NYANZA Enters the Erie Canal

Nyanza left the EYC bright and early at 0730 on Friday Morning, right on schedule on a beautiful sunny day , light and variable headed toward Buffalo with Cap Jim, Mark Kubejah and Roger Zurn.....after experiencing some left over seas from Thursday night storms we had a wonderful motor up to buffalo...Styrofoam mast holders and all...not sure this is the answer if we were to experience heavy seas but they got us to Buffalo and into the Canal...

Testing out the repaired autopilot was a disaster and plans will be made to install a new one in Annapolis area in September....

Arriving in Buffalo we passed Teddy Johnson on Damn Yankee on his way to do an overnight to Dunkirk and back.....ps..They arrived back at 0230 and woke us all up with heavy music...that's Teddy.

We had a wonderful dinner at BYC with Jim Whistler and his wonderful wife, Alice, before proceeding on Saturday morning to the Black Rock lock...arriving at 0800 only to find a sign that says the lock does not open on Sat-Sun until 1000hrs. We had checked the internet and there was no indication that this was the case.....oh well...breakfast was then produced by the Captain.....OJ, Yogurt..fruit and granolla.....and we dropped 6 feet into the Niagara River at 1000hrs and proceeded to Tonowanda where we entered the Erie Canal.....around 1100hrs.

Forgetting how narrow this end of the canal is.....two fast powerboats washed a wave down the canal and we rocked and rocked and rocked....finally getting to Lockport where we dropped in two combined locks 25ft and 25 ft coming off the Niagara Escarpment headed toward Rochester....

At 0530 we pulled up in a lovely little town called Medina, NY after about 30 miles and tied to the wall where we were even able to find 30Amp power for overnight......Mark went on a search mission looking for the bathrooms and showers that the lockmaster gave us a combination for.....we never found them....lockmaster had gone home for the evening when we tried to call him....

but we did find a wonderful restaurant called ZAMBISTRO which I would highly recommend on main street in Medina.....In talking to Chef Michael Zambito we learned that he had been from Medina and had returned 18 months ago to open his Bistro after 4 year at The Culinery Institute of NY. Check it out.......

Evening came fast...Judy Kubejah and Fred Heidt arrived around 2200hrs to continue the journey toward the Hudson and Roger and I drove back to Erie arriving at 0130.

Check out the photos posted on the website........I will give you an update when I hear from the crew.....no news is good news until next Sunday when Bob Becker, Peter Reyburn and I meetup with Nyanza in the Hudson to continue the journey to the Hudson.