Seneca Falls to Geneva on the CS Canal
6:00 a.m. We wanted to get an early start, but not this early. The loudest jackhammers in the world (and an excavator) were ripping up the parking lot between the village and the park. Sudden realization: The caption of this photo would be a great name for a band!
I made a coffee run to the breakfast joint while Mia took Fender T. Dog for a walk. We used the wonderfully maintained boater’s facilities at Seneca Falls for Triple-S’s, had a nice (home-cooked) breakfast by Chef Mia, checked all the systems, moved the boat 100 feet to the pumpout station, did that business, and left for Seneca Lake around 9:30.
Maybe I was just cranky because of the rude awakening this morning. My logs clearly represent my cynical state of mind about this day. I’ll spare you the detailed, verbatim transcript and instead consolidate this part of the trip into one large section.
Suffice to say that Geneva was a complete waste of time: 5 hours there and back on the CS canal, and three hours wasted at the city docks. We should have continued down the lake to Watkins Glen, or maybe gone to the sand bar on Cayuga Lake. After all, we had to start heading back to Tie-One-Onda on Day 6 (the next day).
But … here it is, in condensed format. Keep in mind that this was written in 2011:
The trip itself was very pleasant. The CS Canal meanders along the path of the Seneca River, and although most of the waterway cuts through rural areas, there are some sights to see.
We passed a replica of the African Queen from the Bogart/Hepburn movie (photo above). Waterloo has a nice little marina. Lock CS4, the last lock in the canal, had a backup of downbound pontoon boats coming from the other direction so we had to wait nearly 30 minutes to continue upbound. Since there is no place to tie off and the light winds wanted to beach the boat, we couldn’t shut off the engines.
We stopped at Inland Harbor Marina for gas (50 gallons in each tank at $4.55, which was the cheapest around). As the canal gave way to the lake, we saw several nice-looking and nicely-maintained marinas on the eastern shore — including the marina at Seneca Lake State Park.
It had been awhile since No Losses’ had run at full throttle, so I decided to open her up for the final jump across the lake to Geneva. She got up on plane and topped out at nearly 28 mph! But her port engine temp gauge climbed to nearly 180, which was 20 degrees higher than it should be, so I backed her down after a couple of minutes.
The wind was out of the southwest as we arrived at the cheesy floating docks at Geneva. There were two 28-footers tied off to the dock and their owners helped us squeeze into the 40 or so remaining feet. The rest of the dock spaces are small and will accommodate boats no larger than about 20 feet.
There are two power towers, both with water spigots. However, nothing worked. Everything on that dock had been vandalized so many times that the city had decided to shut it all off. Same with the remnants of the pumpout, which at the time of our visit was missing its suction hose and coin box, and had a broken pipe that was back-feeding waste from shore into the lake.
The dock height was only a foot off the water, so we had to rig a sling out of bath towels to lower Fender T. Dog onto the dock. He didn’t like that at all, and neither did we. We took a quick walk so he could relieve himself. I don’t know why we bothered to pick up after he did his business. It was obvious that no one else did.
The City of Geneva’s web site touts boater facilities (and a new Ramada!), but in reality there are only two restrooms. They are open to the public and attached to a building that houses an ice cream stand. (Wait, did someone say there’s a Ramada here?!?) The entire place was so filthy that I wouldn’t even wash my hands in the rest room. As the photo shows, even grass won’t grow here. (Hey — that is a Ramada!)
When the two boats who were tied with us prepared to leave, one of the owners came over and said, “There’s safety in numbers, but we decided not to stay the night, so we’re heading back to Seneca Falls. I suggest you do the same.”
We arrived back in Seneca Falls around 7pm to find all of the powered spaces taken. Oh, well. Let’s see how No Losses survives overnight on batteries.
(End of cynical rant.)