Warm shower at the yacht club before we departed at 8am, assisted by Ed. It was six miles to the first lock, #8 which we reached an hour later. The configuration of the locks on the Mohawk River, where this part of the Erie Ship Canal runs, is typically a weir adjacent to the lock.

The locks are equipped with hanging lines and often vertical cables (shown in the photo below) to hold you on the side wall, which seems a whole lot better and easy, certainly quicker, than the practice I saw in the Panama Canal all those years ago (when I was 18). There they would throw you light lines to which you attached your own four heavy long lines to hold you in the middle of the lock. The Panama Canal is probably designed for bigger ships and the influx of water is more turbulent if I recall correctly.

We saw a lot of debris in the water today, particularly at Lock 10, the last one we transited. We are another 80 feet higher than sea level today, in addition to what we were raised yesterday. Anchored at Amsterdam NY tonight, tucked in between two islands opposite the town.