My Friend Sal

Rome NY
N 43 12.099 W 75 27.030

The last few days we experienced a lot of firsts.

We are now 468 feet above sea level; the highest we've been in quite a while. It is also an altitude record for Tarwathie I'm sure.

We also passed over an aqueduct for the first time. In Little Falls, after exiting the lock we were in a stone walled aqueduct and looking down on the roofs of the nearby buildings. That is not a sight seen often from the deck of a sailboat. We also noticed that the Erie Canal from Little Falls to Rome is mostly built on the side of a hill. The uphill side slopes down to the canal. The downhill side is built of a stone wall. A surprising feature of that is that several creeks cross under the canal through culverts. I never would have expected that.

We also got in to trouble passing through a lock for the first time. Lock 17 has a lift of 40 feet; the highest on the canal. They also have a rule that all boats must tie to the south wall because the north wall is not in good shape. Traveling west, that means port side to. No problem we thought. We switched the fenders and the sacrificial fender board from the starboard side to the port side. Then we switched the dinghy from port side to towing astern.

As soon as the lock doors closed and they began filling the chamber trouble started. The current pushed Tarwathie hard against the wall. It was then we noticed that the mast spreader and the mast top were scraping on the wall. You see when we took the mast down this time we lowered the mast top in to the boom gallows. To do that we could not keep it on the boat center line because it would hit the solar panel. Instead, we put it in the port side slot of the boom gallows. Thus the mast is sitting at an angle, on the center line forward and sticking out to port aft. I didn't think about that before entering the lock.


As we scrabled to push the boat away from the wall to spare the mast I noticed that the dinghy had gotten stuck under the monitor aft and also wedged into a crack on the lock wall. In a few seconds it would be sunk. I had to scramble to use a boat hook with my left hand to move the dinghy while using my right hand to push Tarwathie away from the wall. Luckily, I succeeded. Thereafter it was merely a task of using our hands and feet to hold Tarwathie and the mast away from the wall. It took all of our strength. At last, as the lock approached half full, the currents lessened. Fortunately, the damage was minor. I must replace the chafing gear on the port spreader. Our Windex wind direction indicator was also damaged, but I think I can repair it. We were lucky, it could have been a lot worse.

What lesson should I learn? An old one. Complacency and inattention to details is bad news on a boat. A good skipper is like a good pilot. He is always thinking one or two steps ahead, visualizing the circumstances of his vessel some time in the future. My skippering that morning was not something to be proud of.

At the end of the day, we arrived in Rome. We called our son John and he came to fetch us to have dinner at his house with the grand kids. That's always fun. However we didn't dare to stay the night with them because we heard that local teenagers have been vandalizing boats on the wall in Rome.

Today, July 4, John and I are traveling to Oran, NY, to the former neighborhood of my parents. It is the 75th anniversary of Marylyn, one of the neighbors, and there will be a neighborhood party. It's a great chance to see old friends. Alas, once again we can't stay overnight there because of the vandals in Rome.

For blog readers interesting in engineering, here is an aside on lock construction. As we lock through in the lifting direction, the action in the water reveals the details of the engineering design of the lock are revealed. After they close the doors on both ends, one hears the noise of concrete sliding on concrete as the open the upstream valve. Then a series of circular patterns of upwelling water appear. The upwelling starts on the upstream side and propagates downstream, reaching the downstream end in 15 seconds. Clearly there is a tunnel built under the lock floor. Orifices in the tunnel allow water to flow in and out. The upstream and downstream valves are gates that seal the ends of the tunnel when closed. The orifice sizes are probably staggered with smallest orifices upstream, so as to roughly balance the upwelling flow amongst the orifices when lifting. When emptying the chamber, currents are hardly noticeable with the maximum flow occurring when the lock is most full. When lifting, maximum flow occurs when the lock is nearly empty, thus lifting is inherently more violent. When lifting, the lock tenders open the gate valves gradually so as to minimize the violence.

Rome, as you might expect, is full of Italian people. This morning, working on the boat along the wall, I met one of them. My friend Sal, is a delightful old gentleman. His appearance is so classically Italian that he could convincingly appear in any episode of Sopranos. Sal told me two stories. First, he told the story about his friend who wanted to take his money with him when he died. "What about your relatives?" asked Sal. "Screw them," said the friend. "Well give it to the church," said Sal. "But the church is so rich," said the friend. Sal finished, "Yes, but if you give them your money the church will say masses for you." "Ah," said the friend, "you're right."

Sal also told the story about swimming in the river at Rome when he was a kid. He and his friends would dangle by their fingers underneath the bridge. When a canal boat went under them, they would let go and drop on to the deck. That infuriated the captain of the canal boat and he screamed at them, "You sons of bitches." Then the captain fetched his shotgun which was loaded with blanks. Bang. Bang. The gun would blast as Sal and his friends jumped overboard and swam ashore laughing.