Life is Finding Elvis

---

Cruising

We are on the Canal du Rhone au Rhin, the canals are closed due to flooding and we are in a halte nautique at Ranchot. It was exciting getting here with the River Doubs in flood making conditions tricky especially as a large charter boat tried pushing us over the barrage as we came out of a lock. They would not give way but they ended up losing control and ended up heading sideways towards the weir. We think they recovered it.



We just spent a few days in one of our most favourite towns in France yet, Dole, we just love the antiquity of the town. It was spoiled a little one night when France won the first round of the Euro soccer competition and the local fans were throwing dynamite into the Canal next to us, well at least that's how it sounded! This was reminiscent of Orthodox Easter in Kalymnos 20 years ago when they actually do throw dynamite into the harbour to celebrate. Considering France is in a state of high alert for terrorists it was surprising that the Police did not even show up to check.

We just dug out one of the Newsletters from Swara which we wrote when we cruised these canals and rivers 18 years ago! Just for fun we have attached it, takes us back a bit.

Currently it is raining again, in Dole we watched the Trooping of the Colour for the Queens 90^th Birthday. Republican or Royalist you have to admit the Brits have Historic pageantry down to a fine art. Hope when we are 90 we can have the same energy as the Queen and Prince Phillip.

We left Briare on the last day of April in the most horrible downpours of rain , luckily we were only going a few kilometres to our first stop Chatillion sur Loire , by the time we were ready to leave the weather improved somewhat. Marg’s brother came to spend a weekend before we left Briare and a good time was had by all.

Cruising down the Briare Canal / Canal Lateral a Loire we had some lovely stops, our favourite wine stop just below Sancerre where we did lots of walking, lunching and quaffing the local wines. Most of the stops were with free water and electricity. We spent 4 nights in Decize in the marina whilst it just rained and rained.

We cruised to Digoin in better weather and then spent a few days there, before heading upstream along the Canal du Centre. The locks here are all automatic and are so easy both for going up and down as long as you have an athletic young crew (like Margaret!) who leaps off the boat, shimmys up ladders and takes the lines. We have this down to a fine art, when the locks are low enough we use a expandable mooring stick that just drops the mooring line over the bollards, it easier than trying to lasso them, last time we tried lassoing we caught a horse.

We were going into an automatic lock behind a yacht when the lights started flashing and the gates started closing, we would not have got in without being crushed in the gates, reversing out in a hurry the gates closed on our bow fender but it popped out the right side. We rang the VNF who look after the canals and they stopped all the locks remotely, did not enquire how we were and about an hour later their emergency man arrived, shrugged his shoulders and reset the locks. Could not have cared less if we had been crushed and sunk.

We cruised along the canal stopping when we felt like it, one day just kept cruising as it was just perfect and did 27 locks. Slept well that night.We got stopped by the water police and had to show lifejackets, now where are they? License, papers etc.

We visited Chagny which has supposedly one of the best restaurants in France, decided the menu looked a bit ordinary so took a picture of a large cock instead.

Vintage Cru started having electrical issues with both alternators, the charging system is, or rather was, a little bizarre with internal regulators and external regulators as well. Spent hours and hours trying to sort it out and simplify the system but could not get the engine battery alternator to charge, so coupled up the house battery alternator which just managed.

After the Canal du Centre we entered the river Saone which was running very fast due to all the rain and floods and pushed along against the current through Seurre, Verdun sur Doubs to St Jean de Losne where we engaged the services of an electrician. He just did everything I had done, took the alternators away to check and said they were ok and stated that it must be Gremlins. (Technical bit that might bore you) Eventually Peter took the alternator apart and found that one of the slip rings was partially disintegrated, so if you checked them when the brushes were in contact all appeared ok but as soon as it ran it could not work correctly. Normally we would repair this but due to the age of the alternator decided to replace it. All works well now.

Whist in Saint Jean we saw the new Kiwi flag (see photo). There are more Kiwi and Aus boats here than we’ve seen since arriving in 2014. Along the way we have seen some different canal boats, the small red one had someone living in it, thought ours was small.

To enter the port at Montceau le Mines you have to pass under three types of lifting bridges, interesting from an engineering history perspective. A nice town with some lovely walks around all the old mining areas which have been completely restored or turned into parks, some with animal parks where Yeti met his first Lama.

To date this year we have done 371 kilometres, gone through 107 locks, both up and down mostly on our own, a few with one other boat. The weather has been very wet for a lot of the time and France and the waterway system are in a bit of a mess with floods, damage to infrastructure and closures to lots of waterways. One of our favourite chateau’s, Chambord, which we visited just before we left Briare, was affected by the floods.

Finding Elvis

If anyone ever wondered what happened to Elvis we can reliably inform you that he is alive and well and living in a lockkeeper’s cottage on the Canal du Centre. We were coming up in the lock to the sounds of Rock and Roll being played loudly from the cottage. As we are wont to do we started jiving on the deck (well as much as we could considering the room). As we got to the top there was Elvis doing the gardening! Seriously the guy looked like Elvis although a bit older, although he was wearing blue overalls instead of a white suit. We commented on his music and his similarity to Elvis and had a chat about rock and roll, he rushed into his cottage and came back with lots of trophies saying he was the winner of Rock and Roll Dancing competitions in various years in the 90’s. As the lock gates opened we left to the sound of Blue Suede Shoes in French!

Yeti the Dolphin Dog

Yeti does not like being in the water although he does like running through muddy puddles. We were approaching the pontoon in Verdun sur Doubs where the river was running 4-5 klm h. Normally when we approach a quay Yeti gets put in his deck crate as he likes helping with the mooring lines. As we were doing a recce to see where to go he had not been put in yet. The Port Captain was on the pontoon waving us in with his dog, Yeti got so excited he missed his footing and fell in over the side. We wondered how well he could swim with his long hairy coat weighing him down. We quickly did an emergency turn and there is Yeti about two hundred metres away swimming like mad for the shore against the current. As soon as we got a bit closer he realised it was us and tried swimming towards us, we managed to get along side him going sideways down the river and fished him out with the big fishing net we bought last year just for this type of mishap. He was not fazed at all, just shook himself off and was put in his crate until we tied up.

His favourite position as we are going along the canals(not the rivers) is sitting on top of our air conditioner so he gets the best view and can bark at all the passing dogs, cyclists and joggers. He has had his photo taken about a million times by passersby.

Plans

We have booked our winter mooring in the Canal du Midi from next November at Castelnaudry . We plan to cruise up as far as Strasbourg and then turn around and depending on which canals are open head south slowly to get to the Midi by mid October

---