Dragonfly Boating: Fort Ann to Whitehall, NY

The rain let up this morning, so Kathleen got to go for a run along the Empire State Trail, I did some exploring and we both got some good pics of the pretty park we’re staying in. The start of the bike trail goes through the old canal where Locks 16 and 17 once stood.

My first stop was Fort Ann Battlefield, now a farmer’s field. In the summer of 1777, the retreating Colonial Army slowed the British invasion from the north enough to allow better defenses to be built and reinforced in Saratoga, trading a small defeat in Fort Ann for a decisive victory at Saratoga.

It was another day where we squeezed some forward progress into a small weather window. We left Fort Anne at 9:00 AM in a light rain, traveled 11 miles and through one lock, and arrived at Whitehall in light rain. We got the last spot in front of a power pedestal at the town wall, but ended up sharing it with a Canadian sailboat that had a long extension cord. The wall is fairly full, and includes two large sailing cruisers carrying their masts and a Catalina 25 sailboat with no mast (bottom of pic), the first no-masted sailboat besides ours that we’ve seen since Dubuque, IA, last September.

Not wanting to sit inside the boat through more rain, we quickly disembarked to visit the local museum, which is about 200 feet away from the dock. Whitehall claims to be the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, where a fleet of small ships was built in 1776 to battle for control of Lake Champlain. Fun fact (and disclosed by the museum staff): At least three other American locations make identical claims to building the first Navy vessels. The museum was incredible, with over 4,000 artifacts documenting local history of the canal, lake, wars and life in this area. Map Link: Whitehall, NY

Whitehall was originally called Skenesborough, after Phillip Skene, a retired British Army officer who settled here, built a sawmill and just about everything else. His home, Skene Manor, is the beautiful Victorian Gothic on the hill overlooking the town. He was a fierce British loyalist and opposed American independence, so while his significant legacy is preserved here, the town was renamed in 1786.

Today was our lucky day, as Whitehall was hosting a summer festival in the park next to our dock. The rain let up around 4;00 PM and we strolled around the booths, ate tacos and burritos from a school-bus converted to a food truck and listened to the Whiskey River Band, a local, over-60 cover group. Lastly, we watched an impressive fireworks show from our folding chairs on the wall next to our boat. The booming echos of the explosions off of the nearby hills was a new experience and one we’ll always remember.