We traveled more than 40 miles today, through locks E8 to E15. We are docked at St Johnsville Municipal marina where Greg has finally met us to fix up a few things that broke loose. He had to drive his truck up to Maine to work on another boat anyway, so this is not too far out of his way.

We had more drama this time at E13 and E14, where the dam is right beside the lock and makes a lot of turbulence that pushes into the long concrete wall on the other side. The boat wanted to go into the wall so I corrected. By the time we got into the lock the correction put us into the other wall. We got to exercise our big new “lock fenders”. These are 36×27” balls that hang down near the front. We bounced (and scraped a bit) off the rough concrete lock walls. We have not hit the boat yet but we have given those fenders a workout.

The “stair step” locks E2 to E7 were easier yesterday because the canal separated from the river for them. Also where we entered E2 the was dam considerably upstream on a calm deep river.

St Johnsville is very small. It does have a small downtown, but no chain store area outside of it. Every house but a few that we saw had paint falling off and needed maintenance. Yuppieville this is not. There are frequent trains, both passenger and freight, that travel north/south between the town and the marina.

The marina is also a campground and has nice facilities. The westward section of the Erie Canal, which we will not travel, has been blocked for weeks due to high waters from unusual amounts of rain, so some larger boats wanting to take that trip have been waiting here and at a few other marinas for a long time.

The first half of our trip was rainy, with overcast the rest. Yesterday was perfect weather. We dropped the dinghy and have taken several trips up and down the river between locks E15 and E16. Pretty foggy this morning but sunny and warm later on.