Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Welcome to Castleton Boat Club


Waterford to Castleton Boat Club – 1 locks, 17 nautical miles

We tossed off the docklines at 8:30, bid farewell to Waterford and the Erie Canal and dipped the bow of SeaLight into the mighty Hudson River. The northbound Hudson leads to the Champlain Canal which in turn leads into the St. Lawrence river and the land known as Quebec. More on that later.

 

We coasted SeaLight into Lock 1, the final (or first, depending on which way you are going) lock of the journey, and the easy canal I was expecting turned out to be not so easy as they didn’t have any damn wall ropes to hang onto so we ended up floating aimlessly, bouncing from side to side, running from bow to stern holding the boat off the rugged concrete walls with our boat hooks, as the water level slowly dropped. The doors finally opened and we motored the hell out of there as I got an earful from the crew.

 

This was to be Mike’s final day as he had booked an evening flight from Albany back to his home in Chicago so he could see through the raising of the mast. It had been so great having him on the trip and all these hours on the boat provided time for us to really catch up. As we cruised down the Hudson, passing many towns, cities, factories, and working vessels, we talked and chatted about so many things. Mike, Ana, and I have been friends for over twenty years now and he has always been so good about keeping in touch. We talk on the phone every few months and meet up in person when we can. I wonder where we’ll met up next?

 

We reached the Castleton Boat Club and there were a couple of people at the fuel dock who caught our lines and helped us in. After docking we stood for a very long time talking to them. One was an outspoken American dude who claimed to be a chiropractor, scientist, boat builder, and competitive athlete, but as we’d find out later, also a trained partier who left a cloud of alcohol vapour trailing behind him. The other guy, Jeff, was also American, from Plymouth, and had, incredibly, single-handed his 36 foot sailboat all the way from Michigan, including the full length of the Erie Canal, which we struggled with having three crew. He had been helping the chiropractor scientist and his friend step their mast and was next in line to do his boat, but the day was becoming increasingly windy.

 

Castleton Boat Club is the only place that rents out their crane for boats to put up their own masts, and they charge only $100 compared to the full service marinas that will cost you five times that. You could say two types of transients stop there – those extremely capable and those extremely cheap. I knew which category we were in.

 

I got us checked in and paid up at the clubhouse and on the way back to the boat I met a local member who introduced himself as Steve and welcomed me then asked who had checked us in.

 

“Uh, it was uh, didn’t catch their name…” I stammered.

 

“Was it a chubby old cigar chomper or a lady?” he asked.

 

“Oh, it was the chubby old cigar chomper, for sure.”

 

“Ok, good. Well we’re all volunteer run here, 50 hours each we need to do every season, but most of us do way more than that. No paid staff, we do everything ourselves. Enjoy your time here, feel free to use the washrooms, water, electrical, and if there’s anything you need just ask.”

 

I liked this place. They bill themselves as the “Friendliest marina on the Hudson” and I believe it.

 


Ben and Kate arrived a couple of hours after us, but there was no space on the dock near the crane and Steve at the fuel dock was yelling at them to dock there, but because of the wind noise they though he was asking them if they needed fuel so they said, “No thanks!” So they continued past the docks and I jogged along them to see if I could help. There were plenty of slips available on the inside row, and once I got to the end I heard Ana yelling at me and pointing to an empty slip down the dock. I thought maybe Steve had told her to put them in there so I started frantically waving them into the channel. They turned the boat in but didn’t get too far before it came to a sticky halt. Grounded. I ran back to the boat and launched our dinghy then tried to pull them out but no luck, it was stuck in hard. As it was low tide they decided to just toss out the anchor, leave the boat, then come back when the tide was coming in. Ben went to the front of the boat and started lowering the anchor. The handle was still sticking out the water as it hit bottom – two feet deep. That drew a chorus of laughter from the bystanders. As they were checking in, Steve awarded them with the Fickle Finger Of Fate trophy for their spectacular grounding.

By early afternoon it seemed clear that our mast (and maybe nobody's) would be going up today because of the wind, so Mike decided to take a late afternoon flight instead of the later one he was scheduled for. We said our goodbyes and I watched him speed off towards Albany in a Uber. I was going to miss him.

 

Despite the wind, a few hours later Jeff decided to give it a go so he got his boat into position and we all took up stations to help him raise the mast. This was the first time any of us had done this. Of course we’d all seen it done many times, and helped many times, but doing it completely on your own is not quite the same thing.

 


As the mast was being hoisted up by a rope around the centre point it looked like the whole thing was going to bend in half. But it didn’t, and we eventually got it up and into place. Jeff’s boat was a keel stepped mast which meant the mast had to go into a hole in the deck, through the boat, then sit into a fitting at the bottom. This means it has to go in very straight so that it doesn’t pry the cabin deck apart. Between the huge gusts of wind, waves, and occasional wake thrown by passing boats, this was a bitch of a job, and there were some tense moments….but we finally got it. Whew.

We invited Jeff over for dinner as his fiancĂ©e Jenna who had been traveling with him for some parts of the trip, wasn’t here at the moment and he looked like he could use some nutrition after that nerve wracking experience. Jeff is a very funny guy and as we traded stories he told us of a program he is building to enable army veterans to learn how to sail, which is why he was transporting this current boat. Turns out, he also had an interesting experience in Amsterdam. He had called a local taxi company when the eighty-year-old driver arrived and Jeff was waiting in a different spot across the park, he flew into a rage and drove his car at Jeff and knocked him over. Jeff called the cops and they picked the guy up but said they couldn’t do much unless Jeff wanted to stick around for a couple weeks. Maybe they wanted to wait until he ran a few more people over so they could do a class action prosecution.

 

Kate and Ben joined us for post dinner postres and humour and there were more than a few gut laughs. I love this crew!

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