Monday August 18: Oswego, NY

We have been watching the weather closely for the past week - checking in at various websites to see what the opportunities will be to cross Lake Ontario. It will be just a bit over 60 miles of open water so we really would like to enjoy the trip!

In all of the 18,500 miles we've traveled on Yesterday's Dream and Guppy, the worst crossing of a large body of water was not the over the gulf stream to the Bahamas or over any of the large sounds of the southern states nor the overnight 22 hour crossing of the Gulf of Mexico but the 11 hour crossing of Lake Ontario in 2010! We were positioning ourselves to be able to take advantage of the predicted zero foot waves due in over the next few days :-)

So it was early yesterday after another mostly rainy evening/night that we left Spicer Bay for a short 4 mile run to Clayton, NY.

There was supposed to be a great antique boat museum there - plus we would be well positioned if it looked like there was a good time to cross Lake Ontario.

The weather has still been crazy. We would loved to have spent more time in the Thousand Islands area but more not so great weather is due in again at the end of the week. Time to move on!

We stayed at the municipal docks in Clayton which are right downtown. It's a VERY rolly dock due mostly to the number of boats out and about on the river - especially the freighters going by the dock.

It was fun to see them though. It's a relatively narrow channel that they pass through on their way up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario. Fortunately we saw them only from the dock!

The bikes were off pretty quickly as we were in, tied up and power hooked up by 11:30 or so. Found an ok Chinese for lunch and a Dollar Store nearby so were able to pick up a few things like paper towel and trash bags.

We also rode through the VERY touristy downtown - complete with a giant anchor and chain in front of the recently opened Hilton on the waterfront. It blended in nicely - it's great to see the efforts made for a hotel like this to blend into the surrounding town structures that have been in place for such a long time.

Another "summer home" tower could be seen on the island off of Clayton. It really surprised me how many of these homes there could be in this region.

And they do like their power boats around here!

Steve did a nice job of capturing the old wooden speedboat of the past with the new fiberglass speedboats of now. Both just out for a ride in the river near our dock.

Finally!! A sunset worthy of a picture! Actually the sun just hasn't been out much in the evening to even qualify as a sunset :-)

Again, two plans: plan A was to travel 14 miles to Cape Vincent, spend the night then leave early Tuesday and scoot across the lake.

Plan B: go when it looked good!

Plan B won out and today looked good if we left by noon. So up early and off to the Antique Boat Museum. It opened at 9 - we were there by 9:10.


What a place! The picture above right was in the "Quest for Speed" building. All sorts of primarily wooden boats from the early days of racing. What really surprised me was the water speed record of 317 mph was set in 1978 and has stood since. For more info on water speed records, click here.

The boats on display were truly amazing. And the number of them was overwhelming!

There was an in-water display also with a cute little boat named "Rebecca" :-)

Time to go. It was 11:45 until we left the museum. After a quick lunch (great miso kale soup!) we were off.

The lake was looking as flat as predicted.

Even looking back the lake was flat!

But still cold. T-shirt, long sleeved shirt, windbreaker and jeans for driving from the flybridge. Even with the top canvas down and the sun shinning it wasn't like it was warm :-)




We arrived to Oswego about 4 pm but by the time we went through the first lock (staying below the lock can be pretty rough if the wind picks up) and were tied up it was almost 5.

Just glad to be in ....