We departed from Pirate’s Cove a little after 9am. Our path took us a couple miles further on the Erie Canal and then we took a sharp right turn onto the Oswego canal. This canal took us to the edge of Lake Ontario.

Along the Oswego canal we negotiated seven locks. These were just like all the ones we transited on the Erie Canal, with no surprises along the way.

There are four ways to tie along the lock wall. The first way is to offer your own line to the lockmaster so he can connect it to a bollard. This method is not used on the Erie Canal, but they still have the bollards.

The second method is to grab one of the lines hanging from the edges of the lock walls. This is the most common.

The third and fourth options are similar. The lock wall has either a cable or a pole embedded into a channel in the lock wall and you use your own line to loosely loop around the cable or pipe.

The lock masters were friendly and the weather was nice, so we took it slow and arrived at Oswego Marina around 3pm.

There really wasn’t much we wanted to do in Oswego, so we got set for an early departure to cross the lake.