When we left Kingston I was hopeful there might be some light winds we could use for our last sail before taking down the mast. We motored out of the harbour, and I raised the mainsail to catch a tiny puff of wind before everything went completely still. Defeated we put away the sails and motored our way up the Hudson towards Catskill.

We got into the marina at Hop-O-Nose in Catskill, and talked to the crew there. They gave us some advice on what to build for mast stands and provided us with lumber and tools. It was a blistering hot day of course, and through much sweat I built the stands on the boat for the mast to sit on while we also took the sails off, took the boom down, and got everything read. Then we moved over to the crane dock to pull the mast.

It was a pretty efficient operation and we quickly had the mast down and on the stands. Using a number of ratchet straps we secured everything down to the deck and it all seems very secure.

I was thinking we might take a couple of days to build the stands, ready the mast, and then take it down, but we managed to do the whole thing in about 4 or 5 hours, and just like that we are now an odd looking canal boat. We look particularly silly with a 50' mast on a 30' boat, but it seems to fit well enough.

We are still waiting on information about when lock E-16 will open, but we are starting to be hopeful it will be soon. For now we've booked an extra week here at Hop-O-Nose and we'll hang out here with our buddy boat Mr. Turtle and then decide what our next steps are depending on news from the canal.

But for tonight it's going to be a very hard and long sleep after a very busy day.