June 27 - Saturday: Temp to be 99°-102°. Departed at 8:25am and right into écluse (lock) #19. Le Julian had already departed, so had to wait for the water to come up again. Arriving at écluse 21 Le Julian and another boat are there, écluse appears to be out of order. Fifteen or so minutes and it's up, Le Julian and Juniper carry on. The other boat was not departing yet. With a VNF office there at the écluse they may have wanted Le Julian and Juniper to share the locks. Before we arrived in France we heard they were requiring this.
 |
| Shade and a beautiful spot to ourselves. |
 |
| Michael & Julie |
June 28 – Sunday: Departed 8:15am and it’s 76°, thunderstorms are predicted. We get through écluse (lock) #25 and #26 and it feels like we’re going to make good progress. Enter écluse # 27, the doors close. Then nothing. We wait and the water is not dropping. Joan goes to the hut and pushes the call button. It rings and rings and rings. No answer. Calls the VNF number on the hut and gets “leave a message”. The call button continues to ring. Michael checks the lights at both ends of the écluse, they are red/red. It’s out of order. Pondered options for about 15 minutes when the VNF man arrives to rescue us. Merci beaucoup!!! Ten écluses and 10 km (kilometers) brings us to Fontenay Le Chateau at 11:40am. We have power and water – yay!!!! We are drinking liters and liters of water so we need to refill often. We walk town and find a boulangerie, closed now but opens tomorrow at 7:15am. Another yay!
We do NOT find a grocery store. Rummaging the cupboards we find Cous Cous, garbanzo beans and corn. (Thank you again Karen & Bill!) Toss in our leftover veggies from the refrigerator and we have dinner. Tasty even! Sure hope we find a grocery store tomorrow though….
 |
| Joan on the bike path next to the canal |
June 29 – Monday: Rain and thunderstorm last night as they predicted. Neither lasted long and the thunderstorm didn’t seem too close. 7am and it’s 68°, high will be 80° and it’s a bit overcast. So much better than 100°!!!!
Le Boat manages the marina we stayed at and they arrived just in time for us to pay 15€ for moorage, water and power. Can’t get by for that in the US for an 11 metre boat! Departed 8:45am. Stopped at Selle to walk town, then lunch on the boat since we couldn’t find a restaurant. We three are getting our boating mojo now. The break in heat and some better sleep makes us feel human again. We even got a bike down so Julie and Joan could take turns riding between the locks. That felt great!!! Eleven écluses (locks) and 20 kms (kilometers) takes us to Corre. At the last lock we turn in the remote used to activate the écluses by dropping it into a metal box. We dock at Marina Corre visitor dock at 3:45pm. We are off the Canal des Vosges and on the Petite Saône now. Off to re-provision at the Intermarche about 1km away. Good size store and we did a great job remembering 90% of the items off the grocery list that is still on the boat. Another sign we’re recuperating. 😊
Looking forward to dinner at La Marina Restaurant only to find it’s closed Monday and Tuesday. Sigh. Having re-provisioned, dinner onboard is just fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment