Rome Bellamy Harbor Park

A bit warmer last night with temps close to 60. Currently 75 as the high. (Writing this at 4pm). Progressed through locks E19 and E20 today. E19 has a railroad bridge very close to the lower gate. This section of the Canal has a lot of shoaling, so we saw a number of Canal dredge barges and work boats. Yesterday we shared lock E18 with the sailing vessel Whitecap. Learned that he has an 8 foot draft and was concerned about this section with the shoaling. He was running a few mph faster than us. (If you understand hull speed, which is what I’m running at around 6mph, it’s affected by vessel length. The sailboat was about 40’ in length so his hull speed would be faster than ours.) Anyway, as we exited lock E19 we saw him tied up on the wall on the other side. Apparently he was waiting for a tow through the shoaling section. (Which we did mark at around 6 or 7 feet of water max depth.) When we spoke with him earlier he said he would likely need to get towed through the area. Now I know that the shoaling is mostly silt. But not sure I understand why you would tow a sail boat through that, unless you had a very strong keel. He must have gotten his tow and made it through, as he just passed us about an hour ago, as we are now tied up at the Rome Bellamy Harbor Park, where we stayed last week on our way east. At Utica, I pulled up and tied to the lock approach wall at the Utica Harbor Lock. This lock is now permanently closed, however the wall at the entrance where we tied up, makes a convenient free stop for boaters. The following is information Rosanne found about the lock’s past. This lock is the only lock on the NYS Canal System that is outside the main channel. The upper gate slides vertically. NYS Canal Corporation maintenance facility is at the east end. Long polluted by effluent from adjacent coal gas works, the harbor is now clean and undergoing redevopment. The original Erie canal brought commerce and prosperity to Utica. The Barge Canal enlargement ran north of the city’s commercial district and textile mills, however, and cut if off from the canal. To keep the city from being completely marooned, Utica Harbor was built to improve access to the Barge Canal. The harbor was complete in 1918.
Today was the busiest day we’ve seen on the Erie Canal since we launched. We passed three eastbound boats traveling together, and then a few more traveling separately. Also had a few boats waiting for opposite direction locking as we came out, and then had the WhiteCap sailboat behind us. No plans here in Rome today, as we visited the sites coming through earlier. Just a nice day to relax.Les mer