June 6, 2019 – After a beautiful sunrise scene at our anchorage, we actually encountered a few sprinkles on the way north to Albany.
The river continued to narrow, and become more industrial as we approached Albany, with barge docks, warehouses, and the Watervliet Army Depot. We had to talk to a few tug captains that were moving about, while passing a very slow moving sailboat with it’s mast down, headed for the canal. You can see by the bridge at right that sailboats can’t transit this piece of the river, or any of the canals, with their masts in place.
The first lock we encounter is the Troy Federal Lock, that is run by the Army Corps of Engineers; it is the point at which the tide-induced current will stop, and the flow of the Mohawk River and the canals are driven solely by precipitation and normal downstream river activity.
Locks allow boats to safely transit areas of significant elevation change, especially past areas where there are natural or man-made waterfalls or rapids; so as we approach, the first thing we see is the wide dam with white water flowing over it. In Canada, we will see several different kinds of locks, but most that we will see for a while have a pair of gates at each end, that open to let boats enter, then close to allow water from the higher side to flow into the chamber, raising the boat. Once at the new level, the gates can open, and out you go.
Here’s a time-lapse of our first locking: