Slow Boat

That boat looks strangely familiar!

We've spent a year giving our canal boat an adventure, taking her places canal boats never go. Out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico. Racing down the fast currents of the Mississippi. Bucking the waves in Albemarle Sound. Through all that, she's enjoyed celebrity status.  In every port, she's the cutest boat on the dock--or at least, the most unusual.

But the party's over.  Today, after touching in Albany, NY (to put our guest boater Ally Berger, who's been cruising with us from Catskill, on a train home), we locked through in Troy, NY . . . and Dragonfly re-entered her home waters, the Erie Canal.

Where canal boats are, um, practically common.  Here's one, sharing our dock in Waterford.


OK, there may be other canal boats, but ours is still special. Those solar panels and all.

Speaking of which, the town of Watervliet is doing some clever stuff related to boats and solar panels.

Coming north today, we cruised past a waterfront structure with a honkin' load of panels.

Turns out, it's a new boathouse in the town of Watervliet. The crew teams from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will park their racing shells here. Meanwhile, the solar panels--which the town purchased with a federal grant awarded by the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority--will power the lights in the waterfront park. They're expected to generate more than 18 thousand kilowatt hours per year, saving the city $1,600 a year.

SlowBoatCruise will come full circle . . . and come to an end . . . on May 31st!  So if you have questions about any aspect of our trip, now is your chance to ask.  If you have problems with the blog comment function, remember you can also send questions to slowboatcruise@gmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/SlowBoatCruise/121214894602244