Learning A Lot

I'm glad to report we haven't been swept away by the current yet.  I've never been in a flood area before and with this little taste of what it might be like , don't ever want to be.  The locks are still closed and the water from the flooding in the Mohawk River Valley is spilling down the Hudson bringing with it lots of tree debris, logs, entire limbs, small branches, anything that was laying along the shore is being swept down here.

The water is a murky brown, on the bright side it's kind of like sitting in a sea of really chocolaty milk!  Except you don't get the Yummm factor looking at it. 

The water was up two feet this morning at 8:00 and when we checked high tide wasn't until 11:00, so it was definitely flood water.  It has been really moving all day with an added opposing wind for a little fun!  

We decided to stay here tied up to the dock.  A boat left this morning to go up the Champlain Canal (which is open) and came back three hours later with a damaged prop from hitting something in the Troy Lock.  With all the debris in the water we are better off paying docking fees than damaging our props. (Gee, I wonder where we learned that lesson???)

The Albany Yacht Club was honestly the cheapest per foot of any Marina's we checked on the way up, so even though we may be crazy, we aren't stupid!

They still have not as far as we know opened the locks to drain them. The twitter here from the locals is that the NY Canal System let go all of its (too expensive) seasoned full time lock masters and have hired a bunch of inexperienced part time people.  Evidently someone who didn't know what they were doing made a mistake and it snowballed from there.  Now they have no one that has the experience to open the locks in this situation and the people that were let go when asked to help said,  NO WAY!  At least that's the story on the docks at AYC

The day they start draining them  ought to be a real interesting day. The Hudson was running  at 75,000 cubic feet a second this morning, when usually it's about 10,000 according to the dock master and that's just overflow water.  Most of the marinas on the Hudson are ON THE HUDSON,  mostly  long face docks along the shore very different from the marinas we are used to.  At least the wall we are on at the yacht club is an area between two pier docks and we are somewhat protected.  Although we have heard numerous hits on the hull from passing debris and they have been cleaning out the stuff that piles up along and under the docks to keep it moving, although it may be back tomorrow.  Because of the tide we have been told that everything that flows travels down river ten miles and then back eight miles.  So that's a total of two miles a day forward movement.  

So the upside to this situation we find ourselves in is we are learning a lot about an area of the country we knew absolutely nothing about.  

And THAT is what it's all about!

            Although this isn't the Hudson but a pond inland this is what the water looks like.