New York to Montreal

Soon after passing under the Verrazano Suspension Bridge into New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty appears along the New Jersey shoreline. We have arrived in New York and are starting up the Hudson River.

Our first stop on our historic tour was at the Croton Dam, the third largest stone structure in the world, exceeded only by the Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Our next stop was at the Rockerfeller home, Kykuit. We finished the day at Washington Irving's cottage.

After spending two days in Tarrytown, viewing the historic sights in the area, we headed out on our treck up the Hudson River. One of the majestic sights is West Point along the west bank of the river.

As the river cuts through the eastern end of the Appalachian Mountains, it forms a beautiful valley, with river depths as much as 80'. What is quite amazing, is that the river is tidal all the way to Albany.

On Saturday we got to Kingston, located on the northern banks of Rondout Creek, the eastern terminus of a canal that ran from Pennsylvania to the Hudson River. Coal was hauled on small barges to Kingston, than reloaded onto larger barges for transport to New York City or other New England cities. Kingston was also the first Capital of New York and was burned to the ground in 1777 by the British.

After attending a Lutheran church service this morning, Sunday, June 15, we motored another 40 miles up the river towards Albany. We are anchored for the night behind Houghtaling Island.

Monday we continued up river, passing Albany and the capital building. Shortly north of Albany we entered the first lock of the upper Hudson River. the Troy lock. We spent the night at the town of Waterford dock, offered free with power and water to lure boaters to spend some money in their neat town.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday working our way up the Champlain Canal into the south end of Lake champlain. Because of the significance of this natural water route in our early history, there are many historic sites along the way.

On Tuesday we went through 10 lockes, 8 up to the top of the system at 140', and 2 down to Whitehall, where our first navy ships were built. They have a great museum there where they have assembled memorbelia from those years, with great models assembled of the town in those early years.

On Wednesday we went through the last lock, down to the elevation of Lake Champlain of 96'. The south end of Champlain is basically a wide river for the first 30-40 miles. In this stretch Lake George drains into Champlain, and at that point Fort Ticondaoga was built on the high hill along the west shore. From that fort you can see up to the north a good 10 miles and to the south 5-6 miles. We anchored ODYSSEE and dingied in to visit the fort. There was significant weed growth in the shallow water, and we thought we had anchored outside of that weed growth. After a two hour tour of the fort, we came back to the shore to find that ODYSSEE had moved about 1/4 mile to the north, pushed by the south wind, well into the weed growth. The weeds wrapped around the rode and anchor were so heavy we couldn't pull the anchor up, so I would pull it up as much as I could, Claria would move the boat forward, forcing the weeds down the rode, and allowing me to pull up another foot of rode. When we got down to the last 10', the anchor was blocking any further stripping action of the water. At this point I took the boat hook, extended to it's maximum length, and used it to hook into the weeds and slowly stripped the weeds from the rode and anchor. Finally I could raise the anchor and we could move out into deeper water. Several cycles of reverse and forward and we had the weeds off the props and we were off again. Definitely another ODYSSEE odyssey! We spent a very pleasant night anchored in Bulwagga bay.

On Thursday, June 19, we finished our trip to Burlington, VT where we are spending a couple days. We have developed a leak at the shaft of our port engine fresh water pump. Have parts on the way and plan to change out that pump while we are in Burlington as well.

Waterpump replaced, we left Burlington on Saturday afternoon, June 21 and moved 30 miles up Lake champlain and anchored for the night.

On Sunday, we woke up to a drizzel and heavy clouds. We had 14 miles to go to get to the Canadian border, and then another 63 miles up the Richelieu River and Chambly Canal to Saint-Antoni sur Richelieu, our planned stop for the night at their town wall. The Chambly Canal has 9 locks, all small, 120' long by 22' wide, beginning at Saint-Jean-de-Richelieu, where several boats lined the town wall, including KAOS, our "Looper" friends 

from Texas. Locks 1 through 8 are manually operated. The canal itself is narrow with a                       

6 MPH speed limit. Actually we couldn't go any faster, with the canal only 50' wide and 8' deep in some places, our boat was pushing a lot of water. It takes 1 1/2 hours to travel the 9 miles of the canal and pass through the 9 locks.

Monday was again an overecast day with on and off showers. We arrived at Sorel and the St. Lawerance river about noon with many large ships waiting to greet us. We turned left to the SW for a 37 mile up river trek to Montreal.

As late afternoon arrived, so did the skyline of Montreal. We are planning on spending 3 nights here, leaving on Thursday, June 26 to start up the Ottawa River towards Ottawa.

Classic ODYSSEE among mostly new "bubble" boats at Yacht Club Montreal.