We're in Oswego, NY at the end of the Oswego Canal.

It's a free dock at a wide spot in the canal right before the last lock and Lake Ontario. We're staying here one day so I could put up the radar arch so we're ready for big lakes cruising and anchoring out. With the arch down, we can't use the dinghy, the radar, the satellite TV dish or the bimini on the flybridge. I hope we can leave it up for the Trent Severn Canals in Canada because the lowest bridges are 2 ft. higher than the Erie Canal. That should have us clearing the lowest bridges by less than a foot! I'll have to go slow and inch up to them.

Yesterday we completed the Erie Canal and turned North up towards Lake Ontario at Oswego. We stopped for lunch at Phoenix, NY which is a teeny, economically depressed town on the canal. It's cute because the locals have fixed up the town docks for cruisers to stop free, added picnic tables with umbrellas, restored an old bridge house for a defunct lift bridge and during summer the local school kids all wait at the docks to help cruisers and run to the local stores for them for food. They call it the "Bridge House Brats". They all have T-Shirts with that on them. Not much else to do in a teeny town in summer, I guess and cruisers are the only source of income coming by.

Today, we walked over to see Fort Ontario in Oswego. It was first built as a Brittish fort in the 1730s and then changed hands between England, France and the new United States about 5 or six times.

Oswego was very critical to England before 1776 because France controlled all of the Great Lakes except for this one small area around Oswego. This was England's only stronghold in the Great Lakes prior to the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s. In the chart above, shown in the fort, Brittish lands, in red, were all of New England with this one point on the Great Lakes, while France controlled everything shown in green. France later lost all of the Great Lakes and Canada to England and then sold (under duress) the Louisiana Purchase to the United States.

The fort is really very nicely restored, including the officer's quarters above.

Tomorrow, we're going across the Eastern end of Lake Ontario to Sackett's Harbor, which is close to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. I had 2 days in the cruise plan to wait for possible waves on Lake Ontario, but the forecast is for 1 to 2 ft. waves. Nice!