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Published: November 11th 2014
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Blog November 2014-11-09
We reached our winter home in Briare Port De Plaisance towards the latter half of October. We had a great time cruising the Yonne river, a very short part of the Seine and then down the Canal du Loing and finally the Canal de Briare. The weather was very kind to us, we had one day of rain so we stayed at a halt nautique at Monterau sur Yonne, here we met a couple of other Aussies, we then lost another day recovering from the party; we never learn! They have just bought a motor boat( never had a boat before) and are cruising the canals for a few months before returning to South America where they live in a camper van and go fly fishing in Chile and Patagonia .
There are some absolutely delightful places to stop along the way, small towns, cities,large towns with plenty to see and do. We did decide to stop at a most delightful mooring outside a lock, what a wonderful quiet pretty place until 10pm when we realised we were right next door to a campsite with hundreds of people celebrating birthdays. The singing and shouting
went on all night!
We initially were to spend the winter in the Commercial Port as there was no room for us in the Port de Plaisance at Briare. However the Port captain, a Dutch lady called Dorothy, moved some barges and boats around to give us possibly enough space, it would depend on the depth. Using our trusty depth sounder (a stick) it seemed that we could just get alongside. We left the commercial port and arrived at our intended place only to find we had run aground and could not get any near the quay. After lots of pulling on mooring lines, driving back and fore we managed to get close enough to use our passarelle. This turned out to be the best option any way as we now have a very easy way of getting on and off. We seem to have the best place in the port now, quiet with a lovely view and no one on the boats next to us.
Whilst pulling on the lines Marg managed to damage some ligaments/muscles in her chest and she didn’t realise at the time the extent of the damage. Over the next few days the
chest pains increased accompanied by shortage of breath and fatigue so we were worried about a possible heart attack for a while. We went to see a local Doctor, no appointment just walk in, wait 5 minutes (we were first after lunch). After a thorough examination and lots of charades and Peter’s best medical French the diagnosis was pulled muscles. Apparently it is very common with people on barges and canal boats. It cost us 23 Euros to see the doctor, we do not have medical insurance and have not got around to going to the UK to update our National Health Numbers etc so we don’t get EEC cover yet. Even with Medicare cover and full private insurance we were still out of pocket in Darwin for an extended visit to a Doctor by about $100. Makes you wonder.
We have joined the Fluvial Club de Briare, which is a social club that has lunches, talks and walks etc, went to one lunch so far which was very good.
Our friends Phil and Katrina from the Aussie yacht Restless Spirit came to visit for a while. We last saw them in Darwin last year; they left at
the same time as we left for Indonesia in Swara. They went via the Indian Ocean, South Africa, Atlantic to Brazil, through the Caribbean, back across the Atlantic to the UK and then to Holland. Seems a long way to go to come and see us but we are special! We managed to drink an awful lot of wine, one day we had South African reds, Spanish reds (love Rioja), and Portuguese (surprisingly good) French reds of course. Think they may be a bad influence on us!! They were fantastic fun and great guests.
Currently we do not have any major plans; unfortunately Amigo injured himself, tore off a tendon and possibly injured other bits. He is very unwell, the shock has bought on an extreme case of diabetes and possibly other major complications; we are back and fore to the vets at present, having to inject him twice a day with insulin. He has stopped eating and is very infirm; we hope we can get all the problems solved soon. Our latest vet visit indicates he may have had a stroke, this is fairly common in older cats especially those with diabetes, there is a good chance of
recovery with lots of care and treatment, keeping our fingers crossed.
We shall go the Paris boat show next month, there are quite a few social outings happening up to Xmas and hopefully we can have a Merry Xmas here. The weather is bloody cold at times, we had to take Amigo to the vet early one morning and it was minus 1 degree, we had to scrape ice off the windscreen. However we are still getting a lot of sunshine and the days are good, we are getting lots of long walks in glorious sunshine in along the river and canals.
We have started on the winter work on Vintage cru, surprisingly we have been able to do a lot of external painting and she is looking great, some more work on the deck is needed, there are quite a lot of stress cracks in the gel coat, the established way to fix them is to sand back to the fibreglass and either regel coat or epoxy. Too much work! We are going to try a flexible epoxy from the company Peter used to work for, hope it works. We have insulated a lot of the ceiling
and hull, are in the process of double glazing the bedrooms (sort of), replacing the galley ceiling (the previous owner seemed to have a thing about making holes in everything). Really enjoying the ease of the work after Swara. Saying that if the worse happens with Amigo we will scoot back to Malaysia and get Swara ready for sailing, then come back here for a year or two.
We have discovered Hipps. For years all we wore on our feet were Crocs (or rather the cheap knock off versions) it is just too cold now for them. Hipps area fur lined version of crocs, extremely comfortable and warm, we had bought some $ 200 dollar walking boots in the summer sales which are great for walking in the mornings but the Hipps at $6 are hard to beat.
We are taking French lessons with some other couples from the boats, the teacher does not speak any English (or so she says) so we have a Bulgarian lady to help with the translation, this makes for some interesting phrases.
We were driving around Gien the other day and were stopped at lights, a Downes syndrome man approached the
van and then opened the door and sat on Margaret’s lap. We had tried to lock the doors from the inside but it does not have door lock buttons. We gently pushed him out, made sure he was ok and drove off in a rush killing ourselves laughing, we have since found that there is a central locking button on the dash! Yesterday he tried again at the same set of lights, the button works!
We have also adopted a pair of ducks, in exchange for feeding them they are teaching us French , admittedly when we talk to the locals and end everything with quack we do get some funny looks e.g. une bagutee sil vous plait quack! We have named them Fifi and Jean Claude, Jean Claude was named after a French friend in Briennon who also never stopped talking! We have discovered a web site that teaches French through a parrot! Combined with the duck we will have a good grasp of the language soon. Quack wahhh merci! We also have a family of Geese who come for feeding plus a couple of Swans who are really bossy and definitely at the top of the pecking
order. Problems are now arising with the geese as early morning they walk up our passarelle (posh French word for gangplank) and sit on our swim platform honking and crapping everywhere.
There are a few Brits here for the winter that we are slowly getting to know, seem like nice people, had some drinks at a Remembrance Day function with them.
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