Sailing Painkiller 
Amsterdam, NY
That’s Amsterdam, NY not the Netherlands. We haven’t crossed the Atlantic, yet! We left Little Falls around 8:30 am and headed toward our first lock for the day, which is lock 17.
Lock 17 is a unique lock on the Erie Canal. It has the highest water level change of all the locks on the Erie. This lock will drop us 40 feet. The other unique feature is that it is the only lock on the canal that has a lift gate on the eastern end of the lock which means your boat needs to pass UNDER the door that lifts open to get out of the lock. There are only 2 such locks in all of North America and this is the largest one.
Here we are nearing the low water in the lock after we have already dropped the 40 feet.
Mark managing his line and keeping us off the wall with his boat hook. The doors behind him in the lock do typically leak water and create a nice water feature inside the lock.
This is my view from the bow of the boat, holding on to my line. 40 feet is a long way down. And yes, the walls are really slimy.
Here is the lift gate that we had to go under to get out of the lock. Again, this is the only lock on the entire Erie that is like this.
As we went along the Erie Canal today, we spotted a campground ahead and it just so happened to have a classic car show or some such event going on. We saw all these cool old cars on shore. It was awesome to see. Would have liked to pull over to go check it out but there was no place to pull over.
Here’s a really nice view of one of the dams by lock 15 as we went through this area.
Then we got some rain on and off for the next hour or so.
Finally we pulled up to the wall in Amsterdam. We were initially worried that we might find a lot of boats on the wall in Amsterdam since last night in Little Falls was full. However, as we pulled up, we found there was no one there. Just Mark and I and our friends Ed and Evelyn. We had the place to ourselves. It was a nice park like area near the wall but everything was really quiet and nothing around this area seemed open at all. There was a restaurant right near the water that was closed today. There was also this tall structure that had stairs and an elevator that turned out to be a pedestrian bridge over the highway and train tracks behind us.
I was able to get some great photos from the top of the tower.
We had a nice dinner aboard Jersey Grace with Ed and Evelyn. She made a nice tortilla soup. With the rain today it was starting to feel a bit fall like and soup sounded really good. After dinner we headed over the pedestrian bridge to check out the town. The town was like a ghost town, literally nothing was open, however it is a Sunday, so I guess that makes sense.
Stats for today:
Lift Bridges – 0
Fixed Bridges – 9
Guard Gates – 1
Locks – 7, the most locks in one day!
Sailing Painkiller 
Wow wow wow!!!! That gate is wild!!!! Dropping 40 feet has to be also wild. Great job on your postings and blogging. So interesting.
Hayden
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