He took his younger son Chris with him, leaving Greg to provide security for the sailboat, the women and children. They had their walkie-talkies for communications and he’d instructed his son to be ready to leave them if it was necessary to keep them all safe. It would be up to him and Chris to keep themselves alive without endangering the rest of the family. They pulled the tugboat into the mouth of the canal and slowly idled down the length until they reached first lock gate. The gate was open. He knew from his readings that the purpose of the first lock had to deal with the differences of the lake level of Lake Erie and if the lake was not down that lock would stay open. They motored slowly down the length of the lock and into the channel. They watched intensely for any sign of life that they saw nothing by the time they reached the end of the canal that led to the second lock.
They had no other alternative. They tied the boat up to the side of the canal where one of the control stations was located. While he stood guard, Chris went and inspected the booth to see if lock controls were located there. He found a set of controls that operated the lock and worked the mechanism to see if everything was still functioning. Slowly the massive doors that were used to hold back the tons of water trying to go towards Lake Ontario began to open. Chris reported that he had also found a set of operational manuals for the lock system and it appeared that there were several stations used to control the locks along the 20 mile stretch. That was the good news. The bad news was they would not know if a lock was functioning until they got to it, which meant they could find themselves trapped in the lock system if they could not make the lock function in front of them, because once past the lock they were coming out of it would be almost impossible to reverse the process because at each stage they would have dropped to the bottom of the lock canal thus making it impossible to get back to the control room operating that lock. Taking the manuals that were found they jockeyed the small tug around and returned to Lake Erie to join the rest of the family.
He and his sons spent 2 days going over the manuals. They familiarized themselves to every operational aspect that they could garner from the books. It really was a matter of life or death in how successfully they would be able to work the lock system. The other information that was vital to their passage was that the mast of the sailboat would not clear two of the bridges that they would have to pass under if the bridges were not already raised. They would have to lower the mast, all several hundreds of pounds of it and then figure a way of raising it later on. The mast was designed to be mounted with a pivot point so lowering and raising back to where it belonged theoretically would not be a problem. The actuality was that the procedure for such operations usually meant a crane would be required to do so. Something he doubted would be available at precisely the moment they cleared all the obstacles. Again, it didn’t matter. It was problem number 25 on a list that had 24 other problems in front of it that had to be solved so they could live long enough to get to solve problem 25. But, with 2 engineers and an almost engineer on board lowering the mast didn’t seem to be that big a problem compared to what it would take to raise the mast without creating any damage.
They had studied the lock operators manuals to a point where they could all operate the lock system with their eyes closed. They had read and reread the troubleshooting section until they had fixes and bypass capabilities coming out their ears. They were as ready as they would ever be to face the passage. They would now come to see if that would be enough. Their biggest fear would be the necessity to have to fight their way down the length of the passage. They knew that it would simply be impossible to do and they would die trapped in the lock system. Stealth would become the necessity of life.
With the tug on point they started the passage through the locks.
They had studied the lock system layout and one of the great things to come out of the great war on terror was the PTB had decide that the Canal was a vital link to the economic survival of the world, ergo they had provided the Canal zone with state of the art security systems and television surveillance and really high and stout fences running from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The fences were fifteen foot tall and topped with triple razor wire. In each lock control house was a full bank of monitors that surveyed the length of the system for both river traffic and security concerns. The hope was that once in the control room they could look ahead to see what would face them. So far though, the high fence security system seemed to have been successful in maintaining the deprivation of all but bird life from the zone. The run from Erie to lock 7 was uneventful. They had even been extremely fortunate that the railroad swing bridge had been left open, whether it was fate or someone’s attempt at stopping the flow of people… or things from accessing the zone, who knew?
Now things would happen fast. From lock 7 through lock 3 there would be a vertical drop of over 150 feet and since they were almost stair step in placement if one was clear then most of them should be clear for them to run. The entire stretch was only a little over a mile long.
The study of the manuals had paid off and the passage of the locks ran like clockwork. The only problem was time. There was only so fast they could run and the locks worked on their own clock. The process that worked for them was so long as it looked clear, Chris, the electrical engineer would run the lock and he would pilot the sailboat and Greg the tug boat. The most danger came from the moment the boats started to drop below the sides of the lock. They lost all their visibility until they progressed into the next stage. If things went bad it would be like fighting inside of a box with no exit. They would not last long.
With each progression the option was for Chris to rope back down to the boats or make his way overland to the next control room. With the aid of the camera system he could make his choice as to which provided the best cover or protection. In 4 hours they had managed to get through to lock 3. And there they were stopped by a low crossing lift bridge, the controls for which were out of the canal zone according to the literature they had studied. They would either have to drop the mast or abandon the sailboat and continue on with the tug and hope somewhere they would find appropriate transport before they ran out of fuel.
He did the math and then checked the rope supply and figured it out. With the tug tied to the back of the catamaran to keep the speed under control they boosted Chris up the mast to where he could reach the bridge. With a rope secured to the top of the mast it was looped through a bridge strut and then he threw the end back down and it was passed to the tug and that line was secured to a tug winch. They worked the lock pin from the mast that would allow it to pivot and then slowly the tug allowed the sailboat to slide forward. As the rope played through the bridge strut and the tug holding against the current, the mast slowly lowered itself to the deck of the catamaran. Once the mast was down the rope was released from the tug and the mast top and Chris used it to drop to the deck of the tug.
The rope was then retrieved from the bridge as they moved down the canal.
It was a little under a 3 mile run to the control for lock 2. As always they kept watch as best as they could for problems ahead. They were still several hundred yards from where they would pull over when they saw the first one. An infected, wearing what appeared to be a uniform was watching them from the shoreline and it started to close the distance between them. They had been dreading the time when this happened. They had come so far against such great odds to have made it to that point. To lose it now was simply unfathomable. They waited until the beast closed the distance to 20 yards and then both boys let loose. Chris with his 70 pound compound bow and Greg with the Barnett crossbow. The 2 projectiles hit almost simultaneously driving the broad heads through the vital organs of the creature and it dropped face forward into the canal without making a sound. They breathed a collective sigh of relief but they also knew that now they were not alone in the zone. If there was one there would be others. They never seemed to travel alone.
THE BOAT RIDE Part V
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