Castawayll Great Loop: July 1, 2014 Tuesday Leaving the Anchorage north of Athens

0600-Weather clear, calm, CAVU, temp 70. Decided to sleep a little longer since needing to wait till the tide turned north again at around noon or 1 pm.
Motored over to the city dock at Athens and went to see the different architectural style of houses, saw a few, most not in really good repair, unable to find main street. Walking by a cemetery, saw headstones with death date of 1830, most of them unable to read on the stone due to"Acid rain" and the stone so deteriorated. Found a little gas station that had "Happy Hour Pizza", at noon for 99 cents a slice, had a great piece of Pizza and of course ice cream for dessert, after the apple fritter, once scoop of blueberry patch and one scoop of "death by chocolate". Ate it quickly on the way back to the boat, temp in the 90's feeling like 101 degrees with 80 plus humidity.
12:30 Left the Athens City dock, tide still going south against us and the wind has picked up making for high waves and us wallowing in the river as we were going up stream. Big boats passing going up smoothly.
1700- Stopped in Albany at the city dock, the railroad bridge unable to open for us for at minimum an hour. We decided even though the water was rough and wind blowing 15 plus knts we would take the mast down here which would enable us to go thru Lock 1 and 2 to Waterford and on thru the Erie Canal Waterway. Curt and I were nervous about doing this, especially in the wind, rough waters and a group of young kids driving their boat up and down the river by us giving us huge wakes. We had to remember the proper order in doing this, thankfully Curt remember each step and the mast came down without problems. Now we have a motor boat, hard to think that we can't put the jib up and get a little more speed. The kids came back to the dock and said sorry about the wake "My bad", one of the girls said do you do Yoga?, just checking your balance, ha ha. As Curt and I said yes you did rock us badly, the girl said whoops she's not smiling and off the boat and away from the dock they went. The boat leaving with very little wake but no matter we were done bringing the mast down and ready to go. Took us about 1 1/2 hours to get it down and everything tied up. Made it to the city dock in Troy, New York, too late to go any farther we tied up, hoping to get to Waterford tomorrow. Got to see a deer walking in and out of the trees along with the water.