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June 11, 2012 Day 31 Total miles to date: 707.83

What an interesting day we had! We left Mechanicville at 8:40am after talking with the Lockmaster at Lock 3. He controls the water level in the pool after that section. He had already lowered the level to 17 feet for us and when we got into the lock he decided to lower it another 4 inches so we could hopefully make it under the railroad bridge that we had to clear. Quest went under the bridge first as they are a little over 16 feet and we could see their clearance. (They really went first to take our picture!:) We went under the bridge very slowly and we think we cleared it by about 4 inches! What a relief! We have other bridges that are almost that close but were told if we made that one we could clear all of them. Let’s hope! The Lockmaster even hailed us on the radio to check on us!

We still had three more locks to go through. All of these locks have had either poles or cables that we loop a line around and hold onto to it at a midship cleat.

After Lock 6 we encountered a great deal of dredging equipment. Bill was on the radio with them frequently to get instructions about proceeding through the area. They let us go through without having to wait on their tugs and barges.

We arrived at Fort Edward at 2:30 and tied up to their dock wall along with Quest. These walls are great! We have water and electric hook ups at no charge and they are in a park like setting convenient to the town center.

We also met a fascinating younger couple from Quebec also tied up on the wall with us. They have been on their boat for a year and are returning home. They built their own 30’ steel tug boat and we were all so impressed with them!

We took a walk downtown that has a few older stores and churches. We actually found a couple of items that we needed in the small hardware store! The larger stores were further out on the edge of town but we did not go that far after our challenging day.

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner on board Quest then called it an early night.