Locking Through...

The following is a pictorial of how this whole lock situation works. Our friend, Dave, shot the photos as we went through Lock 24 today, heading east.


First, the lock master opens the doors and you drive in. That’s Wild Blue on the left in the photo above.



Then, you pick a spot on the lock wall and get yourself tied to a line or a cable that is connected to the lock wall. That’s what we’re doing in the photos above. Our technique is to get the bow of the boat close so Joan can grab the line with a boat pole. She then wraps a line around that line or cable. Then I put the boat in reverse and swing the stern in towards the wall and go back to the cockpit of the boat and do the same thing with another line.


When the lock master can see that all the boats are secured, he closes the doors and starts letting water out or in. In this case, we were going down. You can see in this photo how much lower Wild Blue is on the lock wall than the photos above.


When the water matches the level outside the lock, the lock master opens the doors, we shove off, and motor out of the lock. In this case, we went down about 15 feet.

The water is moved in and out hydraulically and the process is generally smooth. Wind can make a real difference, as can the different types of attachment to the lock walls. So far, the locks we’ve been through here have been pretty nice.

My thanks to Dave for these photos!

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We are down for the night in Sylvan Beach, on the east shore of Lake Oneida. Heading east across the lake, we checked weather - no marine warnings. By the time we were half way across the lake, the radio erupted with a weather alert... severe thunderstorm warnings in our area. We got to Sylvan Beach and tied off to the wall before the storms moved in. Nothing severe for us (some wind, rain, and lightning); talked to Dave, who is about 60 miles west, and they had some BIG winds with that line of storms.

We were "rocked" to sleep.