It's been awhile, I know. Since our last post, we finished sailing lake Ontario, took our masts down, had a visitor, motored through the erie barge canal, entered the hudson river and have just put our masts back up.
Lake Ontario was a bit of a chore. We waited for favorable winds, but they never came, it was east wind everyday. We listened to the radio with the hopes that the monotone radio guy would say "south west wind blowing 15 knots", but instead all we heard was "flood watch from Ernesto, east winds 20-25 knots gusts up to 30" and of course our heading was 90 east. Not so good for us. So the winds actually weren't that bad it was just the waves we had to deal with, so we got to Rochester and waited a day for better weather, and slogged our way to Oswego. Oh...and we got great news in Rochester..

CONGRATULATIONS TO JASON AND TERA......WELCOME BABY AJA JANE TO THIS WORLD......

Ok...so once in Oswego, we took our masts down and headed south. My mom was lucky enough to spend a rainy long weekend with us aboard a demasted Meggie in a very very small town called Minetto with 1 bar (that we didn't go to as it looked like an old house that someone put a neon sign in and called it a bar), but even though it rained the WHOLE time and we were confined to the small cabin aboard Meggie, we had a great time and lots of laughs, which is what it's all about.
After our goodbyes, we headed south until we came to a crossroad (or river) that led us east all the way to Waterford, NY.
The NY canal system is basically just a river with locks along the way. The canal is very easy going and other than steer, we had to keep an eye out for debris.

The river experienced high flooding in June which led to the closing of many locks and fortunately all were open as we traversed. The damage to the locks was minimal, but the grounds and buildings around the locks were severly damaged.The river reminded me of different things...sometimes I felt like we were in the movie deliverence, and other times it was so beautiful you would think you were in the amazon river. I would periodically say "Mike...there's a croc...look out." or "I think I see some hippos over there." Let me just say that it's a LONG river and yes...I think I may have gone just a touch crazy some days. It's funny the things you think of when you have hours and hours to do nothing...and it's really funny the songs that get stuck in your head. I had skip to my lou stuck in my head for 3 days...how crazy!


Anyway....we made it to Waterford, where we were smack dab in the middle of a tugboat roundup celebration with about 30 tugs, so we stayed for a day to give Meggie a rest and to regain some sanity and be amongst other humans, before finally heading SOUTH.
So from now on our heading is south and only south.
We're now sitting in the Castleton-on-Hudson marina finishing up the last few jobs that come along with raising the masts and then we'll make our way to NYC and should hopefully arrive by the end of the week and spend a few days with Mike's brother Martin and his family.
So we'll keep you posted and don't give up on us even though I may be a bit tardy with our updates.
Keep well everyone, and until next time....
Kylie and Mike