Departure day from St Jean de Losne was Thursday 28 March and the day dawned bright and clear. The weather has been terrific for the last week or so and now is not only sunny but also warming up. We have seldom used the pot belly stove for the last couple of weeks and have re-programmed the central heating down by degrees. We had enjoyed a farewell dinner and Jan’s birthday at Giles’ L’Amiral restaurant a couple of nights before and fortunately had a day to recover from his largesse.

On this lovely sunny spring day we had only two jobs to do after casting off all the attachments to the shore (power, water, phone), they being to hoist the scooter aboard at the entrance to the ecluse and then to stop at the fuel barge to take on some 450 litres of white fuel before heading off down river to St Symphorien and the lock that ushers you into the Canal Saone Rhine.

We had decided to head off in the direction of Strasbourg and to see how far we could explore this little used canal before having to turn around and retrace our steps back to St Jean and then up the Burgundy Canal to Dijon to pick up Gillian Ragus, our first visitor of the new season. We had of course had David and Judith Reed together with their daughter Jennifer on board during February, but that was considered part of the winter period rather than the now burgeoning spring / summer / autumn season.

On this canal lies Besancon, once a Spanish town. That surprised us since it is well north of the centre of France, but such were the borders of Europe during the period 1,000 to 1700 that parts of these countries often changed hands with wars or marriages as the cause. Much of the canal is based on the Doubs River which sometimes provides the waterway and sometimes runs parallel to it. It is a fierce river when carrying the run-off from the spring thaw of the snow in Switzerland and northern France but at this time of the year it is reasonably slow flowing. This will be important when we get to Besancon as when we drove to the town to check out moorings we found the river flowing at about 6-7km per hour in the centre of town, too fast for comfort.

This time of the year was also immediately before Easter and we had been warned that it was likely the locks would be closed until the 7^th of April but our Finnish friends Ula and Olieboy had called the VNF in Dole who had insisted it was open. We also called up and were satisfied that all would be OK.

We drew away from the fuelling barge with our friends John and Jan waving frantically, all of us wondering where and when we would meet again. Into the 3 kmh current, Van Nelle forged ahead with little effort and we turned the corner of the Saone leading to the entry lock just before the time we had elected, 10.00am.

As we arrived at the lock we saw through the open doors that another boat was already inside. Since the ecluses are only 38.5m long and we are 27m, that leaves only 11.5m for other craft. I pointed this out to the eclusier who was unconcerned, unlike the occupants of the other boat as we towered over them on our approach into the lock. It turned out they were only 9m long so we had a whole 2.5m clearance for the stern of Van Nelle, their bow and the distance between us. With some helpful coaching to the occupants of the other boat, a very black woman and a very white man, they were able to hold their rental boat fairly still and avoid banging the lock gates or us. They preceded us for the balance of the morning until they stopped for the chap to do a spot of fishing. We passed by and continued through to Belvoye where we stopped for the night.

I have begun to refer to the shiny white, hire and private cruisers as ‘fenders’ (those objects used to cushion boats from unwanted contact with hard and rough surfaces) as they will fulfil that purpose in the hands of the unskilled hiring community as we come together in close situations. Our 50 or so tonnes of iron and steel will be well protected by the crumple rates of such lightly built boats handled by people who seem incapable of holding a straight course. We saw a boat approach us in the canal later, where we had stopped for the afternoon and night, performing the most unbelievable changes of direction and almost but not quite, hitting each side of the canal as it rapidly tacked down the length of the bief (area between locks). We were sure it would bounce off us as it went past but it straightened for that time and avoided us, and our ire.

We had decided that our cruising this year would not be at the same frenetic pace that we had adopted last year. The countryside was brilliant from St Symphorien through to Dole but especially for this first day of cruising in the new year. The change of scenery, the accompanying bird songs, the slow movements of the cattle and the slowly changing scenes of grand chateaux and rustic barns, was a great way to start this new year of travel and exploration.

We accompanied the hire boat for the next three locks until we reached the one inevitably closed for lunch and we tied to stakes, manfully beaten into the bank by the first mate - Maureen. The black and white team then stopped for some recreational fishing and we continued on to our overnight mooring, just past a huge cement factory. We were fortunately just around the corner from the bellowing, smoky place, at a spot market as an ‘aire du picque-nic’. It is not a great site for the same in our estimation as it is lined with rusting hulks and is still within earshot of the factory cum mine cum power station. Our mooring, a little further along, was on the side of a toilet seat manufactory, a number of seemingly abandoned buildings and the home to a large community of curious cats. I think they all came aboard during the night for a bit of an inspection.

We finished the day walking up to the nearby town, a couple of kilometres uphill, to find and absence of romance among the modern shops and supermarkets of this village. School came out as we passed on our way back to the boat and the sound of primary school children meeting their parents who were waiting to take them home, split the quiet air with Easter joy. Their school was festooned with bright pictures of Easter, clearly visible to the passing traffic through the school room windows.

The night was peaceful and quite quiet despite the proximity of the factories and we barbecued some chops and sausages, enjoyed a couple of beers and a glass or two of the latest cheap red - a Minervois - and so to bed.

Friday started quite early as we both woke before seven and so started preparations for our rendezvous at the next ecluse at 1000. The boat was doing everything right, engines and systems all working fine. We had only three or four locks to Dole, a large town in this region and one with a pretty port de plaisance, so we set off before 10.00 and arrived at about 11.30. The country we passed through was a mixture of wide open rural scenes, bordered with slight hills on which was the occasional grand chateau, and some more mechanized scenes as we passed under huge motorways and railway bridges.

The canal in this area is narrow and, since it is not used for commercial traffic, not repaired to the same level as the more popular or populous ones. It has some very narrow corners and I thought forward a couple of weeks to the time we will be returning and wondered what it will be like infested with ‘fenders’, the pretty white hire boats of the Nicholls fleet. We will find out I’m sure. I also thought about the phone call we had as we were leaving St Jean. Marcus Leguijt called to advise he was on his way by car to Lyon to pick up his boat, left there at the start of winter, and to bring it back to Holland (sorry, the Netherlands) with his father-in-law as crew. They plan to use the Rhine to get back quickly so we will have to pass en-route. We made plans to keep in touch and to party on contact.

Meanwhile we arrived in Dole and took some time to moor the boat securely against the shallow and very sloping sided wall opposite the floating pontoons of the town port de plaisance where the finger wharves are far too small for Van Nelle. This has it’s advantages since it lets us off the financial hook of the cost of mooring at the port. We quickly noticed our black and white friends of the first day, and right across the road from us, an enormous and elaborate fair ground, filled with side show alley attractions.

The fair was strangely quiet and remained that way for the day, the night and all the next day. It seemed strange to us to have their capital tied up for so long during the holiday weekend without any activity, save the children of the show families playing in the dust around the rides and games. At the extreme end of the fair is ‘trailer city’ where all the showmen and women have their caravans, their washing, cooking and children - oops - forgot, and the dogs. We have since been to the Tourist Office to find out that it will open tonight (Saturday) and will go for the balance of Easter.

After a bicycle ride through the city’s sporting ground behind us and along the tow path to the next lock, we reversed our direction to investigate the huge shopping area on the opposite bank to the city and back in the direction from which we had come. It was a biggy with a giant Geant and surrounding hardware and other stores. We of course had to worship at the temple of Brico and thereby bought some fly screen material to cover windows later in the season when the odd mozzie gets an urge to feast at ‘chez McDaniell’. Maureen also found the volcanic rock that turns the empty cage of the barbecue into an efficient griller. We retired for pizza and beer on the boat, since right next to us is moored a floating, wood fired pizzeria. Another early night gazing at the spectacular church that dominates the skyline and is fantastically lit at night.

This is a very pretty place and one worth exploring as the historic centre of the town has been preserved as a medieval walking space, now filled with opulent boutiques, magasins de cadeaux and restaurants. Dole also boasts the birthplace of Louis Pasteur whose birth house is preserved as a tanning and Pasteur museum (his father was a tanner). Tanneries line the edge of the watercourse that is diverted into the town from the river Doubs which flows fulsomely right in front of rows of medieval timbered houses and ateliers (workshops).

The markets are open in full on Saturday mornings, covering the square and the places in front and around the church, adjacent to covered markets which open every day to sell foodstuffs. Outside, the market place is for cheap jeans and ladies underwear, trinkets, haberdashery and knick-knacks. Interesting and colourful.

The restaurants here are also wonderful and varied, many specializing in the regional specialities and using fresh local produce. Roasts and thick stews of rabbit, beef and chicken are washed down with Burgundian red and white wines and are followed by the rich and fantastically decorated pastries and chocolates that are on display in many shop fronts. Many of the restaurants entreat you to dine in or take away ‘plats de emporter’, an alternative to BYO perhaps and a great way to have a feast on the deck of the boat in warmer weather without the formality of the restaurant scene.

Maureen found and bought some local pate-en-croute and jambon persile for lunch which was accompanied with the bitingly delicious local lemon cordial and fresh round bread, with salted butter of course.

This afternoon we will visit the Mediateque, housed in a big and very beautiful 17^th century building, this being a showcase of audiovisual and written records of the city. We will also explore the city museum, seen once before on a car trip but filled with a rich array of art and archeology. It’s a good day for indoor pursuits as the sky has taken on a slight overcast and the temperature has failed to rise much since morning.

Well, the Mediateque turned out to be a bit of a damp squib as it was really just a library with a couple of PCs connected to their data base. Mind you, it’s a very nice library but not as ‘tech’ as we expected so we moved on to the Musee de Beaux Arts which we had been to before, but on a quick visit.

The Musee has a very good range of paintings and sculpture by a surprisingly well known collection of ‘masters’ and we took our time to explore all the rooms and exhibits. Among the wide range of styles and ages, including many gloomy religious works, were some really stunning pieces. A huge picture of Napoleon’s army retreating from Russia featuring an obviously spent and dispirited officer sitting on the flank of his expired horse, one of his boots missing and the long line of soldiers behind him, dragging their weary bodies through the snow back to France. I have forgotten the numbers but they were something like 400,000 troops went to Russia as part of La Grande Armee but only some 40,000 returned. The Russian policy of scorched earth and the ravages of winter defeated the great force and this was expertly recorded in this painting.

There is a section with the more modern impressionists including Picasso, Lautrec, Van Gogh and others. This section also was stunning and kept me involved for much longer than I had expected. On the way out, down the grand staircase I also came across a whole collection of exquisite paintings and statues of female nudes with the ages of the pieces going back 200 years and reflecting a wide range of subjects from legend to modern opera.

On our return to the boat we noticed a duckling which had obviously become separated from its mother and siblings. Crying plaintively it swam back and forth the length of the port before disappearing downstream towards the barrage. Some days later, on our return journey through Dole we noticed the duckling’s mother was reduced to 5 ducklings from her original 7. That’s the way of nature. Unfortunately we were unable to do anything about the orphan we saw as it was well out of reach and we had no way of catching it.

That night we attended the fair and chose a four story, walk through, chamber of horrors as our entertainment. It consisted of narrow passages with moving floors, blacked out passages and mechanical spiders etc. It was great fun to abandon adult gravitas and just laugh through this rather childish fun palace as we had on the bumper cars and shooting gallery at the fair in Brazey-en-Plaine a couple of weeks before.

Sunday saw us packing a picnic to take by bicycle to a part of the river we could not get to by boat. This was a branch of the river that flowed over a large barrage, all of it running along the camping and sports area of Dole. There were a few other wanderers including a man and his 4 yo boy who waded across the barrage to a couple of the little islands standing along the dam. It looked pretty dangerous and certainly something that would be prohibited in Australia but the two explorers made it out and back, the young boy enjoying his ride on his dad’s neck.

During the picnic we had a call from Marcus and Els who advised that they were now not doing the same canal and therefore we would not have the chance to meet them on their trip back to the Netherlands. This was a great disappointment as we had been looking forward to renewing our friendship since they left St Jean in November for Lyon. I agonised about it for some time before coming up with the solution. We would take a taxi to St Jean to pick up our car which we would drive to Pontailler, their next stop. There we would pick them up and bring them to Dole for a night on the town and an overnight stay on Van Nelle. We would take them back to their boat the next morning after breakfast and return the car to the ancien ecluse before getting a taxi back to Dole and continuing on our way. Expensive but fun. We called them and they agreed so we packed up the remnants of our picnic and headed back to the boat to make arrangements. We soon had a taxi at the car park and were on our way.

The taxi driver turned out to be a bonus as she spoke quite good English, allowing us to practise our French with her as she corrected our verbs. This worked both on the way to St Jean and the next day on the return as we booked her for both trips. As the drive was something approaching 30 minutes each way she had a bonus as well, since the weekend was turning out to be slow for her business.

All worked well and we picked up Marcus and Els and Hout, their tiny dog, which was given a stern warning by Maureen as it had bitten her in November. Hout behaved very well for the next 24 hours as we made our way to Van Nelle, settled our guests in and then headed off to dinner at the Templiers Restaurant with them. This being Easter the restaurant had devised a special (more expensive) menu for that night and we dined on sumptuous local specialities and wines. I really must keep good notes of the meals and wines we have while out at restaurants but it seems too onerous at the time to work, while we are enjoying the cuisine.

Templiers is a very smart and efficient, but friendly place, which has an air of formality among the starched white table cloths that are placed on various sized tables distributed under medieval arches in what could have been a feasting hall or dungeons, given the stone walls and high arched ceilings supported by spidery stone pillars. The owners and staff are courteous and helpful with suggestions about the best wines (and not the most expensive) to compliment the foods chosen from the 6 course menu. We were all in very casual dress but that didn’t faze them as it does in some (to be avoided) restaurants in Paris. We had a mixture of foods including fish, lamb and pork main courses, all beautifully cooked and sauced and arranged ‘a la’ nouvelle cuisine. The wines were young local whites (quite acidic with a taste of resin) and reds (soft, fruity and quite light) after starting the meal with an aperitif of a wine liqueur made by distilling wine to a spirit and blending it back into a sweet wine.

We headed back to the boat and went to bed early as we all had journeys to make on the morrow. By 1100 we were heading back to St Jean from Pontailler, having dropped our two Dutch friends back at their boat ‘ST53' aka ‘Something Else’ and at 1200 the lady taxi driver picked us up for the return to Van Nelle. We spent the afternoon reading rather than cruising and had a BBQ before heading to bed to rest for the next day’s adventure.

A quick trip to the supermarket in the morning preceded our departure to Ranchon, a place we had picked out on our recce by car. This is a small town with a lovely quai for pleasure boats in a narrow section of the canal. We were lucky and on arrival were the only boat there. That did not last, as by the evening there was a 27m luxemotor tied alongside us and two ‘fenders’ (white cruisers) at the end of the quai. We had enjoyed the cruise to Ranchon as it takes you through really beautiful countryside through a narrow and winding canal which, from time to time, gets quite shallow. We met a loaded barge heading towards Dole and went crunching over the loose gravel bank as we slipped past its huge bulk.

One of the key reasons for staying a couple of days at Ranchon was a restaurant we had discovered on the main road a couple of kilometres before the town. When we drove past, it’s ‘car’ park was full of huge trucks, some 30 or 40 of them. Any time you see a restaurant with a full car park, especially if the vehicles are trucks, it means you have found a place of exceptional quality and value. We had decide we would lunch at the restaurant on our return and so on arrival we unshipped the bikes and headed back to make a reservation for tomorrow’s lunch. We had a couple of beers and chatted to a lady who had recognised us from a visit she had made to St Jean some months before. She thought we had a small dog - actually it was Marcus and Els’s ‘Hout’ that had accompanied us all to a waterfront café where the woman had been drinking with friends months before. Our luncheon booking made and beers consumed, we headed back to Van Nelle

The next morning, in order to work up an appropriate appetite for what turned out to be a large meal, we turned up the scrapers and sandpaper and stripped back the front of the wheelhouse in order to re-varnish it’s sun and ice affected coverage. In a couple of hours we had stripped, sanded and applied the first three coats of Deks Ole No 1 varnish and a coat of the No 2 to the timber. We washed and dressed in our cleanest dirty jeans and set off on our bikes for the Restaurant de la Maritime. On arrival we were ushered towards the dining room, all pretty with table cloths and nice tableware. We were having none of that and insisted, to the amazement of the portly woman maitre’d, on going into the laminex wonderland that was the adjacent truckers dining area.

Maureen was the only woman in the room which was filled with some 30 or 40 burly truckers, and perhaps it was her presence that kept the noise and behaviour subdued, but no-one complained. The menu was four courses with several choices in each. We chose Oeufs Mayonnaise and Charcuterie - both huge entrees, followed by Coq au Vin and Filet de Dinde with Frites and Choufleur. These generous plats principale were followed by the plat du fromage and then dessert, pastries and fresh salad de fruits. All this was washed down by a litre and a half of ‘Le Vin Rouge’. The whole cost 27 Euros or $A46 - for two !

We waddled out to our bikes as the truckers headed off to all points European and we wove our way back down the tow path to welcome two Swiss men on the beautiful luxemotor Baron de L’Ecluse, which we invited to tie up beside us, a manoeuvre that was inevitably followed by drinks on their boat. Four people from Basle in Switzerland own the boat which was to be kept at St Jean. On board at the time were retired art teacher Ulrich Boni and maritime entrepreneur Beat Heydricht, who had a supply of crisp white wine from Switzerland.

M and I had been very surprised on our visit to Lausanne and Montreaux to find huge vineyards lining the roads to those Swiss cities. We had tried some of the product at an Italian restaurant in Montreaux and had brought some back to St Jean, now here was another opportunity to broaden our tasting experience. We exchanged the favour with a South African white after which both boats were inspected by each other’s crews. The next morning I delivered fresh baguettes to them and adjusted their lines as we were amazingly passed by another loaded peniche. That I had to take pictures of, since it was improbable that these three barges would be able to fit side-by-side in the canal at the same time. Somehow it all worked and shortly after, Baron de L’Ecluse and two of it’s owners steamed off - direction Dole. We left soon after - direction Besancon.

Actually we had chosen a place called Thoraise which boasted a pontoon, aire de pique nic and a couple of Chateaux. At the end of the short stretch of canal after the ecluse leading into this attractive dell was a tunnel which we would have to navigate the next morning. As we arrived in the lock we noticed a couple of people fishing on the pontoon and as the lock filled I went ashore to explain that we would be occupying their fishing spot for the night. They accepted this news happily and moved off to an area further up the canal as we manoeuvred Van Nelle against the pontoon and tied up for the night. A quick check of the mooring and we took the bikes off to investigate why the commercial peniche that we had been following was now seemingly stuck in the end of the tunnel ahead.

We rode up the tow path and through the tunnel to discover that they had stopped and tied up with their stern in the tunnel and the front 7/8ths of the barge out in the turn-around that confronts you as you leave the sous-terrain (tunnel). Just big enough for a 38m barge to take the absolute 90 degree right hand turn, this section of the canal is another challenge for boats like us without a bow thruster. If you get the angle of departure from the tunnel wrong, you end up ingloriously hard against a rock wall, pushing with boat hooks to give your vessel enough room to continue turning. However, that challenge was for the next morning, right now we wanted to know why the boat had stopped, whether it would be there for long, and why the VNF and the Gendarmes were there.

The rather formidable wife of the skipper explained in broken English (as they were Dutch) that they had seen rocks falling as they approached the end of the tunnel and had stopped short to investigate with a camera. She had discovered a number of youths throwing large pieces of rock into the canal at the end of the tunnel from high overhead and had photographed them in the act. She now wanted the Gendarmes to take the evidence and capture the culprits. We left her to it and went off to investigate the town and the Chateaux.

A steep hill climb on the bikes made somewhat easier by our bike’s 21 gears had us at the top of the village to find no useful shops but a salon for ladies hair and a Mairie that opened occasionally. Some council workers were cutting down the only grand looking tree in the village square so we went on to the gates of Chateau Thoraise. Unfortunately the place was shuttered and barred but we saw enough to be impressed. This is a grand residence with commanding views and cultured walks through home fields littered with ancient trees and arbors. The turrets and vaulted windows add to the splendour of the symmetrical architecture and one can vividly imaging the ladies with low cut, long silk gowns carrying their song birds and lutes to a shady spot as the men in hose and doublet watch their falcons preen, waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting dove.

We let the brakes off and rode like the wind, back down the hill to the grotto in which we would spend the night. As the sun set, the few people sitting in this delightful spot gathered up their belongings and children and wandered off to hidden cars and their homes. We lit the oven for a roast New Zealand leg of lamb for dinner and popped the cork on a local red wine to accompany it.

The next day we expected to make Besancon and so set off reasonably early as we needed to investigate various mooring options on our arrival. During this phase of the cruise we used a mixture of manual locks served by eclusiers of both sexes and the ‘telecommand’, a little battery powered transmitter that operated the automatic locks. This device seemed to be varied in it’s performance as sometimes it would trip the electronic switch at more than 100 metres and sometimes not until we were some 30 metres distance. This made us somewhat cautious on our approaches to the ecluses as Van Nelle is easier to handle while moving than at a dead stop, especially in cross winds. On our voyage to Besancon we also had to pass through some narrow passages, bridges, garde locks and channels, some which curved or deviated mid-stream. For these, the best approach is the slowest, and M stood by with a tyre on a rope in case part of the boat came too close to the stone edges. We survived without noticeable ‘adventure marks’, as the scuffing is called.

We arrived at Besancon at about 1.00pm and took the left channel through the loop of the town to the main quai in the centre, rather than the right channel through the tunnel that cuts off the town. This was a bit of a gamble as when we had reconnoitred the moorings, the river current was quite strong, and if it had remained that way we would have an uneasy night. We passed the place where our Swiss friends had moored, adjacent to the lock under the walls of the citadel, the fortress that has guarded this city for hundreds of years, and cruised slowly around the loop to the quai. There were no other boats and the onlookers on both sides of the river, looking down from the high embankments, were amused to see a boat appear and moor, right in the heart of the town. For the next couple of days we became a focal point for tourists with cameras and young passers by who use the area as a recreation and drinking spot. Fortunately we suffered no inconvenience from the mostly good humoured girls and boys who passed by and who often called out various comments to us about the boat or encouraging us in our meals. One young girl stood looking at Van Nelle for some time and then put her thumb out as a hitch hiker would. I wondered how serious she might have been.

We walked through the old sections of Besancon that afternoon and the next morning before we departed for adventures further up current. This city is a centre of watch making and many shops concentrate of watches and clocks. This was an opportunity to get the batteries changed in our two watches as Maureen’s had stopped months before and mine would certainly stop soon if I ignored this chance. As other shops in Reims had been unable to get the back off M’s watch we wondered if they could here and if they would re-pressurise the watches for deep diving conditions. They could have it done they explained but it would take up to five days - obviously a job for specialists in some other location. We opted for the 9 euro battery change only and would chance the water tightness of the current seals.

Besancon was a Spanish town in the sixteen hundreds and was ‘liberated’ to the French by one of the King Louis - I believe the 14^th - the Sun King himself. It has little Spanish influence now but it does boast an extensive ‘old town’ that has been preserved, as so many European centres have. These are a joy to walk though and a great place to take in the changes of architecture and building in the various quarters of the town. Timbered buildings with bulging walls and overhanging second floors seem to defy gravity as they continue into their 4^th or 5^th hundred year of useful existence. Grand stone buildings are now museums or Hotels de Ville and there are the galleries, museums, grand bridges and boulevards, all are here for the eyes of the traveller. And there are many travellers. As one walks through the towns you can pick up the conflicting cadences of different national languages, obviously French, but also American, German, English and Italian. Many young people are here in the towns, travelling cheap or studying in the Lycees and Universities that have taught for hundreds of years.

We spent some time in the Musee de Beaux Arts in Besancon and were rewarded by a rich collection of art, both ancient and modern the most striking being those of Cezanne and Matisse and grand historic pictures together with the more sombre religious works. They also have many pictures showing major historical events, such as the sieges of the principal nearby towns by successive armies, these leading to the ultimate unification of France as we now know it. M noticed one of the ‘Crossing of the Rhine by Louis 14^th’ where the banners leading the troops were one of white, one of red and one of blue. Perhaps these merged into the symbol of French nationality - the tricolore- just as the towns and regions did to make up La Belle France of today.

After leaving Besancon and heading further north east I did a regular engine check and discovered a couple of small leaks that I suspected had begun after having had substantial work done in St Jean. Rather than allowing them to prey on my mind and possibly increase, we turned around just north of the city and returned through the tunnel and back to Thoraise on the way back to St Jean.

This day was Maureen’s birthday so a special effort was made on arrival at Thoraise’ leafy glade that we had enjoyed a couple of days before. Our last bottle of L’Amiable Grand Cru Champagne was chilled, wild flowers picked and presented, presents opened and a special meal prepared. We sat up and enjoyed the location and the occasion. While in preparation for the repast, a large converted peniche came through the lock. I inquired if they wished to join us at the pontoon and was brusquely brushed off by a very bossy British woman who indicated that they were on their way to a much better spot, and they passed by. ‘Potagoo’ was the name of the barge and I guess that’s an indication of what holds it and her crew together.

The next morning I took the first swim of the season - unintentionally. We prepared to leave Thoraise by first operating the electronic device at the lock which rewarded us by beginning it’s operations to automatically let us in. Meanwhile we normally use the substantial boat hooks found on these boats to gently push us off the pontoon and line us up with the ecluse but on this occasion I used a thinner, shorter pole since the amount of push needed was not great. Unfortunately I put it against an insubstantial ledge of the pontoon and it slipped as I was extended and I found myself unbalanced and heading for the gap between boat and pontoon. I made an instant decision to leap for the pontoon and changed it in mid flight with the result that I landed in about a metre and a half or so of water. I was back on Van Nelle within seconds, using a tyre that was hung off the side as a ladder and I swiftly stripped my wet clothes off, put the boat in gear and made for the lock. It was at that stage that I realised that some interested passers by were approaching to take a better look at this boat going into a lock - if they did they would get a shock. I needed some clothes urgently which Maureen, still in a state of shock rushed off to get me. I was shortly thereafter clothed and VN was safely in the ecluse. It was all a bit sudden and silly and shows just how easy it is for these events to happen. On this occasion it was funny but in other circumstances.... I have a bruise on a rib to remind me.

We made Dole that day and enjoyed a quiet night before departing the next day for St Jean de Losne where, after having to take lunch in the penultimate ecluse, we arrived back in the ancien ecluse at around 3.00pm. Home again ? On the way I arranged for a conference with Phillipe, the maintenance director of H2O, for the next morning regarding the engine and was satisfied that a course of action was suitable after discussions with he and Charles, the senior director of the company. The outcome of that issue came some days later, after the local Baudouin engine expert, his offsider, Phillipe and Charles all arrived on board shortly after 8.00am for a look at the leaks and caught me still in bed. Once joined in the engine room, the expert was somewhat dismissive of my concerns regarding oil leaks as these engines apparently all leak to some extent. The slight coolant leak he said could be fixed simply with an additive and the other issues should just be monitored. Additive is ordered for the following Monday when I will exchange the coolant for distilled water and additive, and run the engine hot for some time to have it take effect. We will see what this does.

So. We are back in St Jean and over the next couple of days we have been back to Dijon to recce the port and to catch up with John and Jan and we have planned another dinner at L’Amiral for Saturday - tonight. We have a couple of weeks still before Gill arrives, which we will spend doing the bits and pieces of painting, engine jobs and manufacturing mosquito proof nets for the various window and skylights we open in summer to keep this big boat cool.

Well the next three weeks were pretty uneventful. I spent much of the first and second week preparing the engine for a new treatment to eliminate leaks and then administering the treatment, mostly just a matter of draining coolant and replacing it with Holt’s Soudure Bloc Moteur, then emptying it and refilling it with the same after receiving the new thermostat.

In all this maintenance (why didn’t we do it over the winter period ?) we also found that the engine temperature gauge is very accurate measured against a thermometer on the engine head. We can now run the engine a lot warmer than it has been to date as a result of the new thermostat and trust in the gauges. To test and make the Soudure do it’s work we needed to run the motor and did so on some little cruises up the river.

The final week before heading off to Dole to pick up Gill Ragus, our next guest, we decided to do some painting. That turned out to be - repaint the entire ship. Cabin tops, wheelhouse roof, decks, parts of the hull and the black and white trim running the length of Van Nelle. Why did we start this ? Anyway, the ship looks brand new and hopefully the paint will cure hard soon. These paints seem to take ages to cure to a walk on hardness.

Also during this time, Maureen struggled with netting to make mozzie screens for some of the skylights and port holes. This proved to be a thankless and difficult task which has not yet reached completion.

We arranged a "Happy Hour for Boaties" during the period to which about a dozen, mostly new arrivals, turned up. Tall tales and true were told over a few beers in the spring sunshine on the Quai Nationale.

Towards the end of the three weeks we had a couple of little car issues, like the drivers seat breaking free of its bolts and being replaced in half an hour from the local car scrapyard. One of the immobiliser activating devices has also decided to kark it. Thankfully we have a second which continues to operate the doors and ignition. In trying to fix the other I discovered I had left the electrical tester on for some weeks, so it was flat and needed a new battery. It’s never straight forward when it comes to minor repairs - there always seems to be something that needs fixing before the original problem can be tackled. Why is that ?

Our neighbour, Matthew, was off to fly 747s around the world for his employer, Korean Airlines, and asked me to run their Zodiac while he was away. This is one of the larger units with a very powerful motor, full remote steering and engine controls and a semi-rigid hull, and it goes.... I took it up river to the Gare d’Eau in about 5 minutes, a distance that takes Van Nelle half an hour. While there I stopped in on David and Susan from South Australia, who are working on their boat ‘Wanderer’. Their engine just stopped on the way to St Jean just before winter and they were semi-marooned in between towns on a canal. Now they wait for May to have the engine repaired and while doing so are installing a shower, extra water tanks and doing some inevitable painting jobs.

Maureen is making yet another bed, a sort of emergency conversion for the wheelhouse settee and I have installed another fire extinguisher since some of our others (just a year old) have run below their green pressure markings and we have no time to have them re-charged here. But, apart from those little ‘make work’ items, we are ready to head out tomorrow (Friday) for the trip to Dole to pick up Gill. We made contact with her and suggested the change which has us travelling in one direction through St Jean to Dijon from where we can continue on up the Bourgogne Canal.

It is ANZAC Day today and I remember the stirring Dawn Service and City Parade we helped bring about for Albany just a year ago. All this was still a dream at that time. This is a good place to remember the ANZACS as so many of them perished in France in WWI, fighting for a Mother Country few had seen. Lest we forget !