Crew Change in Montbard

Crew Change in Montbard.

Joan and I arrived in Montbard in time to visit L’Abbaye de Fontenay, clean the boat and re-provision before her sister arrived. Luckily there was a super marche, boulangerie and on Friday a market all within a couple of blocks of our moorage.

With the work out of the way we bicycled to L’ Abbaye de Fontenay, one of the oldest Cistercian abbeys in the world (built between 1139 and 1147) and now a World Heritage Site. At its height over 200 monks lived and worked on this beautiful campus.

Abbaye church and dormitory

Dormitory where up to 200 monks slept on their pallets with only a screen between each of them.

Cloisters - The current owners have done an amazing job restoring this piece of history. After the revolution it had been converted to a paper factory for a number of years.

Trip hammer, powered by a water wheel and developed at Abbaye de Fontenay

We knew that Julie had left Seattle, and had all of her flight and hotel info but as time passed we heard nothing from her and began to worry. We finally called her hotel in Basel (train strike required her to spend a near the airport before she could continue). Julie had checked in but we had no luck connecting with her. A few hours later in the afternoon, still no call. We called again and our call to her room was disconnected. We called again and finally got a very sleepy Julie. She had heard the phone ring and assumed it was her wake up call for the next morning, it took a while to convince her that it was still the day she arrived.

 

Julie and Joan biking back to Juniper after visiting Abbaye de Fontenay

Julie arrived the next day, as planned. In the meantime, we were still struggling with boat issues. A letter was sent to the partners with a few options, one of which was we would cut our trip short and return Juniper to St. Jean de Losne to have this year’s repair work completed. In the end that was the group decision, so we got 14 days of cruising in, out of this year’s 54 and are now headed back early. At least the area we traveled through was beautiful and will be, even a second time.

Since we are turning around I won’t bother to write about Joan’s and my trip through the last few days but will cover it both directions as Julie and I head back. The Abbaye was the first thing we saw a second time biking back out with Julie. The next morning Joan had to leave three days early for Basel (because of train strikes) where she is staying at an airbnb.

 

Seeing Joan off at Gare Montbard

After seeing Joan off, Julie and I hit the market for some shopping then started her education on line handling for our 1:00 first écluse appointment. It looks like we will have Juniper back a week or two early. Thinking we might rent a car and explore Bourgogne that way, while using Juniper as a Gite.

Julie practicing lassoing a post, in preparation for doing the same with a bollard in the écluse.

And here she is with the real thing.

Up and Over The Hill

Up and Over

We are now coming up on the hard part of the trip, five days in a row of staircase locks. These are a series of écluse that have little more than a passing basin between. Our longest stretch will be over 40 écluse and take us two days of idling between locks with line handling to be done and redone and redone. Fortunately we are one of the first boats out this season so we are usually getting two èclusiers rather than one running between locks.

Our first view of the castle and town of Châteauneuf. One of the more spectacular sites of this trip.

From Pont d’Ouche we climbed 11 écluse in 11km the day was beautiful and in the 70s. It was another 09:00 start so we would hopefully be in Vandenesse-en-Auxois before lunch to allow us plenty of time to bike to Châteauneuf a castle and town that date back to the 1200s.

This Châteauneuf house caught our attention

The castle comes into view kilometers before we arrive at our moorage and we probably took 50 pictures of it as the view continually changed. As soon as we had finished lunch we were on our bikes and ready for the climb. For such a beautiful day there was no traffic heading to this famous French landmark and once in town we realized we would have the place to ourselves. Then we got to the entrance to the castle Ferme le lundi – Closed Mondays. The ancient village was a delight to walk through and we did have it to ourselves. Before riding back to Juniper we enjoyed a beer at an outdoor table to reward us for our climb.

Joan now wants a garden shed like this  modern shed built into a medieval wall.

Stopped for a well deserved beer after our climb to Châteauneuf - Photo proof for our boys.

When we returned to the boat we searched until we found a VNF person and changed our first écluse time till 14:00 – time to make the ride, see the castle and enjoy lunch at an outdoor café.

Joan checking out one of the bedrooms - Luckily the bed was too small, we're staying with our cabin.

The castle had certainly changed with the times and the presentation let you see how and where the changes had occurred. In the earliest days it wasn’t much more than a defensive tower and wall. Later the ownership changed to a buddy of the Duke of Bourgogne with plenty of money. The castle was enlarged to its present size, although still primarily a defensive structure. By the time of the revolution the defensive part wasn’t as necessary and the inside became more elaborate plus well decorated and appointed.

We had a pair of eclusiers that claimed to be family. The younger gentleman made sure to do all the heavy work for his older female "family" member. Here getting her gate started for her, before getting his started.

Returning to Juniper we cast off our lines for an 8 lock staircase to the tunnel that goes through hilltop. Our èclusiers for the trip were a mother and son team that were wonderful to watch. She really raised him right, always polite and helpful, big smile and the consummate gentleman. He was always trying to make his mom’s side of the gate easier for her to open. Since canals are all gravity fed there has to be reservoirs higher than the highest écluse. To make that happen the top usually has a tunnel to allow more area to catch and store water. The Tunnel de Pouilly is 3.35km long and only slightly wider than Juniper the height gave us standing headroom at the upper helm station, but not much more. A number of years ago lighting was added making the passage easier and more pleasant. We did hit one fairly long stretch with no lights and it was eerie.  On top of the dark it was darned cold and we’d just taken all our warm clothes off and left them below.

Pouilly tunnel a 3.5 km Sci-Fi attraction - and it was cold. We fit with about 2 feet to spare on each side. Steering a very straight course, in the dark, for that long wasn't easy.

Arriving in the huge port of Pouilly we found it completely empty, but at least open, with a friendly staff that spent plenty of time helping us with our problems. This was to be a two-night stop to allow for shopping and sight seeing but, we had to figure out how to get Joan back to Basel to catch her plane going home with a train strike in process. So we tried:

Renting a car – we’d have to rent it for at least four days because of weekends and no transportation to the nearest rental agency with the trains not running. We are already over a week behind so this won’t work.

Catching a plane - that is not conflicted with the train strike – cost over $3,000

Blablacar – the only dependable transport in France, wasn’t quite Joan’s cup of tea going by herself.

Leaving the boat 2 days early and sitting in Basel – turned out to be the answer now we just had to figure out how to buy her train ticket in advance since trains often sell out the day before a strike, then find her a place to stay. We found her tickets with trainline.com (great to work with) and found her a room with a German Swiss woman in Basel at a great rate and close to public transportation.

In the old days barges were pulled through the tunnel with this electric chain tug. It moved along a chain that ran the length of the tunnel and was powered by overhead trolley wires.

Now we still had our boat problem – got some help from the VNF to purchase the correct coolant for our engine and we were off – only an hour late for our appointment. We didn’t even make it into the town of Pouilly, maybe next time.

Pont Royal - our moorage for the night. Very picturesque - but this was the entire town.

That afternoon was a 12 écluse staircase to Pont Royal (we set our personal record of 7 écluse in less than an hour) and today, Thursday, we started out with a couple of short trips between locks before starting the staircase that will ultimately take us 3 days to complete.

The château we found in the woods at Marigny-le-Cahouët. It's now a private residence, but they let visitors enjoy the land around the building, as long as you are courteous.

We are tied up in the town of Marigny-le-Cahouët. The chart and a sign at the Quay indicate there is a 13^th century château near here. Looking throughout the town we could find no signs to this elusive building, or ruin. Tried google maps, no luck – till we zoomed in and found a square piece of land with a body of water all the way around – zooming closer it was on rue de château. We gave it a shot and found the beautiful building you see in the pictures below. The amazing part is that it is currently being used as a residence.

Dijon to Pont d'Ouche

The Canal de Bourgogne operates from 0900 – 1200 and 1300 – 1900, you must schedule an éclusier to accompany you the day before you plan to travel and give them your destination for the end of the day. Each group of èclusiers is responsible for a certain group of eclusé (usually 10 to 12). When you reach the end of their section they turn you over to a colleague who is always waiting for the hand-off and work through their section to be handed off yet again.

Joan bicycling ahead to help with écluse gates and lines

We had an appointment to be at écluse 75 at 0900 and arrived a few minutes early to find the écluse down and the gates open and ready for us. By the time we were tied up our èclusier arrived and started our day’s first lockage. Today we were trying something new out (for us,) we were putting Joan on a bike to handle both the opening and closing of one écluse gate as well as handling the lines from shore; our hopes were that this would enable us to reach our goal of 22 écluse and village of Pont de Gissey-sur Ouche before we ran out of time.

Michael at the helm, while Joan is ashore doing all the manual labor.

With Joan on her bike and me on the boat we made the distance and the locks as planned. Pont de Gissey-sur Ouche was a beautiful village that probably took all of 20 minutes to walk. Both the canal and the Ouche river flowed through town and the bridges across both made photogenic backdrops for our dinner in the salon. Morning and nights are still cold but days are getting warmer.

A VNF (French inland water authority) building that Joan and I both loved.

From our moorage spot at Pont de Gisset-sur-Ouche - and this would be the pont the town in named for.

Vegetable garden at Château Barirey-sur-Ouche

There is a Château a few kilometers down the canal from where we are so we scheduled a 13:00 start for the next day so we can take a look. Up at 7:00 and we were on the road, without croissants to bike down the canal to the town of Barbirey-sur Ouche. The Château is now a bed and breakfast but the grounds are open to the public. We spent nearly two hours walking through the gardens, across fields and into the woods of Château Barbirey sur Ouche, what a treat. Biked back to the boat via another village that featured lots of people carrying baguettes but our French was not good enough to find the source and returned to the boat empty handed.

Château Barbirey sur Ouche taken from the grounds.

Today was Michael’s turn to ride the bike, and Joan’s to drive. We showed up at the first écluse to find we had two èclusiers for the day, I still rode the bike, but didn’t get to help with any of the manually operated écluse gates. After 5 or 6 écluse I finally joined Joan aboard Juniper.

The view from our salon while eating dinner at Pont d'Ouche - across the canal are miles and miles of rolling farmland.

Arrived at Pont d’Ouche to find that the marina was not yet open for the season, being early has its pluses and minuses. Plus, we had two èclusiers and made wonderful time through the écluse – minus, nothing is open and there are no fellow boaters to meet and socialize with. With nothing open in town it took just a few minutes to check things out (we did get electricity, so we’ll have heat in the morning while it’s still cold) Pont d’Ouche marks the end of where the canal de Bougogne receives water from the Ouche river. Tomorrow we begin the climb to the summit, once we cross the divide rivers will no longer be flowing to the Sâone river but flowing toward the Yonne.

Made it to Dijon

Moutarde on tap at Maille's

Our first day was spent finding our way around, doing the important things: checking with the tourist information office to see what we should see, stopping at a sidewalk café for a café au lait, and just for good measure dropping into an Irish pub for a pint of the good stuff. Plus, being in Dijon, we had to check out moutarde (better known in the US as mustard). We dropped into the Maille moutarde shop and tried several flavors plus a few that were only available on tap at this store. Back at the boat we wrote to the yard that had done the work on Juniper hoping for a reply (remember, we are in France).

Joan café au lait

Dijon Day two – after having to go a day without croissants for breakfast Michael was sent out into the cold morning to search for the nearest boulangerie. As luck would have it the walk was less than 5 minutes. Joan barely had coffee ready by the time I was back. The morning mail asked if we would mind returning to St. Jean de Losne to have the needed repair work done – we politely said we would really prefer not as it was a 20 minute drive for them and a 2 day trip for us that would have us arriving on a weekend (so sit two more days) then a day of work on the boat and finally two days to get back to where we were. A full week of cruising time lost. They agreed and said they would have a mechanic visit us in Dijon.

Being a market day we grabbed our shopping bags and walked to Les Halles in search of local delicacies.  We ended up with escargot, paupiette a couple of new, to us, les fromages and vegetables we hadn’t been able to find in a grocery. All in all a great haul. Another walk back to the boat for lunch before returning to the old city center. By the way that walk is about ¾ of a mile each way.

Escargot - and we're in Bourgogne, how can we pass this up?

Using our phones to translate French to English and visa versa

Chouette trail marker

The rest of the day was spent doing a tourist walk called the Parcours de la Chouette or the owl’s walk. The name comes from a carved owl on the side of Notre-Dame that legend has will grant you a wish that is made when your left hand is touching the carving. The trail is marked by following bronze owl plaques on the sidewalk and guides you through the history of this amazing city, plus most of the museums are free. They say an hour to walk the trail; after a day on our feet we returned to the boat to put our feet up having seen about half the stops. The evening mail also let us know Anthony, our mechanic, would be aboard at nine the next morning. Our dinner entrée was our escargot – and they were good.

Anthony - we finally found the elusive part

Dijon Day three – We were up in time to read the news while enjoying our morning coffee and croissant before Anthony arrived. We had already given them our two cents worth that maybe the boat wasn’t going fully in gear and that was the cause of our problem. It only took a few minutes to determine that was at least a part of the problem, if not the entire problem. Then a couple of hours to actually find the piece that was causing the problem, it was located behind the back wall of one of our cupboards (don’t even ask how many places we took apart to find the correct one). With our mechanical problem fixed it was time for lunch then a walk back to the old city center to finish our walk.

The highlights were visiting the Musée des Beaux Arts located in the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy from the days when they ruled as an independent region and probably had as much power and wealth as the king of France. The buildings were spectacular and the medieval art and armament on display was interesting and well displayed. In the afternoon we joined a group to climb the stairs to the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon for a great view from the highest point in Dijon. The tower was built to symbolize the prestige and power of the Dukes of Burgundy.

You have to look for art everywhere - this is how corbels are really held in place

Michael making a wish for our grand daughter to be's good life and health

Joan making a wish for our grand daughter to be as well

Musée des beaux arts - tomb of one of the Dukes of Burgundy

Rooftops taken from the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon (Philippe the Good)

Gargoyle at top of Tour Philippe Le Bon

By this time we realized we didn’t have an éclusier scheduled for the next day. A couple of phone calls left us frustrated but no answers. We had the tourist information office call, they also had no luck. So we returned to the boat so that I could try biking back down the canal to a VNF office we had seen coming into Dijon. While I was getting a bike down Joan found another boater that lived aboard in Dijon and knew the secret number to get our trip scheduled. With that accomplished we decided to celebrate with a dinner out for our last night in Dijon. Tomorrow we attempt to do 22 écluse in one day. Some may call it crazy, we call it trying to make up the week we lost.

Underway, At Last

Tuesday morning started out with a strong wind and rain as we said our goodbyes and got ready to head up the Canal de Bourgogne. Our first destination is Dijon, capital of the Burgundy region, two days away.

Joan opening an ecluse gate our first day.

At ecluse 75 we meet our eclusier (lock keeper) for the day. Very business like and kept his distance from us as we started through the 20 ecluse between St Jean de Losne and the city of Dijon. By the time we reached the end of the day he was joking with us and even offered to watch the boat so we could go shopping at a small town he enjoyed. Once through the first ecluse we hit our stride. Motor in, tie up starboard side to (there are three bollards on that side and only two on the other). As we enter the chamber Joan lassoes the first bollard with the stern line while I am slowing Juniper. We drift slowly ahead and I walk forward to lasso the #2 bollard while Joan brings us to a complete stop with the stern line. As the chamber fills Joan steps ashore with her line as our deck becomes even with the top of the ecluse to be ready to assist our eclusier open the gates when the ecluse is full.  The locks on the Canal de Bourgonge are amongst the last of the manually operated ecluse in the French canal system. Each door has a lever-arm that is used to allow a person to easily open or close the gate.

Our first night's moorage - along the towpath at ecluse 62

The proud creator of the museum

Time ran out before we made it to Dijon so we tied above ecluse 62 which has an eclusier that has created a museum covering everything from the canals, to military aircraft, currency of the world to pop culture. We enjoyed a delightful tour through his pride and joy before fixing a tasty dinner and enjoying a bottle of wine before settling in for the night.

Part of the museum in the basement of the eclusier's house at ecluse 62

Wednesday was a cold morning and not being plugged in to shore power we had to use our heating system sparingly. When 0900 rolled around we were on the water and waiting at ecluse 61 to meet our eclusier for the day. For the second day in a row we had someone who spoke good English and enjoyed sharing information with us. We were back in stride and making good time till our engine decided not to engage the transmission to the propeller. Our last three ecluse were a bit worrisome as we had no idea if we would get power in forward gear. All worked out fine and we secured at the Dijon marina before noon. Now we have two days to sightsee and hopefully get the transmission issue corrected.

Still at Blanquart's - the season is off to a slow start

Using a forklift and chain-hoist our engine is put back aboard

Another week has gone by and we are still tied to the quay at St. Jean de Losne. The engine has been installed and all the problems associated with removing and replacing the engine resolved. Our steering system was totally rebuilt plus we found that 3 of the 8 bolts that hold our engine in place had also sheared – those too have been replaced. If I knew a bit more French I’m sure I’d have learned a lot of new words as our mechanic worked in our engine compartment in the pouring rain trying to remove sheared bolts. This past weekend we did our sea trial and the steering and engine worked as they were supposed to. We did find a couple more problems that were fixed today and we are finally ready to start this year’s adventure. We have a lock-keeper  (eclusier) meeting us at 10:00 tomorrow at ecluse Viranne. He will follow us for the day handling each ecluse with our help.

While Juniper has been sitting Joan and I have not. We’ve done a couple of bike rides, done a lot of shopping and continued washing, rubbing, polishing and finally buffing a little bit each day. Regarding the bike rides, I am so lucky that Joan is still willing to follow my crazy rides. Yesterday we rode till the trail gave out, then the ruts gave out, turned around and tried the other side of the river. Again rode till the road, then path then ruts gave out. Saw what might be a road across a field so we pushed our bikes to a new dirt road. Followed that to a paved road then it seems I got a couple of village names mixed up so we also go a beautiful long ride on French country roads through small villages.

The following is a letter we wrote to friends and family about how our trip had been going.

Just want to let everyone know we are alive and well.

Upon my arrival in St. Jean de Losne I was met by the owner of the yard we spent the winter at – his first words were “I have some bad news for you.” Apparently one of the two bolts that holds the top of the rudder in place had sheared off – the problem was that the rudder is directly under the engine. Time to call in a crane to lift the engine out of the boat, and that’s after we found that 3 of the 8 bolts holding the engine in place had also sheared off. But wait, there’s more – separating the engine from the hydraulic unit showed that the plate (kind of like a clutch) that connected the two units had fallen into many, many pieces plus the shaft that finalized the connection had its teeth nearly stripped clean.

So what was going to be a few days cleaning up the boat before Joan arrived turned into two weeks of cleaning things up waiting for parts and getting the engine back aboard and working. We did get the bottom paint cleaned up and used rubbing compound on the hull while waiting to get back in the water. Then just to add insult to injury the French trains announced they would be striking 2 days out of every 5 for the months of April – June. This meant that Tom had to leave 3 days early and the day Joan was arriving was nearly sold out. Soooo I bought Joan a train ticket, which Tom took with him to Basel and met Joan in person to deliver it. Gerard, our B&B host arranged a taxi to pick me up Easter Sunday to meet Joan’s train and take us back to Gerard’s. Of course Gerard had made other plans since we were supposed to be back aboard the boat by this time. Fortunately for us we’ve spent enough time with him he left me the keys to his house and showed me how to fix the breakfast part of B&B.

We finally took off Tuesday and have made it as far as Dijon. Great weather and lots to see. We’re staying very near the old town center and enjoy exploring the many churches, buildings and museums that date back as far as 1000 years ago. I wish I could say all is going good – as we left the last three locks on our trip to Dijon we lost power to the propeller so are awaiting a visit from our mechanic tomorrow morning – since it’s such a catastrophic failure, it should be easy to diagnose and fix, right?

We just got our hotspot loaded with a few gigs of upload so should have some blog posts up in the next couple of days.

Oh, one more thing – Joan left her new computer behind at security in Heathrow – it just arrived back in Seattle this afternoon.

Love from both of us – we are having fun and trying new things, plus drinking lots of wine.

Our blog is:  canalboatjuniper.blogspot.fr

2018 - Pre-season Work on Juniper

Cathedral in Mulhouse

2018 is the year that Joan and I have the honor of getting Juniper out of hibernation and ready for the partners to cruise. I've gone over a week early to get the boat ready so Joan and will not lose and cruising time preparing the boat. Fortunately our Seattle partner, Tom, volunteered to come over and give me a hand, since there was some extra work due to Juniper being out of the water for a new steering system.

British Air got us to Basel the Sunday before Easter. Tom and I took a bus to Saint Louie and then a train to Mulhouse where we spent the night. Monday morning we were up early to see a bit of the old town before hopping a TGV to Dijon, then a local train to Saint Jean de Losne where Juniper wintered.

Our B&B host, Gérard, met us at the train station and drove us to his house then out to shop for mud boots for me, and finally to the boatyard. We dropped into the office to pick up our keys and were informed they had bad news for us. They had discovered that one of the two bolts that hold the top of the rudder post was missing - the reason this was bad news is that the rudder post is directly under the engine and we have to pull the engine to fix it. We gave the go ahead for our €1.000 bolt and went to work getting the bottom ready for launching on Friday. From there things have gone downhill a bit more.

Our €1.000 bolt - the first of many

As the mechanic was taking the engine apart to enable it to be pulled he discovered that the transfer plate that transfers energy from the engine to our hydraulic pump that turns the propeller had literally disintegrated into a bunch of metal chips (better now than when cruising but still another delay and expense)  and that 3 of the 8 bolts holding our engine mounts had eroded to the point that they had sheared off.

Engine on its way out.

Rather than just lifting the engine far enough to fix the original €1.000 bolt we now had to bring in a crane to lift the engine completely out, lifting it up and over the boat, then forklift it off to the shop for repairs. So now we're waiting to see how long till we can get all the sheared bolts removed, and order a new transfer plate and four engine mounts. Then another day to put it all back together. We have moved our launch day till the Tuesday after Easter Monday.

The silver lining to all this is that it was caught in a yard with experienced mechanics and all the tools, rather than causing a breakdown in the middle of nowhere while cruising.