Fulton to Oswego and Crossing the BIG Lake!

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAYS 86 and 87  - June 25 and 26, 2017

Sunday the 25th we left our sweet little Canal Landing Marina in Fulton to simply move up to Oswego, an overwhelming distance of 12 miles. We transited Locks O-3, O-5 (there is no O-4 on the Oswego Canal), O-6 and O-7.

Our destination for the day was a place called "Between the locks" in Oswego. There is a long wall between O-7 and O-8, which is the last wall on the Oswego Canal. This is not a great distance, you can see the entrance to Lock O-8 as Part of it is a low wall with cleats, and part of it is a higher wall with rings and bollards. We, naturally, chose the lower wall with cleats!

We were originally planning to stay in Fulton another night and head to Fulton on Monday, based on what SailFlow and MarineWeather had been telling us earlier, but as we continued to consult these two vital resources, it appeared the Monday rather than Tuesday would be the day to cross Lake Ontario to Canada.

The day was spent relaxing! Baxter got quite a few nice long walks!

Monday the 26th was the big day!  Lake Ontario is the fifth of the Great Lakes, and is 193 statute miles long and 53 miles wide.  Today the winds were predicted to be light,  and switching from west (bad when you are going north!) to southwest or south through the morning.

We fueled up at Oswego Marina and headed out through the breakwaters onto Lake Ontario with some anxiety.  No matter what the forecast, cruising on the Great Lakes is a big deal. The first few miles there were some mild waves on the beam, as we would expect with a light west wind. Pretty soon though, Lake Ontario settled down and was as nearly flat as a Great Lake can be! No waves, only some very gentle low swells.

Our prop change in Fulton was now put to the test. We had not previously been able to get Daydream on plane. Patty put the throttle down, and Daydream popped right up on plane!  She then backed it off to a nice easy slow plane, about 9.5 statute miles per hour.  We ran across the lake on plane, catching and passing the big yachts that had left a bit before we did. One of them told us (facetiously, I am sure!) we had "waked" him. Although we burned some fuel, getting off the lake reasonably quickly just seemed like a good idea! 

Passing a yacht on a CALM Lake Ontario!

Running faster than our normal slow cruise turned what would have been an 8 or 9 hour day into a 4.5 hour day. Our total distance crossing the lake and then getting to our marina, Prinyer's Cove Marina, was 63 miles. We had pre-registered our passport information with the Canada Border Services Agency, we have NEXUS cards, and Prinyer's Cove is a designated NEXUS telephone reporting site, so a phone call got us checked into Canada in record time!

Tomorrow we start moving towards Trenton and the beginning of the Trent -Severn Canal!