Day 29
Begin: Lock E20, Marcy
End: HOME!!!! (Oneida Lake)
We awoke on the boat for the last time, and we just stayed in bed relaxing. We knew that this was it, back to the real world. We ate and then after a brief walk around, we were on our way. The stretch between Lock E20 and Lock E21 is about 18 miles, perfectly straight, and honestly quite boring. After a few miles at 6 MPH it all looks the same.
We decided to bypass stopping at Rome and made it to Lock E21 in about 3 hours. We dropped through the final two locks and were on the final stretch. It was quite strange to be motoring in familiar waters. Even stranger was being on the sailboat in an area that we cannot normally get to due to the route 13 bridge.
We had called my father before getting into Lock E22 and he agreed to meet us at the Sylvan Beach Wall. We unloaded the boat at the Sylvan Beach Wall with dad’s car right there. It was amazing how much stuff we had aboard. I loaded the boat slowly over a few days so I did not realized the magnitude of stuff we had brought. We got the boat completely unloaded and began getting the mast ready to be put up, but we were delayed by a strong down pour. It was ironic that our trip ended with a downpour when we saw only about 3-4 daytime storms the entire trip.
The storm passed quickly and then we put the mast up and motored out into the lake. The wind was from the south and we sailed home using the spinnaker only. I checked my GPS and using the Spinnaker only we were cruising at 9.5 MPH!!! It seemed like the boat was flying. The boat raised out of the water by about 3″ when all the equipment was taken off.
We got home, moored the boat and rowed ashore. The trip was over; it was very depressing. We were tempted to just pass Sylvan Beach and keep going, perhaps to the Finger Lakes or Lake Ontario, but we did not have the time.