Friday 15
July – Sillery to Variscourt – 42 kilometres, 14 locks, 7 hours 30 minutes
Lovely
weather, lovely scenery, great, free, unserviced pleasure boat mooring largely
taken up by a commercial. We managed to squeeze between their bow and a group
of fishing persons who would not budge an inch for us.
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| Claire waving goodbye as we cruise past Serenity |
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| The start of the main marina at Reims |
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| Eeek! |
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| Note fisherpersons off our bow. This is a halte fluviale... |
Saturday 16
July –Variscourt to Lock 11 Nanteuil near Barby – 31 kilometres, 5 locks, 5
hours 30 minutes.
Ditto for the
previous day but much nicer mooring.
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| Lovely |
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| Peaceful mooring. |
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| After all that hard work some sustenance was needed. |
Sunday 17
July – Lock 11 Nanteuil to Attigny – 23 kilometres, 5 locks, 4 hours 30
minutes.
Rode into
Rethel to do some shopping before our departure – should rather have left our
mooring at 08h45, moored in Rethel,
shopped, and departed but the ride was interesting albeit it cost an extra
hour. Port diesel pump leaking badly so spent quite some time cruising on one
engine – takes a bit of getting used to! A stunning day nevertheless topped off
by having Austin and Susi Robinson from the American flagged cruiser Freshwater on board for sundowners.
Monday 18
July Attigny to Neuville-Day (Lock 20) – 9.5 kilometres, 9 locks, 3 hours 15
minutes. A very warm day but eventually a really gorgeous mooring all to
ourselves. And now diesel dripping at a fast rate from the starboard lift pump –
gunge from the pre-filter?
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| Great mooring |
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| Abandoned pub. |
Tuesday 19
July – Neuville-Day to Le Chesne – 6.5 kilometres, 19 locks, 4 hours 50
minutes.
Temperatures
up to 36C so hard work for Lynn and thank goodness we took two days to do the
staircase. Used our ‘misters’ (http://www.themistingcompany.co.za/) for the
first time to great effect.
The next day we arranged for a mechanic from the
local garage to have a look at the leaking engines. Try as he would he could
not do anything about the diesel pump leak and suggested that we have someone
at the boatyard in Pont-a-Bar have a look at it. He cleaned out the pre-filters
and managed to swop out the lift pump which, sure enough, had a gunge-jammed diaphragm
which was causing it to leak. After three hours of sweating in the bilges he
went back to his workshop, returned with a cut-in-half 10 litre plastic
container which fitted snugly under the diesel pump and suggested that we
collect the diesel and pour it back into the tank through a fine mesh. For his
efforts he charged us €50 – a bargain!
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| The road out of town |
Thursday 21
July – La Chesne to Pont-a-Bar to Sedan – 41 kilometres, 10 locks, 7 hours 40
minutes plus 40 minutes spent in Pont-a-Bar.
A gentle
cruise to Pont-a-Bar despite being chased down by a pair of Dutch flagged
cruisers going at full revs along this already damaged canal
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| Canal repairs |
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| Free mooring without services just before the Sedan marina |
but we lost them just after the tunnel as they had to wait for the lights to change in their favour. The mechanic at Pont-a-bar (nice guy and knowledgeable) said that the diesel pump needed to come out and be sent to a specialist for repairs but that we could continue on two engines and sieve the caught fuel back into the tank without any problem.
Arriving in
Sedan at last we saw a large section of pontoon vacant (unusually) despite two
cruisers being tied up against the wall in preference to the pontoon. It has been a long time since we have
been on a river and the gentle following wind and unnoticed following current
conspired against us as we turned to port to glide into our mooring. Suddenly
going sideways at a rate of knots I could only grit my teeth as we hit the
pontoon broadside on, finding the only protruding stainless bolt-head in its 30
metre length which duly took a sizeable chunk out of our side. And there we
were, pinned but safe – welcome to Sedan!
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| Don't you love people who do this? Unoccupied during our stay. |
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| Sedan Port de Plaisance - pic taken the next day after we had moved forward on the pontoon. |
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