The Oswego Canal - Brewerton to Oswego NY

At 8:55 AM on Monday morning, we departed Brewerton NY and 90 minutes later we arrived at Three Rivers Junction and the entrance to the Oswego Canal.

We took a hard right (north) and traversed 8 locks to Owsego, NY.  This segment of the trip was very different from the Erie.  The Oswego runs through 4 towns over a 24 mile stretch.  Although the lock structure is the same as on the Erie, the scenery is very different.

The bridge lifts when the lock doors are opened

Approaching the Oswego Lock

As we approached Oswego we saw a unique sight.  The canal runs parallel with the Oswego River and above.  You can see the rapids in the second photo below.

Looking south at the Oswego River adjacent to the canal

Same view from a bridge.  Notice the rapids.

After docking at the Owsego Marina, we explored downtown Oswego and visited the Big M supermarket to provision for the next segment of the trip.  Noteworthy is that Monday was another day with temperatures in the 90s.

A charming Oswego street

At 10:00 AM on Tuesday morning, we caught up with our mail, which contained the electronic charts for the Trent Severn Waterway, the Georgian Bay, and the North Channel.  This required loading two disks to the Sea Ray Navigator II, our Windows based touch screen navigation system.

The loading process took about 30 minutes and involved calling the vendor to get an authorization number.  Talk about copyright protection, I had to give the vendor the product code on the box and another code produced by the system before they would give me the final code.  The process went smoothly except for the fact that it was 90+ degrees.

Portable hard drive hooked up to the Sea Ray Navigator

While we were at the Oswego Marina we met two couples who were also doing the loop, Ron and Sharon from the Blue Heron, a Marlow 57E, and John and Mary on the 38 foot Sea Ray Mary Francis and Ron's friend Rick.  We enjoyed dinner with them at a local restaurant on Tuesday evening and then adjourned to the Marlow to swap great loop, flying and National Guard stories.

Written by Les.