Welcome back to Lake Erie!

Earlier I mentioned that we should be finished with tides.  Wrong!  Last night I met a Buffalo Yacht Club member who said he was checking on his boat because of the rising water level.  Sure enough, the water level was up because of a "seiche" tide.  A seiche is a wind driven tide - strong wind pushes water ahead of it.  Because of the shape, depth and orientation of Lake Erie seiche tides are not that uncommon.  If you think of lake Erie as an ice cube tray half filled with water, and then tilt the tray one way, that's what the water does in our lake.  Generally the strong winds are out of the west, and our boat is docked at the west end of the lake, so our water level drops.  We've seen it go out as much as 5 or 6 feet with strong winds in the fall.  And since our dock only has 7 to 8 feet normally it's pretty ugly.  Boats are aground, leaning against each other, or up against the docks.  When the water leaves our end of the lake it ends up in Buffalo, and now I've seen it there.




The docks at our club when 4 or 5 feet of water goes to Buffalo.


Sue already mentioned our sailing conditions today.  It turns out during our easy travel up the Hudson River and across the Erie Canal for the last couple of weeks one of our crew lost his sea-legs so we ended up with one unhappy, sick kitty.  By 5:00 when Sue opened the canned cat food he had made a miraculous recovery.  I hope tomorrows conditions are a little better for all of us.

We just did a little trip book keeping and figured out how many photos we have taken.  We're averaging about 17 pictures a day, or about 1 every mile we've traveled.  And since only 10 or 12 are bad all our friends can start looking forward to a really great photo viewing party.  Of course we will ask that you bring your own food and sleep gear.

The folks who mentioned "the big apple" in New York City lied to us.  We found it in Medina, NY.  Right next to the cement mixer chicken.



I'm thinking it's not a delicious...



I guess just because you can...