We finally pulled away from the free wall we had been at for three days around 7:45am. Yay! My ‘fix’ seemed to be working and we motored along through two locks and went about twenty miles. We pulled up to the free docks at Sylvan Beach and tied up. There was plenty of room behind a few other boats tied up there. We took Frank for a walk in to town but not much was open. Today is August 11, 2020 and COVID shutdowns are still going strong in New York. We were able to get some ice cream and walk around a bit. It was a hot day so we decided to head back to the boat and take it out to Oneida Lake and anchor off the beach so we could swim. We dropped anchor and I noticed a boat near us with an Ohio port. We swam around a bit then I took Frank in the dinghy to get a closer look at the boat. There was a guy hanging out and I said hello. We got to talking and it turns out he is a captain of a freighter that travels up and down the Cuyahoga River! He even told me a story of hitting Shooters! OMG! I returned to the boat and told Lauren the story and we laughed and were having a great time. We were swimming about and even had some ducks take over our raft we had floating behind Klondike. Then I noticed some dark clouds moving in kind of fast. Oh boy. We checked the weather and it looked like a front was passing by and it would only last a short time so we decided to stick it out at anchor instead of heading in to the dock. I let out more anchor line and most of the boats around us hightailed it in to safety. In hindsight we probably should have done the same, but here we go! The wind kicked up and the waves kept growing. The rain started to come down in buckets and the wind kept increasing. We were getting tossed about and I was keeping a close eye to make sure we weren’t dragging. Water was coming in any cracks in the doors and the waves were bouncing us around. It was a bit scary for a short time, but we kept watching the radar and the storm was coming fast and leaving fast. Eventually after and hour or so it started to settle down and we were treated to a beautiful rainbow. Since we had just gone through that we really didn’t feel like trying to to pull the anchor and get back to the dock, so we decided to just stay at anchor here overnight and leave tomorrow morning. The sun came back out for a while and Frank got another walk in to town as I just took the dinghy to the beach and hoped no one would care. We made it back with no issues and was treated to a nice sunset. We made reservations for tomorrow at a marina on the other side of Oneida lake. They have a courtesy car so hopefully I can find a shop to buy the parts to hopefully fix the exhaust. We made dinner and relaxed the rest of the evening and retired fairly early.
