In 1955, we bought an Owens twenty-eight foot lapstrake wooden single screw cabin cruiser, little realizing the many adventures, some good and some hair-raising, that this presaged. I haven't seen many chrolicles of real-life cruising, and hopefully you will find this different and entertaining.

The POLARIS was docked at Ervay's marina, in a canal at the south end of Seneca Lake. Seneca, forty miles long, is the largest of the five Finger Lakes and is the end of one of the branches of the Erie barge canal system. We visualized the cruiser as a peaceable mobile cabin and for a while we just used it on weekends for picknicking, fishing, sleeping overnight and socializing.

We learned quickly that the freshwater sailor may have even more emergencies than his seagoing counterpart. After all, the ocean sailor has most of his problems at the beginning and end of his voyages, when he is undocking or docking his ship, while the freshwater sailor encounters the shoreline hazards every day.

I learned, for example, that merely docking in the narrow quarters of a crowded marina was an adventure, especially with a contrary wind blowing. I learned the hard way, then read in the books, that a single propeller forces the boat to turn left, especially when backing; so if the wind is strong in the same direction, it can be impossible to turn right. Add to this the fact that boats have no brakes, and that the engine usually stops during critical maneuvers, and that the other boats usually have drinkers on the after deck with nothing to do but crack wise at your mistakes -- you get the picture!

One of our guests, an experienced airling pilot, enjoyed steering the boat. Seeing how easy it was out on the lake, he vehemently insisted on docking it. This consisted of making a sharp right turn through a narraw opening into the small harbor lined both sides with narrow slips filled with boats; turning right again into our slip, with about six inches clearance on each side of the boat. He had to back and turn to line up the boat with the dock. Jim panicked as he was backing, hit the accelerator and backed at high speed toward the cruiser behind us. At this point, surrounded by screaming boaters defending their expensive property with brooms and poles, and by his screaming wife, he gave me the wheel!

The Erie Canal system, a complex system of interconnected rivers, canals, and lakes, with many locks to lift or lower boats to different water levels, was built to carry freight and passengers, and predates the railroad. We made use of it to travel extensively; cross the Great Lakes, travel in Canada, traverse the Saint Lawrence Seaway, cruise down the Hudson to New York City, out into the ocean, and down the Inland Waterway all the way to the Florida Keys and back. This did not happen all at once, but in short or long trips as work permitted.

Did you ever think about how a boat goes through a lock? I never had, until we actually took our first cruise out of Seneca Lake. My mental picture showed us peacefully floating past pastoral scenes, cattle grazing in the fields, passing deer and wild turkeys in the forest. True enough, but every few miles one is confronted by the iron gates of a lock. The first lock we ever encountered was the fearsome Seneca Falls lock, on the Seneca River connecting the north ends of Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. Completely ignorant of the fact this lock is the most dangerous in the whole system, being a double lock with a vertical drop of sixty feet in two jumps, we sailed into the invitingly open gate. In a few minutes, the gate clanged shut, the water level dropped at a sickening rate in a whirling maelstrom, while I frantically tried to keep the boat from crashing into the vertical pockmarked concrete walls. The water quieted, the gate in front opened, and we went through the same ordea. When the gate opened this time, we found ourselves in the lower river.

Coming back upstream, we had the same problems except that the water level rose at a sickening rate, etc.

Belatedly realizing that there must be better ways to operate, I consulted some veterans and learned that rusty iron ladders are imbedded in the lock walls, and that by hanging to the rungs one can control the boat, while the crew pushes against the wall to prevent scraping. A more sophisticated procedure is to carry a seventy foor line, drape it around one of the large iron ballards placed for the purpose at the top of the wall, sit in a chair on the deck, control the boat with the line, and look smug at the struggling amateurs.

The next Sunday afternoon we tried out the method, and in the first lock it worked perfectly. As the gate to the second lock started to open, I confidently brought the line in and headed through the gate -- only to see ten boats coming toward us! Somehow we avoided collision, and continued downstream somewhat shaken. Coming back upstream I learned still one more lesson. At the last second as we entered the lower lock, I realized that someone would have to carry the line up the steep steps, locate the bollard nearest the boat and drop the line to us. Don, about twelve years old at the time, got the job. He jumped onto the lower wall, dashed up the steps, peered down the thirty feet -- a dizzying experience -- located the right bollard, and dropped the line to us.

Every lock is different. Some open at fixed times, others when the boat captain honks three times, still others when the lock master feels like it. I recently learned that the canal system used to extend from Seneca to adjacent Keuka lake, with 28 locks in a distance of 15 miles.

The huge Saint Lawrence Seaway locks are not frightening in the same way as the Seneca locks, because their heights are only a few feet. However, their main purpose is to accommodate the giant ocean freighters trading between overseas ports and our inland ports on the Great Lakes. Each lock is a tight fit for a big ship. "Small craft" -- the official term for cruisers like ours -- are sent to the end of the lock, then the freighter is led in. It stops -- hopefully -- with its bow directly over us; its curious crew looking down at us a hundred feet below, and shouting at us in Russian, Polish or German. We hear that once in a while a freighter doesn't stop in time, and crashes through the gate; an unsettling thought! And some of the freighters do have problems navigating the crooked rock-filled Saint Lawrence. We have seen, with our own eyes, two ships stranded on rocks. We heard that some of the captains, too parsimonious to pay for a river pilot, pay a high price for it.