Day 1- Sept. 30 2010

We left the dock 4:30 a.m- pitch black outside, no moon....want to get ahead of the wind and the nasty weather for the next few days or be stranded here. We were out 5 min. we could see lights on Wolfe Islnad and Cape Vincent...we were looking for the green buoy in the channel, and a couple miles ahead of us we could see a ship heading in our direction so we wanted to give them a lot of room...when the engine alarm went off and the smoke came pouring out...Ken went down below to ck the engine, put me at the helm and I have a ship coming at me and he tells me to put it in neutral and head towards shore,and go parallel- great just great...5 min. out and we are going aground...he pulled a lot of seaweed out of the intake or whatever it is called...the alarm stopped squeeling and we put it back in gear and headed back out...this all happened before 5 a.m. First crisis averted.. still WONDERING about this trip..so many things have happened, but we are still going forward. We get to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River where it meets Lake Ontario, oh yeah, the 2 ft waves have now turned into 5 foot waves....what a ride...praying the entire time....wind and rain have now started....we made it across Lake Ontario in nasty conditions in 9 hrs. got to the first Lock in Oswego...pouring rain...locked us thru easily...no other boaters stupid enough to be out in this mess. 2"- 4" of rain expected...got all of 4" and it poured even harder when we tried to lock thru....we were absolutely drenched could see our breath in the air..we made it thru 4 locks, when we couldn't go any more. We docked at a little village dock at Minetto,NYat 3:20 PM-exhausted- dried off and ate supper and were getting ready for bed when we heard a voice say" anyone on board" Ken opened up and this nice little ole man gave us a brochure of Minetto and said he would turn the hot water on for us to shower in the morning and welcomed us....how nice was that and in the pouring rain..... oh yeah, our navigation station totally quit working so we don't have our mileage or time or speed or depth sounder...That was day 1- we are not giving up