Nanseann: Day 302 August 12 16.5 mi Schenectady Yacht Club Schenectady NY

October 26, 1825: The moment had arrived at last. It took just a little more than two hours for the successive canon booms to travel from Buffalo to New York City and back again. It was "a grand salute 500 miles long, announcing to the people of the state the completion of the most stupendous undertaking of their time."

The Erie Canal was open. An engineering marvel of its time and of all times, the canal was called by some the Eighth Wonder of the World. The 363-mile long artificial waterway transformed not only New York State but also the young nation. It was the longest canal in the world, passing through rugged wilderness. The builders of the Erie Canal had to account for the fact that Lake Erie is 568 feet higher than the Hudson river at Albany. Thus, the project served as the nation's first practical school of civil engineering. The federal government had refused to pay for the project, so New Yorkers built the Erie Canal at the then staggering cost of $7.8 million, financed through taxes and bonds.

Workers had to cut through 300 miles of primeval forest; dig through the Montezuma Swamp in slime up to their chests; construct 83 locks; erect numerous stone aqueducts, including a 1,137-foot-long stone bridge that was the longest stone-arch bridge in the world; and, in the days before dynamite, cut a 30-foot-deep channel through 3 miles of solid rock. All this was accomplished in just eight years.

The original canal was a ditch 40 feet wide at the top, 8 feet wide at the bottom, and 4 feet deep. On one side there was a 5-foot-wide berm and on the other side a 12-foot-wide towpath to accommodate mules and horses. These animals were guided by hoggees (Scottish for "workers") typically boys, sometimes as young as 8, and together the teams pulled the boats along the canal route.

The present day Erie Canal was completed in 1903 and is not located where the original canal had been. Although their paths cross, the present day Erie Canal follows the natural rivers and lakes to a much greater degree than the original one.

Today the Erie Canal has a minimum depth of 12 feet from Troy to Buffalo. It traverses 35 locks (34 on the Erie Canal and the Federal Lock at Troy), as it rises, then falls and finally rises from sea level at Troy to 565 feet above sea level at the Niagara River. Over 200 highway and railroad bridges cross the canal with a controlled height of 20 feet from Troy to the Oswego Canal and 15 1/2 feet from the Oswego Canal to the Niagara River.

8:30AM departure.....traveling with Looper Good Karma and Slacker Daze through the Waterford Flight.....

Lock 2 is the first of five locks collectively known as the Waterford Flight. An engineering wonder, the Flight features five locks where vessels are lifted or lowered the greatest heights in the shortest distance of any canal in the world. We will rise 169 feet in elevation in two hours.