Journey to Florida 2014: NY City to Erie Canal July 5-13

Presently 100 miles from Buffalo, on the Erie Canal. Overall a rather good journey.
We left NYC on the Sunday for the 150 mile trip up the Hudson. Had to contend with the tides, made great time in afternoons, but it was generally a slug fighting the falling tides in the mornings. The further you got north, the tide followed you, so you were either taking advantage of it or fighting it, longer. We stopped at Riverside in the Catskills to de-step our mast. Everything went as expected, except someone stole our mast supports which we had stored there in September. Guess they needed them more than me... go figure. Well we bought some new wood and 2 hours later we cut some new ones and the mast went down.
We left next morning after fueling up and headed to Waterford and start of the 360 mile trip across the Erie Canal to Buffalo, then across Lake Erie.
Again all was reasonably well... a bit of rain. We have 35 locks to go through, and need to be raised over 500 feet to get to Lake Erie. Surprisingly we have had to deal with some heavy currents due to the heavy rains in June. In fact, about 20 miles of the canal was shut down June 10 - July 10 due to flooding. It opened about 2 days before we got to this section, but the flooded area was interesting to go through to say the least. Remember those "lucky Horseshoes" I mentioned earlier in my blog... well they are still in my back pocket.
With my mast down, I am about 10' above the water line. There are many bridges to go under and the maps chart the lowest clearance as being 15.5'.
One would think that I am have nothing to worry about.
Well, traveling 8 hours a day, on a rather routine, uncomplicated course I became complacent.
I was up deck cleaning some stainless. The Admiral was driving the boat. I happened to look up coming through a small town (Fairport, NY). I happened to look up to see a low lying bridge approaching. It was going to be tight. I told Jo to put the boat in hard reverse and gun it. She responded well but the boat turned sideways a bit. It was enough to avoid the red light that marks the centre of the bridge. With the boat on a bit of an angle slipping under the bridge with about 12" clearance, Jo navigated the boat under the bridge, without hitting anything, in particular without clipping off my wind speed transducer, the highest part of the boat... and incidentally about $500 to replace.... Boy were we lucky.
The Lock operators at the next lock, asked us if we had any damage to report. We said no, as we were close but didn't hit.
When reading the canal stat book after this, I realized this was a lift bridge and we should have requested the bridge operator to lift it to the 17' as the book says. Boy we were lucky today.. a lesson to be learned, to stay alert and aware of everything.
The New York Canal system is a joy to operate in. They provide free dockage, shower facilities, welcoming committees Wi-Fi, and sometimes hydro and water. They know how to treat boaters. The lockmasters likewise treat you with respect and generally have locks ready for you and work with you when you are locking through.
Well getting close to entering Canada. We are meeting our girls on Saturday at Port Cobourne on the Welland Canal on Saturday, where we will put the mast back up. They will bring us our new set of charts for the Erie and Huron as we didn't anticipate returning this way when we left last August. We should be in Georgian Bay in 3-4 weeks. Almost home...
That's all for now.