The Week When Things Went Wrong

After our first week of the trip, the first thing my mom wanted to know was what went wrong. Did we have trouble with any equipment? Did our anchor drag? Did a cat run away? Did someone fall overboard? I found myself flummoxed because there wasn't anything to tell her. Justin had done too good of a job on the equipment, we paid attention to the weather forecasts and avoided rough waters, and the cats are too scared of anything to try jumping overboard. The next week, she asked the same thing and I still had nothing juicy to talk about.

But finally, I'm able to report that things actually went wrong.

The week started out innocently enough. We arrived at the boat in Brockport Sunday night rested and ready for a week of fun. As we unloaded laundry and groceries, we noticed the cabin wasn't cool and comfortable like it had been so far. It was hot, stuffy and oppressive. The air conditioning clearly wasn't working.

Justin dove down into the engine room to investigate the situation, and he emerged with a filter clogged with thick, green, gross seaweed and algae. I looked overboard, and discovered our entire boat was surrounded by a circle of green sludge.

The boogers of the sea. 

It turned out a slight current in the canal was pushing this pile of gunk up against the boat, which then clogged the filters for the air conditioning. Luckily, we were able to dump out the filters and quickly get the air conditioning working again.

The next morning, I took the car to meet my parents and pick up some last-minute necessities.

Up until this point, I've avoided getting into the details of our car situation, mostly because it's very confusing and doesn't add a lot to this narrative. But just to give you an idea, we leave the boat every Friday afternoon so Justin and I can work all weekend and Shianne and Makenna can get some quality time at home. Then Sunday night we drive to wherever the boat may be and continue on our way. This week was the first time we weren't starting or ending our trip in Buffalo, so the car transportation steps were a little complicated. Last Friday, we rented a car in Brockport to get us back to Buffalo, and this week we drove both my car and the rental car back to Brockport so my parents could take my car to our next stop on Thursday so we could all get home to Buffalo Friday afternoon. See? Confusing.

But the best part of this car shuffling was being able to spend time with my parents. They enjoyed a nice lunch at one of our favorite stops on the canal, Custom House Restaurant, and wandered around the small stores in town, picking up trinkets and presents for loved ones back home.

Everyone needs a unicorn crown once in a while. 

Of course, we did all of our wandering wearing masks, but we still managed to have plenty of fun!

You'll never know who was sticking their tongues out. 

COVID-19 has put a damper on parts of this trip, but I am grateful that it's forcing us to take our time on the canal. There are locks further down that have yet to open, so we have no choice but to enjoy ourselves and explore parts of the canal where we have never been before. For instance, we decided to take a slight detour this week to visit downtown Rochester. The Genesee River intersects the Erie Canal and winds right though the middle of the city. After a week of quaint towns, farms, and woods, it was a refreshing change.

My hair is launching an attack on Shianne's face. 

We chose a gorgeous spot right in the middle of the city to tie up and relax. The only downside was the delicious smell of Dinosaur Barbecue from just over the bridge that would occasionally waft by and make me crave meat at strange times.

You can check out Justin's butt checking out Dumbledore's butt. It's butt-ception.

Shianne and I decided to take a short bike ride and explore our new surroundings. It turns out there is a fantastic paved bike trail along the river with pedestrian bridges criss-crossing the water at convenient locations. It was the perfect way to check out the city while keeping our distance from other people. 

Shianne chose to bring her speaker and subject all of Rochester to her country music.

Every time we visit Rochester there is one place we always have to stop in. No, it isn't a favorite restaurant or scenic view. It isn't even an art gallery or a museum. It's an enormous architectural salvage store called Historic Houseparts. Comprised of three giant buildings, there are rooms and aisles jammed with tons of old construction pieces, from clawfoot bathtubs to stained glass windows. We managed to put together our entire dining room with 1800s paneling we discovered there two years ago, and the marble sinks in our bathroom at home come from Historic Houseparts too. True, there wasn't much there that could fit on the boat, but it was still really neat to check it out. 

If I let him, Justin would turn our basement into this. 

I know, you're thinking right now, "who cares about architectural antiques? I was promised things going wrong and all I've read about so far was a slimy air conditioning filter. Where's the destruction? Where's the carnage? Where's the mayhem?"  We're getting there. Calm down. 

Tuesday was one of the hottest days of the year so far, coming in around 92 degrees all day with very little breeze. After our bike trip to Historic Houseparts, everyone was sweaty and tired and excited to get back to the air conditioned boat. I ushered everyone on board, left Justin to load the bikes, and we untied and went on our way. About two hours later, I got a strange message on my phone. Someone was trying to reach me and give me back my backpack and wallet. 

My stomach dropped. I frantically scoured the boat, checking to see if I had remembered to bring my backpack onboard after our bike ride. Of course, I had decided to put my wallet in the bag along with snacks and water for the day. And then when we got back to the boat, I had set it on a nearby bench, untied the boat, and left it there for anybody to find. 

And then enter Good Guy Evan. I wish I had a picture of him so I could turn him into a meme, but that would be pretty creepy. Good Guy Evan was going for a casual bike ride when he discovered my backpack on the bench. He looked through it, found my wallet, looked up my information online and managed to contact me. In a normal situation, I would profusely thank him, jump in my car, rush over to where I left my bag and both of us would go on our way. But the one thing we were not able to fit on the trawler was a car. First I tried to call an Uber or taxi, but COVID has severely limited the availability of both. Then I tried to jump on Justin's super-fast road bike, but my legs were too short and I fell off. 

So Justin came to my rescue. He got on his bike, in the now 93 degree weather and rode the ten miles back to Good Guy Evan. Meanwhile, I continued to drive the boat forward through the canal in the hopes of reaching a good swimming spot before the locks closed at 7:00. 

That's right, I ditched Justin and drove away. 

It took Justin an hour to reach Good Guy Evan from Pittsford, and Good Guy Evan was nice enough to wait at that bench the entire time. I couldn't believe it. With so many things going wrong in the world, it's nice to know there are kind people like Evan who will go out of their way to help some poor dummy get her backpack and wallet back. 

Meanwhile, I kept driving the boat towards Fairport. As previously mentioned, Dumbledore does not move much faster than an out-of-shape person leisurely bicycling, and it moves much slower than an in-shape person in a hurry on a road bike. (Although the 93 degrees did slow Justin down a little.) It also helped that the canal from Pittsford to Fairport is fairly circuitous, while Justin was able to ride his bike in a straight line towards our meeting spot. In the end, I arrived at Fairport with Dumbledore a few minutes before Justin did. 

Now, I would like to take a moment to present my defense for the next thing that went wrong. (AKA excuses.) I have only successfully docked Dumbledore without Justin once, and I very rarely use the thrusters. Usually, I drive for boring stretches when I can turn on my podcasts or showtunes and jam out, while just paying enough attention to keep the boat vaguely moving in the right direction. 

So I forgot how to turn the thrusters on. 

Fairport was surprisingly busy, with very few spots open on the town wall. I chose one near a rented canal boat with a family of curious tourists on board. As I approached, I pushed the thruster button to move us sideways into the open spot. Nothing happened. I pushed them again. Nothing happened. I pushed the power button and then pushed the thrusters. Still nothing happened, and we were speeding toward the canal boat at a lightning fast 4 knots. I abandoned the thrusters and slammed the boat in reverse. Then I leapt off the boat, and the girls were shocked at the four letter words spewing out of my mouth as I grabbed a line and wrapped it around a post, angling Dumbledore so it just barely avoided ramming into the canal boat. I had the girls throw me another line as I hauled Dumbledore in the other direction, back to parallel and finished tying the boat to the wall. 

Before turning the boat off, Makenna demonstrated the correct way. It turns out you push the power button twice to turn the thrusters on. Well, I know that for next time.

A few minutes later, Justin arrived, sweaty and exhausted, but successful. I almost got away with him not knowing about my terrible docking, but when he got on board, he noticed that we had turned the boat off while the shifter was still in reverse. Naturally, Shianne and Makenna then launched into the story about how Casey almost crashed the boat and said a lot of bad words. 

I decided I deserved an ice cream after that. 

I got them extra scoops, they promised to never discuss my docking again. 

Once everyone was filled with ice cream, we continued our way towards the next lock, beyond which was a bay big enough to anchor the boat and cool off. 

As you know from last week, before we entered the canal we carefully measured Dumbledore to make sure it would fit under all of the low canal bridges. So when we approached a particularly short one, Justin wasn't too concerned. Or at least he wasn't until we got a bit closer.

I've never seen a bridge look so innocent before. 

The bridge itself was high enough to fit, but this bridge was undergoing construction, which required some metal sheeting below the bridge for workers to stand on. 

This picture is courtesy of Shianne. I was too busy making fun of Justin for running into a bridge to take a picture. 

We had two options at this point: go forward or go back. We really didn't want to go back. So that meant going forward, which meant getting shorter. We've dealt with this problem before, but that was in a sailboat with several weeks to prepare and tip ourselves over far enough to make it under a low bridge. Dumbledore isn't nearly as easy to tip, and we had to get to the next lock in a few short hours. 

Instead of tipping, we had to just shrink. 

The first step was lowering the mast, which was a simple matter of turning a crank. The next step was lowering the bimini, which was holding up our solar panels. Everyone grabbed a screwdriver and unscrewed the pins holding the supports to the bimini in place. Suddenly, there was a loud snap, and the solar panels came crashing down...onto my shoulders. Luckily, I'm secretly Thor and was able to hold it up. 

Who cares that gyms are closed? Just lift solar panels!

While I kept the solar panels from falling overboard, Justin inched forward. Everyone held their breath...and we made it through! 

Who knew slamming into a bridge was so much fun?

But the excitement wasn't over yet. My arms were getting tired, and the 93 degree weather was not helping the situation. Nobody was driving the boat, and it was slowly drifing towards the shallow waters at the edge of the canal. Justin scampered from support pole to support pole with zip ties and put things vaguely back into place. Finally, I was able to release my burden and jump into the captain's chair to try and steer us back to the middle channel. I hauled the wheel to starboard, and nothing happened. For a second I had thruster flashbacks, but I knew there wasn't anything special I had to do to turn on the steering wheel. I turned it again, and there was no pressure from the steering system, only an ominous click. At that moment, Justin needed some more help reattaching the bimini, so Makenna took over steering by using the thrusters. 

When the bimini and solar panels were mostly back in place, Justin went back over to the steering wheel to see why it wasn't responding. Apparently, the chain in the steering system had missed some teeth when I cranked it so hard to starboard. We looked at the clock. We were still an hour away from the lock that closed at 7:00, and it was a few minutes past 6:00. And now we had a steering wheel that would only turn to port. 

We floored it. 

Dumbledore flew along the canal at top speeds, a lightning fast 7 knots. We might have even reached 7.5. In order to navigate twists and turns in the canal, Justin had to use the thruster every time we needed to turn right. But we knew we needed to make the lock by 7:00 in order to have a chance at having a relaxing swim after our long, hot, exhausting day. 

We pulled up to the lock at 7:02. 

As we came within sight of it, Justin turned on the radio and called to the lock operator. We all sat with bated breath, hoping some kind soul on the other end would answer and let us through. And then came the best tinny, crackly sound we heard all day. The lock operator answered and agreed to send us through. 

Not many people photograph this well while holding a muddy, slimy rope.

She's thinking in minoring in lock navigation in college. 

We were rewarded for our hard day with a quiet pond off the main thoroughfare of the canal. We dropped our anchor and jumped in for some hard-earned swimming. 

Yes, the floaty matches the life jacket.

Everyone's laughing because Dumbledore farted.

That evening, I was happy to let Justin drive the rest of the way to the town wall in Newark. Everyone was pretty worn out, and the steering wheel was still only working in one direction. That's probably why Justin hit a tree half-way to Newark. The berries from the branches he broke off will stain Dumbledore's side deck forever. 

The tree "barked" at us to "leaf" it alone. 

Has that been enough things going wrong to satisfy you? No? Well, lucky for you, there's more.

The next morning, Justin got up early and spent some time fixing the steering wheel so we could turn in more than one direction. Once he was finished, we untied and he pushed the stern thruster to leave the Newark town wall. Nothing happened. Again. The thrusters were definitely on this time, both because the bow thrusters were working and because Justin knows how to turn the thrusters on. We tied the boat back up, and Justin went to do some investigating.

While we were playing in the water the night before, we had tied our inner tubes to the boat with a spare line, then completely forgotten to bring it in. Part of that line had been sucked up by our stern thruster and lodged there. Justin was able to reach in and pull the line out, unclogging our thruster and fixing the latest in a long series of problems.

But wait, there's more.

We left Newark and continued East on the canal until we hit Cayuga Lake. Once again, our leisurely pace allowed us to take a detour, and we decided to spend some time exploring Ithaca and the Finger Lakes.

I am convinced there is a sea monster in here somewhere.

We made our way down Cayuga Lake, with plenty of stops to jump out and swim, of course, and marvel at how deep the water was. Our home waters at the East end Lake Erie are usually around 60 feet deep at the most, so when this scrawny fingerlake was showing over 400 feet in depth, I had to do a double take. But it turns out that due to something sciencey with glaciers, the fingerlakes really are over 400 feet deep. I was a little terrified when the depth sounder went from 400 feet for a few minutes to only 25 feet. The only logical reason for that is a sea monster swimming 25 feet under the boat.

 But something as trivial was not going to keep us from swimming and having lots of fun.

Those inner tubes are the only things protecting them from touching gross seaweed. 

Nobody has been so happy about inhaling so much lake water. 

We got a slip at the southern edge of the lake, but in order to get there we took Dumbledore through some thick weeds. After driving in and out of the seaweed several times, Justin noticed Dumbledore was moving slower than our usual sluggish pace, passing more towards glacial. While the rest of us were swimming, Justin decided to take a dive and check if some seaweed had wrapped around our propeller. While he was feeling blindly under the boat, desperate for oxygen and barely alive, he discovered something more than seaweed on the propeller. A few more dives revealed the culprit; the line that had been stuck in the thruster had come back to haunt us.

And so Justin grabbed a pair of goggles, which turned out to be useless in the murky lake water, and a sharp knife, and spent an hour diving down again and again, slashing at the line tangled around the propeller and trying his best not to cut through something important, like a finger.

Finally, he managed to untangle the culprit. And thus, all of the things that went wrong were vanquished.

This line tried and failed to drown Justin. Don't trust it.

We got to end our week with another visit from my parents, who stopped by drop off my car so we could drive back to Buffalo. We enjoyed some more swimming and a delicious dinner that Makenna made herself.

The chef hard at work.

Even though there were plenty of things that went wrong this week, I'm happy to report they were all issues we could solve. I'm sure more issues will crop up here or there in the weeks to come, but I know that no matter what happens, we'll figure out a way to get through it. Or at the very least I can throw Justin and his bike overboard and make him ride for help.

These two ate everything. There were no leftovers.

tl;dr: We brought the boat to Ithaca and had some technical difficulties along the way, but arrived safely.