Great night's sleep on Catrina and woke up to brilliant sunshine, deep blue skies and 54 degrees. Sitting here with the warm sunshine streaming thru the windows and drinking our coffee...."Life is Good"!!!
Chris from "Cashelmara" came to help take us down the back bimini which will make it easier to put up the radar mast later this morning. That group + 2 other couples (all Loopers) took an Uber to Niagara Falls and did the Maid of the Mist tour. Really appreciate Chris's help, but that's what fellow boaters do!!!
We left North Tonawanda at 9:15, stopped at Blue Water Marina on Grand Island for fuel and spent 1/2 hour getting the radar mast and lower bimini cover back up. Diesel was $3.80 a gallon and regular gas was $4.04 per gallon. And then we were a-cruisin' on the Niagara River, Black Rock Canal including the Black Rock Lock (4') - didn't even have to grab a rope as it is a very long lock and only 1 other boat in front of us. The water was such a beautiful bluish green color (compared to the dingy, dirty Erie Canal.) There were 2 bridges that opened for us - 1 swing and 1 lift.
Passing by Canada to our right and the Buffalo skyline on our left, we were finally on Lake Erie.
Yeah....no more bridges or locks - just miles and miles of water We did some pounding but not too bad. It was definitely chilly as we cruised 17 mph (compared to 8.5 on the canal - max is 10). The high temp was only 63 today, so....We traveled a total of 52.1 miles.
So Mark has had this long-time dream/goal of hitting all the harbors on all the Great Lakes and we've done really well. That's a mighty HUGE goal and so today, we drove into the Irving harbor and could check that off the list. We are at Holiday Harbor on Chadwick Bay in Dunkirk, NY. Nice little town of 11,000+. A couple from southwest NY on "Phoenix" (Loopers) helped us tie up. We checked in and then went for a walk downtown - bakery, ice cream, pizza, seafood, Irish pub, etc.....we had some ice cream (A and R's Ice Cream) and my Captain was very happy to get his Rocky Road fix as we've not seen that flavor lately, I enjoyed my "trash can" (little bit of everything)!
Back to Catrina where Mark worked on logistics and planning for tomorrow's trip to Erie, PA after recording all of today's stats.
We had dinner at Demetri's a short jaunt from the boat and both of us enjoyed some Lake Erie perch! Afterwards, we went for a nice long walk on the Dunkirk Pier - it's a beautiful evening
Anne, Liam, Connor and Brady left this morning from Bloomington and drove straight to Lake James arriving this evening. So glad all our kiddos can be together!
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