We departed Paray-Le Mondial 9am. We are still climbing up through the locks and today did from lock 23 to 10 finishing at Chavannes . We passed through three lifting bridges into Montceau les Mines where we arrived at 1600.
A beautiful example of a canal boat in Paray
We tidied up the boat, booked in to Marina office then Rich went to find an animal park. Em & Lyn did some shopping in centre of town. Em & Lyn then went and met up with the others. It was a warm afternoon so we quickly found tables in the shade and a beer and wine and the kids had ice cream. Back to Sunday Island for dinner.
Montceau les Mines is a a lovely town, originally a mining town in 19th century . The town is now clean with modern shops, malls etc. The marina was modern and this morning we all showered and filled the boat with water.
Issy helping to steer
Thursday 12 May we departed at 9am – what a day! We went through four locks and at fifth lock met up with Emilies Dad and friend in Em’s fathers Canal boat “Harfie”.
Harfie returns
We continued together in the locks, full capacity with the two of us. We did another four locks – last lock No 1 “Ocean” – Altitude 303m.
We were told not to leave our lunch park just after “Ocean” because a yacht was stuck aground. The yacht drew 1.7m, we draw 1.4 with the keel up. We waited 30 minutes then decided to investigate rather than risking delays. Harfie went first around the stricken yacht and as we went past we offered them a line and towed them bumping along the canal floor until they were in deep water. Our Perkins 4.236 had no problems with the extra weight.
The small boat we pulled off draft 1.7m
From Lock 1 we started our descent . Descending is more manageable going though the locks.
In three hours we descended 16 locks. In total the lock count for the day was a record of 24 locks!
Amanda kept Issy & Max amused. A good skipper is required going through the locks with inches to spare (Lyn’s comment). Em is a wizard on fore deck.
These latter locks were all automatic. A couple of times we needed to call the lock keepers to free the gates.
Luckily for us there is not a lot of river traffic at the moment so we are free to maneuver. This evening we “pegged” into the bank and rafted up against Harfie for a BBQ. We put some extra lines ashore just in case
Setting lines ashore.