What do Notre Dame and mullet fish have in common?

After the Monday morning rain, we went out driving around, exploring the area.  There's not much here.  Lots of condos, a couple of Publix groceries, and a whole lot of empty commercial space.  We drove about 15 miles up towards Venice and found a Walmart.

Late in the day, I finally got out to do a little fishing. As you can see from the fish cam, even though the red tide destroyed the mullet, it didn't kill all the other fish here.  

Later, we watched IU basketball and Notre Dame football at the same time. 

Looks like Notre Dame suffered the same fate as the mullet at the hands of the red tide.

Red Tide

We have been out in the dinghy a couple of times, and found quite a few dead mullet floating everywhere.  In addition, we find that we start coughing a lot.  A sure sign of red tide.  It's an algae that irritates your respiratory system.  (Unless you're a mullet.  It's more than an irritation to them.)

I bought a small camera online (not a go pro--but similar.) Then I made a stand for it that fits in a rod holder on the dinghy.  The idea is to film me catching fish.  We'll see how that goes.

Here's a video of us cruising on the ICW.  If you received this by email, you may need to visit the blog's website to view the video.  http://tonic-cruises.blogspot.com/2013/01/red-tide_6.html

Here's coming back into the marina

There are two basins in Palm Island Marina.  We're in the North basin.  As you can see, the North basin is not full of boats.  The only other cruising boat here is a trawler that was in the same marina as us last winter in Islamorada. 

Palm Island Marina

From this

To this

In only 22 grueling hours of driving 1150 miles.

We had to go up the road a few miles to launch the boat.  I drove the boat back through dangerous manatee infested waters while Pam drove the truck and trailer back on the road.  She got back to the marina in only 5 minutes, it took me about 30 minutes. 

I don't chit or chat.  However, Pam more than makes up for my deficit.  She chit-chats with anyone and everyone.  While waiting on me to return, she was talking with some folks from Wisconsin, and sure enough, they are friends with our friends Phil and Cathie also from Wisconsin on Buddy, a Rosborough like ours. 

Home again

We were tied to the wall in Seneca Falls, NY, Wednesday morning, and before midnight, we were home--without the assistance of a tow truck.   The new Chevy truck rocks.

Time to winterize.

Seneca Falls again

The view out our window while tied to the high wall in Lyons was spectacular.

After we got away, it turned out to be an eagle day.  

We saw two different pairs and a youngster.

This pair had one on the nest, and another in a nearby tree

Walking through Seneca Falls, you never know who you might run into....................

There's more boats here today than any other town we stopped in.  The guy in the trawler next to us is on his way to Fisherman's Village in Punta Gorda, Florida.

I've learned a trick when tying to town walls.  We run a line through the base of a cleat, and back to the boat, and cleat it on the boat's cleat.  That way, no vandals can set us free in the middle of the night without stepping on the boat, and waking me up--unless of course, they want to cut our lines.  We've had no problems so far.

There are some folks here from Spokane, WA.  They chartered this Nimble Nomad.  Not the most beautiful boat, but ok for the canal.

They left Cayuga Lake bound for Seneca Falls. As I mentioned, when you go through a lock, the lockmaster asks how far you're going today so he can call ahead to let the next lock know you're on the way.  Seems these folks took a wrong turn somewhere, because as they exited a lock, the lockmaster asked that question, and when they said they were headed to Seneca Falls, he told them they were heading the wrong way.  They had to turn around and go back out the lock.

You might have noticed that I sometimes misuse the word hysterical when referring to the houses and museums that Pam enjoys visiting.  Today, we went to the visitor center in Seneca Falls, and Pam asked the attendant where we could find the HYSTERICAL museum.  I laughed so hard--it was historical.

  

Lyons

It rained all night again last night after we arrived in Fairport, but by morning, it had stopped. 

Since we didn't have a chance to walk around Fairport when we arrived in the rain, we spent a couple of hours this morning looking at the hysterical homes.  Pam even found a hysterical museum, and you can see the "OPEN" sign in the door.  However, it's only open on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursday.  (It was Monday.)

We found another tribute to Sal.

This pontoon was tied up right in front of us.  The name on the boat was "Tacky Tiki"  It's not to clear in the photos, but it even has leopard skin seat covers.  Way Cool !

We departed Fairport and made our way to Lyons. Another town with a hysterical museum that's closed on Mondays. The fall foliage is in full bloom.

Wildlife along the canal consists of hunderts of herons and kingfishers.

 

And a few fish.

We're tied to the FREE wall in Lyons, hooked up to the FREE electric.  However, I think they were expecting bigger boats.

We can climb on the roof and step off on the wall.

 

While we were walking around downtown Lyons, our daughter called to tell us she was in our neighborhood and stopped by our house to check on things.  She discovered that the water heater was spewing out water.  We've been away for more than two weeks, so we were concerned how deep the water might be on the first floor. She told us that she was going to get some of her valuable stuff out of her old bedroom on the second floor.  (She's 40, and still has stuff at our house.)

We can't speed up our return trip home.  The locks close a 5pm, so we're limited in our canal travel time.  The earliest we can leave here is Wednesday.  Fortunately, our son-in-law has a Serv-Pro business.  So he went over to our house and shut the water off, drained the water heater, and started drying things out.  I'm sure when we get there, it will be "like it never happened."

 

Fairport

It's getting colder every day.  The overnight low temps are in the 30's.  Our decision on where we stop for the night no longer involves anything other than making sure we have electricity for the heater.  It's my job to wake up in the morning an hour before Pam awakens, and I crawl out into the cold to turn on the heater.  We only have a small ceramic heater, and of course, it requires electricity.  Pam has started using the hair dryer at night to pre-heat the inside of the sleeping bag before crawling in. 

I broke down and walked back to the gas station again this morning before we left Brockport.  Even though it's a half mile one way to the station (up hill and into the wind both ways)  I figured it would be as easy as anyplace to get more gas since I could use the little red wagon and not have to carry the 5 gallons.  The reason I'm trying to figure out the amount of gas required to finish this trip is so that we won't be left with too much gas in the tank when we trailer the boat home.  The ideal situation would be to have less than 10 gallons left. Our tank holds 87 gallons, and gas weighs a little over 6 pounds per gallon.  So if the tank was close to empty, that's about 500lbs of excess weight that I wouldn't be towing the 600 mile trip home--or the 1200 mile trip south in January.

It's yet another day of RAIN.  We're tied to the wall in Fairport, and today was their Octoberfest.  But it's pouring down rain, with temps in the forties, and we don't feel like getting drenched and frozen to listen to polka and eat brats. 

In the old days, when traveling on rivers, I've always had a habit of tying the boat with the bow facing the direction I'm heading.  I think that habit started back when I was consuming mass quantities of beer.  That way, no matter how I felt in the morning, I could always remember which way to go.  Here on the canal, we've been tying port side to the wall regardless of which way we were heading or which side of the canal we tie to.  Even though I no longer drink beer, I sometimes have to double check our correct direction when we start out in the mornings.

We've been out long enough on this cruise that the underwear count is running low.  Pam and I are trying to change underwear daily.  She doesn't seem to have a problem wearing mine, but her's doesn't fit me at all.  And it's a little cool for commando.

Tomorrow, we plan to stop in the town of Lyons.  Another FREE dock.  With FREE electric and FREE showers.  However, there is a problem regarding the showers.  The town dock is close to the fire station, and boaters are allowed to go into the firehouse and use the showers there--unless the firemen are out on a call.  You might not see a problem with showering in the firehouse unless your pal (The Dawg) is a retired fireman, and has told you stories about what goes on in the firehouse showers.   We will not be showering in the Lyons firehouse.