Saturday 2 July 2016.
35 kilometres, 8 locks, 1 tunnel, 8
hours including delays.
And so we head up the Meuse in sparkling
weather
and as we turn into the Canal des Ardennes near Pont-a-Bar the lock
lights are on red with two boats stuck inside. We found a (very shallow)
mooring a couple of meters from the lock and tied up and waited. It wasn’t long
before a VNF van arrived and in no time at all everything was working again.
A planned refuelling stop at the
not-very-attractive Port de Plaisance at Pont a Bar was extended as we had arrived
at 12h30 and all and sundry were enjoying lunch – so we did too!
Eventually,
350 litres richer and €451 poorer we were on our way again with gathering clouds
ahead. By the time we reached the Saint Aignan tunnel the rain had passed and
the sun was out again and we cruised blissfully down the canal which was showing
signs of some serious flood-related damage repairs.
The lovely, small, ‘wild’ mooring,
sponsored by the village of La Cassine, was full and so, with the bow nosing
the side and the stern a meter away and firmly embedded in mud, we were ‘ambushed’
by Zimbabweans Craig and Les Hunt who assisted with our mooring up – many bottles
of wine later we bid them adieu… The next morning Craig dropped off a bottle of
bubbles to say Thank You and they set off to Charleville-Meziers on their aptly
named vessel Zimbo-T. A pleasure
meeting you guys!
(Note: On leaving La Cassine there was a
newish Dutch cruiser stationery about two meters from the bank where they had
spent the night. The Zimbo’s thought that they were stuck but on passing them
we saw that they were equipped with spud poles which accounted for the lack of
mooring lines – the first time we had seen them in action on a Dutch cruiser.
For the uninitiated, a spud pole is a metal pole which can be lowered into to
mud beneath the boat to secure it in place.).
"but on passing them we saw that they were equipped with spud poles" - that's our hope/plan for these situations this year.
ReplyDeleteSpud poles are ideal in France where you have lots of free mooring places limited only by the quality of the banks. So no plank fenders against the steel shuttering and the added security of having water between your vessel and anyone who might feel the urge to come aboard for nefarious reasons. I wonder if their use would be allowed in some of the pontoon equipped ports where security might be an issue - just spud pole 1m away from the pontoon..
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