CS Canal Leg 1: Waterloo to Seneca Falls

Since I’m again on a gallivant-away from home, outside, and looking for scenes and boats and trucks to photograph-the next four days will be posts of this one-day trip.  Below is my ride that day.   It was an 8-hour ride the length of the Cayuga/Seneca Canal and then about 25 miles of the Erie Canal, and nine locks.  Stating point was technically Waterloo NY and ending was Palmyra.  In all we dropped over 100′ from Seneca Lake to the junction with the Erie, and then heading west, we rose about the same distance to the east side of Palmyra.

Below is my conveyance.

In the enclosed passenger cabin, this builder’s plate is proudly displayed.  Since June 1961, this boat has worked on both US east and west coast;  in fact, when the current owners bought this boat about 25 years ago, it was working in San Francisco and they decided to take the 60′ boat back to the East coast and onto the Erie Canal on its own bottom!!  It did have a pilot house at that time.  For photos of Colonial Belle‘s engine and more, click here on this report from tug44.

Before we go on this leg 1 of 4 reports, other 1961 products of the Blount shipyard include Las Cruces in Panama, Michael Cosgrove in the sixth boro, and Kasai, probably sunk somewhere in the DRC. Another 1961 sister vessel Martha Washington worked many years in Boston, and may be out of service.  Any info?

The photo below was taken at the dock at Stivers Marina in Waterloo.  Beyond the research vessel William Scandling ahead of the sail boats, Seneca Lake stretches slightly more than 35 miles southward to Watkins Glen.  Four miles or less wide, it’s more than 600′ deep.   A team plans to survey more of the lake bottom this summer.

From Stivers, we did a 180 degree turn and headed for the Erie Canal, putting us immediately under the first of many low bridges.

Really, there are lots of overhead obstacles that could not be negotiated with a wheelhouse. Note the bimini folder forward and the captain rising back up.

This is a typical scene along the top end of the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, although more trees are being cleared, including some for this summer’s idea . . . glamping.

The distance from Seneca Lake to lock C/S-4

is 5.02 miles.

As we head to Seneca Falls, we pass the Ludovico Sculpture Trail. The conception goes back over 20 years when a person of artistic interests moved from Buffalo to Seneca Falls, and installed two sculptures on her front yard, irritating some neighbors.

This one celebrates Gould Pumps, founded by Seabury S. Gould in Seneca Falls in 1848!!

The former Seneca Falls Knitting Mills, which made countless pairs of white socks, is now the Women’s National Hall of Fame.   When I first saw the building, it was windowless and derelict.

All photos, WVD.   In the next mile . . . tomorrow’s post, we’ll travel across Van Cleef Lake to C/S locks 3 and 2.