2012 Cruise Begins

We are about to start the 2012 cruising season.  As you may remember we ended last season with Hurricane Irene in central New York. The hurricane-created flood waters damaged the Erie Canal locks and we weren't able to get the boat back to Brewerton where she was to winter.  Instead we took her 20 miles south of Albany to Coeyman's Landing Marina where she was stored outside for the winter. With outside storage you have the boat shrink-wrapped in heavy duty plastic to repel rain, snow, etc.  The folks at the marina even built a wooden frame under the shrink wrap to give the boat a peaked roof so that snow would slide off, not sit on top.  This was the first time we've stored her outside and we were more than a bit nervous.

Down Time wrapped for the winter

I'm pleased to report that she came through the winter just fine.  Yes, I know that it was a warm winter, but central New York still had a couple of good snowfalls.

We got back to the marina three days ago.  We had called ahead to let them know we were coming and to arrange to have the boat's exterior cleaned and waxed before we got there.  We arrived Friday afternoon and they launched her Saturday morning.

Down Time on her way to being launched

The thing she it sitting in in the picture above is called a boat lift (clever naming don't you think?). It is a two metal frames, connected on top, with large straps attached to each side and a diesel engine.  The operator drives the lift over the boat, then attaches the straps to each other under the boat.  Then  the straps are raised which lifts the boat off the wooden blocks it sat on through the winter. The lift operator then drives the lift with the boat  to a specially designed boat ramp and lowers the boat to the water.  Once the boat begins to float, you pull it away from the ramp so the lift operator can raise the straps back up and drive the lift away.

Once the boat was back in the water, we needed to check the engines, clear the anti-freeze out of all the water systems, have some filters changed on the engines, and do some grocery shopping.  All that is done, we are ready to go.

Tomorrow we head up the Hudson, back to Waterford, NY, scene of last year's entrapment.  Wish us luck.  It has been raining here for two days and there is some thought that the Mohawk River may rise, causing the canal to close.  As Yogi Berra would say "Deja vu all over again."