed a strong vortex down inside the lock basin. The boat was twisted away from the wall and we both strained on the lines with all our body weight to keep the boat from turning and crashing the mast into the concrete walls of the lock basin. When the gates finally opened to release us, we chanced putting the motor up to full power again until we were well clear of the spillway. It was the only way we could get enough steerage to overcome the force of the wind. Here is a pic of Lock 5 from the web on a calmer day, when cameras could be safely operated.
Locks 6, 7, and 8 are all in the city of Oswego. Although the wind was still strong, the surrounding topography and the tall city buildings gave us some shelter from the highest gusts while we navigated our last remaining locks on our journey. We made it down to the harbor and were finally at the same water level as Lake Ontario. Here is the view upriver to the south from Lock 8.
We had made arrangements to stay at Oswego Marina. It is the last marina on the river before heading out into the lake. We were surprised to find that the fixed docks were several feet above the boat as we pulled into our slip. The water level on the lake is controlled by dams on the St. Lawrence River. They normally allow the lake level to drop before winter in order to prevent ice damage on shore from wind driven ice flows. This year they had lowered it so far down, that in order to leave the boat we had to step up onto the doghouse roof and then up another 3 feet to the dock. With the winds still pushing the boat around, we had to rig fenders on the top of the deck, to avoid the boat being pushed under the docks!
After dinner, we returned to the boat for some engine maintenance. We pulled and replaced the impeller. It showed some small cracks on the fins, but there was no major failure of the rubber. All of the fins were in place. We began to think that some debris had made it passed the raw water strainer and into the heat exchanger itself. The alternator drive belt seemed a little loose, but it was not excessive.
Our hoped for weather window to cross Ontario was promised for the next day. With fair skies and light winds from the south predicted for the morning, we hoped we could limp the final 36 miles across Lake Ontario and into Sackets Harbor without more overheat problems. We buttoned up the engine and got some sleep.
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