Single-handing through locks.

O

Old Jim

New member
I am newly registered at this site but I have been reading posts here as a guest for more than a year. This is a great site filled with amazing information put forth by people who obviously love their boats and care deeply about the C-Dory community.

My wife and I spent many years cruising the Great Lakes on a sailboat but sold that in 1992. Now we’re looking for something that gives us most of the same live-aboard benefits but without all the work of sailing. I’ve looked long and hard at the C-Dorys (and more recently, the Cape Cruisers) and have pretty much concluded that the CD 22 cruiser is the best boat for our needs.

I have read many of the posts here dealing with traveling through locks but I have one question that I haven't seen addressed and maybe someone here can help with.

On our sailboat, we traversed the Erie Canal but we were both much younger then and I’m not sure my wife would be able to provide much help in the locks at present. Does anyone have any experience single-handing a CD22 through locks? Is it even possible? It’s been 26 years since we did it and I’ve probably forgotten most of what we experienced.

Since our anticipated travels would involve rivers and canals, this is an important matter. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Jim
 
I used to single hand my 22 through the Ballard locks here in Seattle all the time. With a proper setup and a calm head, it's pretty easy. How easy depends on whether the lock is manned by helpful lock masters, how much crosswind and how busy things are but, in general, it's pretty easy. I usually rigged a 15' line off the midships cleat on the starboard side. You can reach that cleat from the helm by leaning out the window. If you fender up well in advance, all you have to do is get the line the right length and toss it over a lock cleat as you come in with a little forward motion. Let the motion take out the slack, put/leave the engine in gear and the line will hold you in tight. Depending on the time to lock through, and how crowded the locks are sometimes that's sufficient. However, it's best to tie off the stern and bow and then take it out of gear to retrieve the mid ships line.

If you're locking through on a lock with fixed cleats so that you have to manually keep tension on the lines, that can be accomplished too single handed provided the lines are long enough to reach the foward area of the cockpit. It's pretty easy to control the boat from there if both lines are reachable from one position.

If the lock is manned by helpful lock masters, just put a big loop in the bow line and leave it hanging slightly over the bow rail, they can easily grab it with a boat hook. Ditto for the stern line. Regardless of the particular lock setup, single handing it is not an issue with proper setup and some advance planning (same thing applies in lots of situations).
 
Jim,

On our Erie Canal Cruise last Fall, three C-Dory 22 owners single handed all the way from Seneca Falls to Buffalo. They mostly just entered the locks and stopped next to a fixed ladder or cable, stood midship, and hooked a boat hook around a rung or vertical pipe or cable, and moved up or down as the water entered or receded. You can see pictures on the Erie Canal cruise album. The larger locks out west might present more challenges, but I know some C-Brats have singlehanded those also.

Dun (CTYankee)
 
Hi,
My wife and I travel the Eric Canal several weeks each season. Most times a boat hook at a ladder is all we need. Going down is much easier because of lack of any current from filling the lock.

My wife does not like to work on the fore deck, so she works from the cockpit and grabs a loose line, I go to the bow and grab another line. The two lines work evan in high winds or very rough locks.

Have fun

Fred and Pat on C-Trek
 
Hi,

I was one of the single handers on the Erie Canal last fall. My boat was an Angler with a bigger cockpit. I put three finders out. One tied to the base of my bow stanchion, one to my stern cleat, and one hung horizontal between the stern cleat and the bow cleat. I had them so when i exited the lock, I could bring them aboard or on my side deck but would not have to untie them.. I had set them on my port side, and used the port side on all my locking.

I then tied an old line on my small hand rail at the port aft of my cabin. I would pull next to a cable, loop the line around the cable, sit on my seat, hold the line and have a coffee. It was a piece of cake.

When I could not tie near a cable, I would grab a line and hold on. A few times a gust of wind would try and try to pull the boat away from the lock wall.

Always wear a pair of gloves, and use old finders if you can. They get mucked up.

One of my single hander friends used a boat hook to hold on to the ladder and moved it from rung to rung.

The "bark" of the locking is more than the "bite".

Fred.
 
I am far from an experienced locker. Hope to improve that this Sept on the Miss. One thing I have done for single handed locking is splice a second loop in a dock line. The terminal loop goes on a spring cleat, the tag end is cleated off on the stern on the same side, and my spliced in loop falls right at forward edge of the cockpit. A line passed through this loop will hold the boat snug to the wall with a single line. Similar to using the handrail.

Questions - in some guides it indicates that single handing through some locks is discouraged or not allowed. Has anyone ever been told this by a lockmaster? Any trouble in this regard on the upper Mississippi? Would you suggest notifying the lockmaster that you are singlehanding or just enter with fenders on both sides, loops out and see what entails?

Thanks,
 
Thanks everyone for some great input.

As I read your replies, it dawned on me that I was worrying about what is essentially an apples and oranges sort of thing. It gave me a "Duh!?!" kind of moment.

Our sailboat displaced about 13,000 pounds. With her semi-full keel, she could be a bit of a handful in some of the locking situations we encountered.

The C Dory 22, with a loaded weight of around 4000 lbs and a flat bottom would be a much more docile boat to handle even with the turbulence in a flooding lock. Like so many things, quite obvious on hindsight.

Thanks to your helpful insights and techniques, I'll be able to save a lot of money on blood pressure medication.

Jim
 
In single-handing the greatloop, I found the Erie Canal locks the easiest; two boat hooks let me "walk" my way up and down the steel ladder steps, without having to tie off, or deal with mooring lines. The hardest were in the Okeechobee Canal, where the turbulence is greater because they don't pump out the the water; they just slowly open the gates. A grumpy lockmaster made the St. Lucie lock, which has about a nine-foot fall, the worst of the lot. I discovered I could manage easier by using a carrick bend (a sheet bend tends to come loose just when you don't want it to) to tie one of my mooring lines to the forward lock line, then I'd run that under the rail of the bow pulpit, and aft along the side away from the lock wall to the cockpit. Then, with fenders on the lock wall, I could sit in the cockpit and control both the bow and stern, keeping Na Waqa secure, with the bow line in one hand, and the stern line in the other.
 
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