Living on a boat, you can never be entirely certain what the day will bring. When you’re docked, things move slowly. Especially this far out in the country. If it’s midday or the weekend, everything is closed. The streets are empty more often than not because there just aren’t enough people to fill them. I often enter the living room to find Maurice just sitting, staring into space, because that’s the kind of lethargy such an environment promotes. It’s the perfect environment for reading too, and after the death of my Kindle I was relieved to find that Wild Goose has no shortage of books.
I read inside for the first few days, but Maurice likes to talk too much for that to last long. Now, when I’m not exploring, I like to take the opportunity to escape the boat. If there are benches in the town, all the better, but I often find myself in a grass bank somewhere as well. Like I said though, that’s only when we’re docked. When we’re moving, it’s an entirely different story.
The boat moves at an average of six kilometers per hour with top speeds of about eight. Every little bit along the canal, when the elevation has changed enough to justify it, there is a lock. Every lock is run by a lock keeper. Most of these lock keepers have so far been students, which makes sense as it’s an uncomplicated summer only job. Boats enter the lock, hand ropes tied at the bow and stern to the lock keeper, those ropes are secured around bollards built into the ground, and then the crew holds the loose ends taught to keep the boat from moving as the lock keeper opens the sluices in the gates on either end and lets water in or out. When the boat is going down, it’s not so important. Letting water out of the lock doesn’t cause too many waves. When the boat is going up, however, the jostling can be quite extreme. That’s why I was needed, and indeed I’m glad I was. Some days it has been quite a wild ride.
My first three days in France we stayed at the port where Maurice had spent the winter: Port Saint Thibault in Saint Satur, a small town right next the larger (though not by much) Sancerre. On the fourth day, we set off on our grand adventure down the Canal Lateral a La Loire. That first day travelling we crossed 40 km and nine locks in almost eight hours. While there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the journey, we moored for the night in the beautiful little village of Cours les Barres; a village so busy for it’s size that evening that we had to tie up a spare three feet past the distance at which our extension cord would reach the power outlets. And thus we arrive at two of the biggest uncertainties of traveling by boat.
The French canals are scattered with moorings big and small. Some can hold about two boats, some ten or twelve, but it depends on the size of the boats, and there’s no way of knowing how many boats or what kind are there before you arrive. If you’re planning to stop at a certain port it may very well be full, especially in summer. If that is the case you may have to go on to the next or back to the last, which could be any number of kilometers away. If you’ve waited until evening to moor, the locks close at seven, and you might find yourself up the creek, literally.
We have been lucky enough thus far to always find a place, but a place does not always mean a place with all the comforts of home. That first night on the road was only the first without electricity. Though we were able to purchase a night’s electricity for four euros the next night in Fleury, after another 40 km and six locks in six and a half hours, the following two nights were electricity free. We’ll get to why that was later, but for now, allow me to enumerate the troubles of no electricity on a boat.
The first and most important trouble is the refrigerator. It is only a small one. There would never be enough room or power for a full size, and yet when we moor without shore power the fridge must be turned off. For one night it’s not usually a problem, but any more than that and we risk half our food going bad.
The second problem is the lights, which don’t work. You would think the fact that you have so little space you must be touching a wall at all times would help with maneuvering in the dark, but that’s forgetting the spiders. When you can’t see where you’re going, you certainly can’t see creepy crawlies or the webs they weave, and that is when your hands and feet and arms and face end up in them every which way. So no power nights mean going to bed before the sun is down and praying you don’t have to use the toilet before it’s light.
Then there’s the problem of the television. Now normally I would say not having television isn’t a problem at all. I prefer it that way in fact. But not having a television in these circumstances means Maurice also not having a television, which he doesn’t mind either, except then he wants to talk. And talk and talk and talk. Don’t get me wrong. I like talking to Maurice. But if I want to read, or write, or think, or do anything that involves the least concentration in the evenings, well… I can forget that.
Then there’s the final and most annoying problem, namely my phone. If my camera dies, or my chromebook or my Kindle (when it was working) that’s hardly the end of the world. My phone, however, is my only security and link to the outside world. I don’t like not having the ability to call for help should I need it, and I doubt my family and friends like not being able to get in touch. I understand the comforts of getting away from it all, escaping from work and life and technology, but this is neither the time nor the place. When I am out in the woods with nothing and no one to worry about, the last thing I would want to look at is my phone. When I need to know what time it is, and when the library is open, and how to make falafel without a food processor though, well, my phone is kind of necessary. It is unfortunate, then, that I have spent this trip without it more often than not because there is never anywhere to charge it.
Alas, we work with what we have, and if that doesn’t include electricity so be it. The batteries are large enough to run the water pump and start the engine, and that will have to be enough.
Day three of travelling brought us through eighteen kilometers and two locks in two hours, from Fleury to Decize, and that is where things got interesting. Decize is the largest town we’ve visited yet, connected as it were to the smaller municipality of Saint Leger on the other side of the River Loire. The port we stopped at did not have electricity, but it did have a large supermarket and a launderette. We planned to spend one night there, take care of our business, and then cross the Loire to the better outfitted port of Saint Leger on the Canal du Nivernais the next day. That one night, however, was all it took for things the unexpected to strike.
The first surprise came just as we were pulling into the port; an enthusiastic old couple jumping up and down and waving their hands as they chased the boat to its mooring. I might have been bemused, but Maurice it turns out knew them. They’d met up north last year and then parted ways at this very port, which might have meant more if he could have remembered their names. To help him save face I hopped off and introduced myself before he’d fully finished parking. Irene and David, as they were called, were just on their way out to do the laundry as well. So we waved goodbye, finished mooring, and collected our own laundry to let wash as we did the shopping.
As soon as we turned the corner to the supermarket, however, our attention was caught by the bright, flashing lights of both an ambulance and a police car. “Isn’t that Irene?” I asked, pointing at a woman hovering around the scene. “No,” denied Maurice. “If it is I’m sure she just stopped to watch.” I was doubtful, but followed him across the street regardless. As it turned out later, it was in fact Irene, hovering over David who had been hit by a car. He ended up with breaks in his hip, leg, and neck, was taken to the local hospital for the night, and then transferred to Dijon for surgery the next morning. We offered our help to Irene with anything she might need, but she was already headed up river to drop her boat with friends and then meet David in Dijon. She didn’t seem too upset about the whole thing, and it sounds like David will be alright at least. Still, perhaps it was an omen of things to come.
The next morning we cast off with an American couple from Fort Lauderdale so that our boats might share the locks. There were two to get down to the Loire and third to get back up to the Nivernais. We never made it to that third.
We had been following the American boat Encore along the Loire for perhaps ten minutes when I heard a long angry beep begin to eminante from the steering console. I glanced to Maurice with wide, concerned eyes, only to find that his eyes were wider than mine. The engine, it seemed, was overheating, despite Maurice’s refilling the fluids the night before. “It can’t be,” he insisted, even as he began steering for the shore, using the engine as little as possible, which was still much more than was really advisable.
I should digress for a moment here to explain a bit about rivers. I am sure you are all familiar with them, long bodies of water that flow downstream into larger bodies of water. What that flowing means for our purposes, however, is that there is a current. Canal boats, with their tiny little motors, aren’t really built for currents. In fact, if there’s too much water in the river they’re not even allowed to cross. So crossing is a feat attempted only with the utmost concentration and care. And when something goes wrong, well… it’s a big deal.
So there we were, little to no motor, drifting downstream at what I considered an alarming pace. Our one saving grace was a single stray mooring, built for much larger boats, coming up on our our. Maurice was able to steer the boat towards it, at which point I took up the rope from the bow and made a running leap for the mooring, landing, missing the first bollard, and getting the rope around the second only to realize that… I do not have the upper body strength to fight the weight of a canal boat being pulled by that much current. “I can’t hold it!”
I will admit, I was a little panicky, pictures of the boat dashed against the river bank flashing through my head. “Wrap it around a bunch!” Maurice called back, which I wasted no time in doing. Five or six rotations did it, but that hardly stopped the runaway vessel. I watched in slow motion as the boat, caught now by its bow, began to pivot with the current, swinging around to crash sidelong into the mooring.
Now, canal boats come with fenders for just such occasions, so the boat wasn’t damaged, but it was a harrowing moment nonetheless. Maurice took his turn to dash on to the mooring, tying up the side and stern though it was clear the bow rope was taking all the pressure. And then we retired to the engine compartment. What on earth could have gone wrong?
Well, it was too hot to be check at first, so we sat about worriedly until the engine had cooled enough to touch. With gloves still, but enough. Much of the water was gone, Maurice pointed out, even though it had been full last night. He filled it up again and then… was that a bubble? Was it leaking? We sat about biting our nails a bit as Maurice recalled the last time the engine had overheated it was because a rubber piece called an impeller had nearly disintegrated. That was only a year ago though, and it cost three-hundred euros to fix. If it had gone again…
With the water refilled he decided to try the engine again. We’d only been running it five minutes though when the temperature began to rise again, rapidly and to extreme degrees. So off again it went before Maurice got on his bicycle to go ask the rental company at the port about a mechanic. (The rental company, by the way, is called Le Boat. I’m not sure why, but their name always makes me smile.)
He came back with a phone number, but not much hope. It was Sunday, and many Frenchmen don’t work on Saturdays or Mondays, let alone the Catholic day of rest. Looking like we might have to camp there for the night then, he sent me off to explore, which I did gladly. By the time I got back, there was news. The mechanic was coming at four, which turned out actually to be 3:15. Two hours and 170 euros later, he was done and we were back on our feet. It was the impeller again, turns out. Go figure. Maurice was pleased to have self-diagnosed.
We got back on the river, with some maneuvering of the ropes, and continued on our way to Saint Leger. But our adventures were not over for that day.
A few minutes along, freshly repaired engine going strong, a bridge began to loom in the distance. “They must have built a new one since the last time I was here,” Maurice conjectured, “But where are the markers?” For on rivers, you see, every bridge has two markers to communicate to boats where the sand bars are. Drive between the two markers and you should pass through safely. Stray beyond them and you’re like as not to run aground. There was some debate over which course to take, these markers being absent, but it was eventually decided that right down the center was probably the best choice. And so we crept forward, further and further, closer to the bridge with every passing minute. There was something strange about the water beneath it though, I thought. My eyes strained as I tried to figure out what it was. There was almost a line across it, like a break in the river, but surely there couldn’t be a break in the river. That made no sense. This river was meant to be driven on. We had to get to the canal somehow. Otherwise… “Go back!!”
I’m not sure Maurice heard me though, because he’d seen it too, and anyone would be momentarily distracted by the river full of jagged rocks at the bottom of a barrage turned man-made waterfall that had just come into view. Especially when that anyone is driving a boat headed straight for those rocks.
He threw the boat into full reverse in less than a flash, but it took a few seconds for the motor to beat the current. A few seconds in which we floating there on the precipice, a stones throw from certain doom. Okay, I’m being a bit dramatic, but had we not caught up at the mooring when the engine went, or not seen the rocks before it was too late, we would not have been finishing this trip. The boat would certainly be gone, and quite possibly us along with it.
It was all very exciting, but I understand why Maurice doesn’t like crossing rivers.
Once we’d managed to turn the boat around, however, and put some distance between us and the bridge, we quickly realized just what had happened. Distracted by the engine trouble, we hadn’t realized how far down the river we’d come. Our turn into the canal, a nearly 300 degree about face, had been just around the corner and we’d missed it entirely. We saw it this time, however, and veered off towards our final lock and the safety of the relatively current free Nivernais.
We made it the rest of the way to Saint Leger without incident, though we arrived too late to buy electricity. Saint Leger has gone high tech, you see. You must visit town hall to purchase a swipe card with which you can access power and water for prices rated per consumption and not per night. It’s a far more logical setup than the pay and use as you like at other ports, but it does make one a bit too conscious of just what she can or can’t do.
So we spent another night without electricity, the food in the fridge may or may not have spoiled, and I passed most of the next morning hiking out to the much farther than expected town hall to buy a swipe card and some power. Usually that’s a job Maurice would do on his bike, but it seems he had injured his foot somewhere along the way. Said foot had started to get better at the time of writing, or so he said, but he was still walking with a heavy limp. Here’s hoping it’s only temporary!
We were in Saint Leger for three days before moving the first twelve kilometers and three locks up the Canal du Nivernais to Cercy La Tour. The journey shouldn’t have taken more than two hours. Three at most. Having left Saint Leger at nine o’clock on the dot, however, we did not arrive in Cercy La Tour until just past three. Why, you might ask? Well let me tell you.
At the first lock, a mere half kilometer from our mooring, there was no lock keeper to be found. The water was low, and the gate on our side open, so we sailed in and honked, but the gate house remained dark and still. “Shall I knock?” I asked Maurice, volunteering myself to climb the steep ladder in the side of the lock. Even knocking didn’t rouse anyone, and so we sat and thought.
“Could I operate the lock?” I asked. I had certainly seen it done often enough, and I usually helped with the gates once the boat was stable enough to release one of the ropes. Apparently it’s against the rules to touch the sluices without direction though, and the penalty for breaking those rules is a travel ban on the canals. Maurice didn’t want to risk that, and he seemed uncertain of my ability to operate the sluices anyway. Eventually he decided he might have a number for VNF, the organization responsible for operating the locks. While he made calls, I poked around the gate house and found, well… nothing. Until a car showed up.
“Je suis ici pour la electricite,” said the man who got out, looking at me with an air of authority. “Um… oui?” I wasn’t quite sure what eletricity had to do with opening the lock, but I was glad someone had shown up at last. “Oh! You speak English?” It turns out so did he, but being an employee of the electricity company who had come to check the meter, he was just as interested in finding the lock keeper as I was. In fact, there were a confusing two or three minutes where he thought I was the lock keeper. We worked it out though, and he shrugged and sped off in his car, meter unchecked.
In the meantime, Maurice had been in contact with a woman who had given him two different numbers. The first of those hung up on him, the second was an answer machine. Eventually he found a number for the VNF headquarters who called the regional headquarters and said who knows what. At a quarter after ten Maurice, who had turned his phone off because that’s what he does with it, turned it on again to find that he had two messages from someone. After fighting with the device for ten minutes, he finally handed me the phone so we could access them and found that someone should have been coming in fifteen minutes. Ten minutes ago.
So we waited another five minutes, and sure enough a man showed up. He wasn’t exactly gentle with the sluices, but we made it through the lock and continued on our way, delayed by roughly an hour and a half. It wasn’t so bad, I thought. We still might have made Cercy La Tour by lunch. And then we hit the second lock.
There was no one at this lock either, and it wasn’t even open for us. Maurice put me ashore a bit before the lock and I walked up to check it out. The process repeated itself: looking around, banging on the door, trying to find anyone that might be able to help. When it came time to call VNF though, Maurice decided he wanted a coffee. His nerves were fried, and he’s not the most patient man in the world to begin with. So I made him coffee and he put up his bum foot.
If I’m honest, I think he was just tired of not speaking French. Not that he seems at all interested in learning, but it’s difficult not being able to communicate with officials with whom you need to be able to communicate. I would know.
It turns out the idleness wasn’t so bad, because a lock keeper showed up a few minutes later, riding his motorcycle up the tow path. Already out of the boat, I volunteered my help with the gates, and he actually asked me to help with the sluices. So I ended up operating half the lock anyway, just within the legal limits of direction. Go figure.
The hold up at the second lock meant we didn’t make the third before it closed for lunch. It was the same lock keeper on the motorcycle though, and he had opened the lock for us so that we could wait inside. And so we waited, again, only getting back on our way at twenty after one. And thus the chain of events that led us to Cercy La Tour, where the days troubles were not yet over.
Tying up at a mooring is usually simple enough business. Someone (me) jumps ashore from the bow, loops a rope around a bollard or, if there is no bollard, a self erected stake. and runs it back to the boat. Then the same is done with the stern rope and the boat is more or less secure. The mooring at Cercy La Tour, however, was… dun dun dun… on a river.
The canal, you see, merges with the River Aron for the length of the Cercy La Tour mooring and then returns to its own private boundaries. What that means is that there is a current - that same current that tried to pull the boat away from me on the River Loire. The bigger problem, however, was that Maurice wasn’t expecting it, and there were no bollards to wrap with rope and perform and emergency stop.
I jumped ashore, as usual, taking the rope with me, and Maurice disappeared back into the boat to grab the stern rope. Having just put the boat in neutral though, that was when it started to drift. “Maurice!” He couldn’t hear me. And I couldn’t hold the boat against the current, and so we ran into the moored boat behind. It was just a tap that didn’t hurt either, but it was still quite embarrassing. Once he’d realized he couldn’t just cut the engine we managed to maneuver the boat, with much problem solving and hulabaloo, into a safe position. It was a little too far up if a decent sized boat wanted to moor beside us, but a small one would have done fine, so we were only parked a little rudely.
We stayed in Cercy La Tour for a relaxing three days before making our last two day run for Baye and the out of water survey, and boy is that a run I don’t want to repeat.
On the short phone call I had with my mother in Saint Leger, she asked me if the job was hard. At the time I laughed, because the answer was not at all. At the time however, I was missing one major lock experience - being in the front of a quickly filling lock.
Each lock, you see, is a different size, usually holding two or three boats depending on their individual sizes. When one is alone in the lock, one can tie up as far back as one likes, and when the water starts pouring through the sluices be far enough back that the boat is only lightly jostled. Even at the front, a lock keeper might be kind enough to open the sluices slowly. If the water only trickles in, the jostling is likewise manageable. On the other hand, if one must pull all the way forward in a lock to allow boat in behind, and then the lock keeper is not so gentle with the sluices, well… that’s when you’re in for a challenge.
And thus the thirty-five kilometers and fifteen locks we did in eight and a half hours from Cercy La Tour to Chatillon en Bazois were a challenge indeed. We somehow found ourselves at the beginning of a line, meaning we were at the very front of each and every lock, none of them gentle. The upside is I finally mastered a technique for managing my ropes, a fact about which I was quite pleased and proud. The downside is that the work was much harder physically than any I had yet encountered.
Holding a ten ton boat steady as it is buffeted forward and backward and side to side is no easy task. In this case it took not only upper body strength, but all over body strength to boot. It was up and down and over and back getting the right leverage and angles. By lunch time I knew I was going to be sore. By the time we reached port I was so wiped that I skipped dinner and crawled straight into bed. I’d been downing handfuls of peanuts and raisins all day, but nevertheless, it turned out that was a bad idea.
The next day was worse. We only did fifteen kilometers in seven hours, but that included fifteen locks, three of which were doubles and one a triple, meaning we didn’t have to load out or back in. The locks weren’t so terrible, we did a lot of them alone, and yet I felt like hell warmed over. I couldn’t concentrate, I was mildly light headed, and it wasn’t until I had a croissant for lunch that I realized I was just hungry. Or at least carb deprived. After lunch I still ached all over, but I had the energy to finish out the day with a smile. I even made quesadillas for dinner that night with the tortillas I’d found in the exotic food aisle of the grocery store.
Still, I have revised my opinion just as the job is coming to an end. It’s not always hard work, but neither is it easy; instead it merely depends. We’ll be spending a week in Baye, however, with no moving or locks of which to speak. After that it’s back the way we came, so literally all downhill from here. I don’t anticipate any noteworthy adventures, but I’ll let you know if they occur. Otherwise, that just about covers all of the boat moving drama, and yet there is plenty that happens when the boat is still that brings just as much to bear. Alas, you’ll have to wait another day for that, but I promise none of the other posts will be quite this long!
I read inside for the first few days, but Maurice likes to talk too much for that to last long. Now, when I’m not exploring, I like to take the opportunity to escape the boat. If there are benches in the town, all the better, but I often find myself in a grass bank somewhere as well. Like I said though, that’s only when we’re docked. When we’re moving, it’s an entirely different story.
The boat moves at an average of six kilometers per hour with top speeds of about eight. Every little bit along the canal, when the elevation has changed enough to justify it, there is a lock. Every lock is run by a lock keeper. Most of these lock keepers have so far been students, which makes sense as it’s an uncomplicated summer only job. Boats enter the lock, hand ropes tied at the bow and stern to the lock keeper, those ropes are secured around bollards built into the ground, and then the crew holds the loose ends taught to keep the boat from moving as the lock keeper opens the sluices in the gates on either end and lets water in or out. When the boat is going down, it’s not so important. Letting water out of the lock doesn’t cause too many waves. When the boat is going up, however, the jostling can be quite extreme. That’s why I was needed, and indeed I’m glad I was. Some days it has been quite a wild ride.
My first three days in France we stayed at the port where Maurice had spent the winter: Port Saint Thibault in Saint Satur, a small town right next the larger (though not by much) Sancerre. On the fourth day, we set off on our grand adventure down the Canal Lateral a La Loire. That first day travelling we crossed 40 km and nine locks in almost eight hours. While there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the journey, we moored for the night in the beautiful little village of Cours les Barres; a village so busy for it’s size that evening that we had to tie up a spare three feet past the distance at which our extension cord would reach the power outlets. And thus we arrive at two of the biggest uncertainties of traveling by boat.
The French canals are scattered with moorings big and small. Some can hold about two boats, some ten or twelve, but it depends on the size of the boats, and there’s no way of knowing how many boats or what kind are there before you arrive. If you’re planning to stop at a certain port it may very well be full, especially in summer. If that is the case you may have to go on to the next or back to the last, which could be any number of kilometers away. If you’ve waited until evening to moor, the locks close at seven, and you might find yourself up the creek, literally.
We have been lucky enough thus far to always find a place, but a place does not always mean a place with all the comforts of home. That first night on the road was only the first without electricity. Though we were able to purchase a night’s electricity for four euros the next night in Fleury, after another 40 km and six locks in six and a half hours, the following two nights were electricity free. We’ll get to why that was later, but for now, allow me to enumerate the troubles of no electricity on a boat.
The first and most important trouble is the refrigerator. It is only a small one. There would never be enough room or power for a full size, and yet when we moor without shore power the fridge must be turned off. For one night it’s not usually a problem, but any more than that and we risk half our food going bad.
The second problem is the lights, which don’t work. You would think the fact that you have so little space you must be touching a wall at all times would help with maneuvering in the dark, but that’s forgetting the spiders. When you can’t see where you’re going, you certainly can’t see creepy crawlies or the webs they weave, and that is when your hands and feet and arms and face end up in them every which way. So no power nights mean going to bed before the sun is down and praying you don’t have to use the toilet before it’s light.
Then there’s the problem of the television. Now normally I would say not having television isn’t a problem at all. I prefer it that way in fact. But not having a television in these circumstances means Maurice also not having a television, which he doesn’t mind either, except then he wants to talk. And talk and talk and talk. Don’t get me wrong. I like talking to Maurice. But if I want to read, or write, or think, or do anything that involves the least concentration in the evenings, well… I can forget that.
Then there’s the final and most annoying problem, namely my phone. If my camera dies, or my chromebook or my Kindle (when it was working) that’s hardly the end of the world. My phone, however, is my only security and link to the outside world. I don’t like not having the ability to call for help should I need it, and I doubt my family and friends like not being able to get in touch. I understand the comforts of getting away from it all, escaping from work and life and technology, but this is neither the time nor the place. When I am out in the woods with nothing and no one to worry about, the last thing I would want to look at is my phone. When I need to know what time it is, and when the library is open, and how to make falafel without a food processor though, well, my phone is kind of necessary. It is unfortunate, then, that I have spent this trip without it more often than not because there is never anywhere to charge it.
Alas, we work with what we have, and if that doesn’t include electricity so be it. The batteries are large enough to run the water pump and start the engine, and that will have to be enough.
Day three of travelling brought us through eighteen kilometers and two locks in two hours, from Fleury to Decize, and that is where things got interesting. Decize is the largest town we’ve visited yet, connected as it were to the smaller municipality of Saint Leger on the other side of the River Loire. The port we stopped at did not have electricity, but it did have a large supermarket and a launderette. We planned to spend one night there, take care of our business, and then cross the Loire to the better outfitted port of Saint Leger on the Canal du Nivernais the next day. That one night, however, was all it took for things the unexpected to strike.
The first surprise came just as we were pulling into the port; an enthusiastic old couple jumping up and down and waving their hands as they chased the boat to its mooring. I might have been bemused, but Maurice it turns out knew them. They’d met up north last year and then parted ways at this very port, which might have meant more if he could have remembered their names. To help him save face I hopped off and introduced myself before he’d fully finished parking. Irene and David, as they were called, were just on their way out to do the laundry as well. So we waved goodbye, finished mooring, and collected our own laundry to let wash as we did the shopping.
As soon as we turned the corner to the supermarket, however, our attention was caught by the bright, flashing lights of both an ambulance and a police car. “Isn’t that Irene?” I asked, pointing at a woman hovering around the scene. “No,” denied Maurice. “If it is I’m sure she just stopped to watch.” I was doubtful, but followed him across the street regardless. As it turned out later, it was in fact Irene, hovering over David who had been hit by a car. He ended up with breaks in his hip, leg, and neck, was taken to the local hospital for the night, and then transferred to Dijon for surgery the next morning. We offered our help to Irene with anything she might need, but she was already headed up river to drop her boat with friends and then meet David in Dijon. She didn’t seem too upset about the whole thing, and it sounds like David will be alright at least. Still, perhaps it was an omen of things to come.
The next morning we cast off with an American couple from Fort Lauderdale so that our boats might share the locks. There were two to get down to the Loire and third to get back up to the Nivernais. We never made it to that third.
We had been following the American boat Encore along the Loire for perhaps ten minutes when I heard a long angry beep begin to eminante from the steering console. I glanced to Maurice with wide, concerned eyes, only to find that his eyes were wider than mine. The engine, it seemed, was overheating, despite Maurice’s refilling the fluids the night before. “It can’t be,” he insisted, even as he began steering for the shore, using the engine as little as possible, which was still much more than was really advisable.
I should digress for a moment here to explain a bit about rivers. I am sure you are all familiar with them, long bodies of water that flow downstream into larger bodies of water. What that flowing means for our purposes, however, is that there is a current. Canal boats, with their tiny little motors, aren’t really built for currents. In fact, if there’s too much water in the river they’re not even allowed to cross. So crossing is a feat attempted only with the utmost concentration and care. And when something goes wrong, well… it’s a big deal.
So there we were, little to no motor, drifting downstream at what I considered an alarming pace. Our one saving grace was a single stray mooring, built for much larger boats, coming up on our our. Maurice was able to steer the boat towards it, at which point I took up the rope from the bow and made a running leap for the mooring, landing, missing the first bollard, and getting the rope around the second only to realize that… I do not have the upper body strength to fight the weight of a canal boat being pulled by that much current. “I can’t hold it!”
I will admit, I was a little panicky, pictures of the boat dashed against the river bank flashing through my head. “Wrap it around a bunch!” Maurice called back, which I wasted no time in doing. Five or six rotations did it, but that hardly stopped the runaway vessel. I watched in slow motion as the boat, caught now by its bow, began to pivot with the current, swinging around to crash sidelong into the mooring.
Now, canal boats come with fenders for just such occasions, so the boat wasn’t damaged, but it was a harrowing moment nonetheless. Maurice took his turn to dash on to the mooring, tying up the side and stern though it was clear the bow rope was taking all the pressure. And then we retired to the engine compartment. What on earth could have gone wrong?
Well, it was too hot to be check at first, so we sat about worriedly until the engine had cooled enough to touch. With gloves still, but enough. Much of the water was gone, Maurice pointed out, even though it had been full last night. He filled it up again and then… was that a bubble? Was it leaking? We sat about biting our nails a bit as Maurice recalled the last time the engine had overheated it was because a rubber piece called an impeller had nearly disintegrated. That was only a year ago though, and it cost three-hundred euros to fix. If it had gone again…
With the water refilled he decided to try the engine again. We’d only been running it five minutes though when the temperature began to rise again, rapidly and to extreme degrees. So off again it went before Maurice got on his bicycle to go ask the rental company at the port about a mechanic. (The rental company, by the way, is called Le Boat. I’m not sure why, but their name always makes me smile.)
He came back with a phone number, but not much hope. It was Sunday, and many Frenchmen don’t work on Saturdays or Mondays, let alone the Catholic day of rest. Looking like we might have to camp there for the night then, he sent me off to explore, which I did gladly. By the time I got back, there was news. The mechanic was coming at four, which turned out actually to be 3:15. Two hours and 170 euros later, he was done and we were back on our feet. It was the impeller again, turns out. Go figure. Maurice was pleased to have self-diagnosed.
We got back on the river, with some maneuvering of the ropes, and continued on our way to Saint Leger. But our adventures were not over for that day.
A few minutes along, freshly repaired engine going strong, a bridge began to loom in the distance. “They must have built a new one since the last time I was here,” Maurice conjectured, “But where are the markers?” For on rivers, you see, every bridge has two markers to communicate to boats where the sand bars are. Drive between the two markers and you should pass through safely. Stray beyond them and you’re like as not to run aground. There was some debate over which course to take, these markers being absent, but it was eventually decided that right down the center was probably the best choice. And so we crept forward, further and further, closer to the bridge with every passing minute. There was something strange about the water beneath it though, I thought. My eyes strained as I tried to figure out what it was. There was almost a line across it, like a break in the river, but surely there couldn’t be a break in the river. That made no sense. This river was meant to be driven on. We had to get to the canal somehow. Otherwise… “Go back!!”
I’m not sure Maurice heard me though, because he’d seen it too, and anyone would be momentarily distracted by the river full of jagged rocks at the bottom of a barrage turned man-made waterfall that had just come into view. Especially when that anyone is driving a boat headed straight for those rocks.
He threw the boat into full reverse in less than a flash, but it took a few seconds for the motor to beat the current. A few seconds in which we floating there on the precipice, a stones throw from certain doom. Okay, I’m being a bit dramatic, but had we not caught up at the mooring when the engine went, or not seen the rocks before it was too late, we would not have been finishing this trip. The boat would certainly be gone, and quite possibly us along with it.
It was all very exciting, but I understand why Maurice doesn’t like crossing rivers.
Once we’d managed to turn the boat around, however, and put some distance between us and the bridge, we quickly realized just what had happened. Distracted by the engine trouble, we hadn’t realized how far down the river we’d come. Our turn into the canal, a nearly 300 degree about face, had been just around the corner and we’d missed it entirely. We saw it this time, however, and veered off towards our final lock and the safety of the relatively current free Nivernais.
We made it the rest of the way to Saint Leger without incident, though we arrived too late to buy electricity. Saint Leger has gone high tech, you see. You must visit town hall to purchase a swipe card with which you can access power and water for prices rated per consumption and not per night. It’s a far more logical setup than the pay and use as you like at other ports, but it does make one a bit too conscious of just what she can or can’t do.
So we spent another night without electricity, the food in the fridge may or may not have spoiled, and I passed most of the next morning hiking out to the much farther than expected town hall to buy a swipe card and some power. Usually that’s a job Maurice would do on his bike, but it seems he had injured his foot somewhere along the way. Said foot had started to get better at the time of writing, or so he said, but he was still walking with a heavy limp. Here’s hoping it’s only temporary!
We were in Saint Leger for three days before moving the first twelve kilometers and three locks up the Canal du Nivernais to Cercy La Tour. The journey shouldn’t have taken more than two hours. Three at most. Having left Saint Leger at nine o’clock on the dot, however, we did not arrive in Cercy La Tour until just past three. Why, you might ask? Well let me tell you.
At the first lock, a mere half kilometer from our mooring, there was no lock keeper to be found. The water was low, and the gate on our side open, so we sailed in and honked, but the gate house remained dark and still. “Shall I knock?” I asked Maurice, volunteering myself to climb the steep ladder in the side of the lock. Even knocking didn’t rouse anyone, and so we sat and thought.
“Could I operate the lock?” I asked. I had certainly seen it done often enough, and I usually helped with the gates once the boat was stable enough to release one of the ropes. Apparently it’s against the rules to touch the sluices without direction though, and the penalty for breaking those rules is a travel ban on the canals. Maurice didn’t want to risk that, and he seemed uncertain of my ability to operate the sluices anyway. Eventually he decided he might have a number for VNF, the organization responsible for operating the locks. While he made calls, I poked around the gate house and found, well… nothing. Until a car showed up.
“Je suis ici pour la electricite,” said the man who got out, looking at me with an air of authority. “Um… oui?” I wasn’t quite sure what eletricity had to do with opening the lock, but I was glad someone had shown up at last. “Oh! You speak English?” It turns out so did he, but being an employee of the electricity company who had come to check the meter, he was just as interested in finding the lock keeper as I was. In fact, there were a confusing two or three minutes where he thought I was the lock keeper. We worked it out though, and he shrugged and sped off in his car, meter unchecked.
In the meantime, Maurice had been in contact with a woman who had given him two different numbers. The first of those hung up on him, the second was an answer machine. Eventually he found a number for the VNF headquarters who called the regional headquarters and said who knows what. At a quarter after ten Maurice, who had turned his phone off because that’s what he does with it, turned it on again to find that he had two messages from someone. After fighting with the device for ten minutes, he finally handed me the phone so we could access them and found that someone should have been coming in fifteen minutes. Ten minutes ago.
So we waited another five minutes, and sure enough a man showed up. He wasn’t exactly gentle with the sluices, but we made it through the lock and continued on our way, delayed by roughly an hour and a half. It wasn’t so bad, I thought. We still might have made Cercy La Tour by lunch. And then we hit the second lock.
There was no one at this lock either, and it wasn’t even open for us. Maurice put me ashore a bit before the lock and I walked up to check it out. The process repeated itself: looking around, banging on the door, trying to find anyone that might be able to help. When it came time to call VNF though, Maurice decided he wanted a coffee. His nerves were fried, and he’s not the most patient man in the world to begin with. So I made him coffee and he put up his bum foot.
If I’m honest, I think he was just tired of not speaking French. Not that he seems at all interested in learning, but it’s difficult not being able to communicate with officials with whom you need to be able to communicate. I would know.
It turns out the idleness wasn’t so bad, because a lock keeper showed up a few minutes later, riding his motorcycle up the tow path. Already out of the boat, I volunteered my help with the gates, and he actually asked me to help with the sluices. So I ended up operating half the lock anyway, just within the legal limits of direction. Go figure.
The hold up at the second lock meant we didn’t make the third before it closed for lunch. It was the same lock keeper on the motorcycle though, and he had opened the lock for us so that we could wait inside. And so we waited, again, only getting back on our way at twenty after one. And thus the chain of events that led us to Cercy La Tour, where the days troubles were not yet over.
Tying up at a mooring is usually simple enough business. Someone (me) jumps ashore from the bow, loops a rope around a bollard or, if there is no bollard, a self erected stake. and runs it back to the boat. Then the same is done with the stern rope and the boat is more or less secure. The mooring at Cercy La Tour, however, was… dun dun dun… on a river.
The canal, you see, merges with the River Aron for the length of the Cercy La Tour mooring and then returns to its own private boundaries. What that means is that there is a current - that same current that tried to pull the boat away from me on the River Loire. The bigger problem, however, was that Maurice wasn’t expecting it, and there were no bollards to wrap with rope and perform and emergency stop.
I jumped ashore, as usual, taking the rope with me, and Maurice disappeared back into the boat to grab the stern rope. Having just put the boat in neutral though, that was when it started to drift. “Maurice!” He couldn’t hear me. And I couldn’t hold the boat against the current, and so we ran into the moored boat behind. It was just a tap that didn’t hurt either, but it was still quite embarrassing. Once he’d realized he couldn’t just cut the engine we managed to maneuver the boat, with much problem solving and hulabaloo, into a safe position. It was a little too far up if a decent sized boat wanted to moor beside us, but a small one would have done fine, so we were only parked a little rudely.
We stayed in Cercy La Tour for a relaxing three days before making our last two day run for Baye and the out of water survey, and boy is that a run I don’t want to repeat.
On the short phone call I had with my mother in Saint Leger, she asked me if the job was hard. At the time I laughed, because the answer was not at all. At the time however, I was missing one major lock experience - being in the front of a quickly filling lock.
Each lock, you see, is a different size, usually holding two or three boats depending on their individual sizes. When one is alone in the lock, one can tie up as far back as one likes, and when the water starts pouring through the sluices be far enough back that the boat is only lightly jostled. Even at the front, a lock keeper might be kind enough to open the sluices slowly. If the water only trickles in, the jostling is likewise manageable. On the other hand, if one must pull all the way forward in a lock to allow boat in behind, and then the lock keeper is not so gentle with the sluices, well… that’s when you’re in for a challenge.
And thus the thirty-five kilometers and fifteen locks we did in eight and a half hours from Cercy La Tour to Chatillon en Bazois were a challenge indeed. We somehow found ourselves at the beginning of a line, meaning we were at the very front of each and every lock, none of them gentle. The upside is I finally mastered a technique for managing my ropes, a fact about which I was quite pleased and proud. The downside is that the work was much harder physically than any I had yet encountered.
Holding a ten ton boat steady as it is buffeted forward and backward and side to side is no easy task. In this case it took not only upper body strength, but all over body strength to boot. It was up and down and over and back getting the right leverage and angles. By lunch time I knew I was going to be sore. By the time we reached port I was so wiped that I skipped dinner and crawled straight into bed. I’d been downing handfuls of peanuts and raisins all day, but nevertheless, it turned out that was a bad idea.
The next day was worse. We only did fifteen kilometers in seven hours, but that included fifteen locks, three of which were doubles and one a triple, meaning we didn’t have to load out or back in. The locks weren’t so terrible, we did a lot of them alone, and yet I felt like hell warmed over. I couldn’t concentrate, I was mildly light headed, and it wasn’t until I had a croissant for lunch that I realized I was just hungry. Or at least carb deprived. After lunch I still ached all over, but I had the energy to finish out the day with a smile. I even made quesadillas for dinner that night with the tortillas I’d found in the exotic food aisle of the grocery store.
Still, I have revised my opinion just as the job is coming to an end. It’s not always hard work, but neither is it easy; instead it merely depends. We’ll be spending a week in Baye, however, with no moving or locks of which to speak. After that it’s back the way we came, so literally all downhill from here. I don’t anticipate any noteworthy adventures, but I’ll let you know if they occur. Otherwise, that just about covers all of the boat moving drama, and yet there is plenty that happens when the boat is still that brings just as much to bear. Alas, you’ll have to wait another day for that, but I promise none of the other posts will be quite this long!
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