The first month of the Summer Cuise - 2007
with the subtitle
The battle of the knob – July 2007

Dear all

Just a little “hello” from Monteceau-les-Mines, about 450 navigating km from Paris and 118 locks, 106 going up – 12 going down. We have been on the following waterways: Seine, Canal du Loing, Canal de Briare, Canal Latéral à Loire and now we are on Canal du Centre.

Last year we were here too – sailing in the opposite direction. The weather has been “half” of last year 17 degree this year against 34 degree last year. There has been some days with sun, but most cloudy and some with rain. But we have been lucky only to have a few showers during our navigation.

We have been navigating through beautiful landscapes and less beautiful, we have seen a lot of “naked” dead trees – maybe put there to remind us about the global heating J.

This year we have chosen to navigate fewer hours per day in order to visit many small charming villages.

We have not taken many pictures from the canals, we did that last year. But we have seen that each village has got their own design of the street lamps.

This year we have met a lot of huge boats, which makes it more difficult to find a mooring place in small harbours. In the middle of June there was a dyke collapse on the canal from Digoin to Roanne. A distance of 15 km was emptied of water; a lot of boats were captured in the mud and at the wrong side of the collapse. They are now in Roanne at a dead end of the canal. Perhaps they have to stay there for months. We are sending our sympathy to RUDA (Wicky and Lee - people we know from Arsenal) they are “prisoners” in Roanne.

Canal du Centre don’t look too “healthy” at many stretches but we hope it will keep the water inside a few days more till we have left it J

On the Canal du Loing we saw that there “should be” a nice harbour in Nemours next to a lock. It was a small pontoon with space for one boat and it was taken by “a permanent” boat. The lockkeeper came running after us with a smile and asked us if would like to continue to the next mooring place. It was a quay with space for 5 boats, nice place but only ONE KNOB (see picture) in the middle of the quay. We were first so we moored really tight and close to this knob.  Just as we started our supper a hotel boat – with 8 passengers arrived. The captain came to our boat and said: “I need the knob to moor at – please move your boat backwards” – we had to share the knob, find the spires and peg us down – and afterwards eating the cold supper L

When leaving Decize we had a little panic. Jytte walked to the first lock (high) to take the ropes. When NUSER sailed into the lock Rudy realised that there was no cooling water. He rushed down to stop the motor – he thought every thing has broken down. A Danish boat, Flamingo, helped us back to our “old” pontoon. The problem was that some thing had closed for the water intake. It was fixed and after that  - no problems.

So we are having a great time. We have met some péniches in narrow parts of the canal, but every time with no damage, only once we hit something at the bottom.

All together a nice and cosy Summer Cruise up till now.

We wish everybody a good summer 2007.

Love from

Jytte og Rudy

Montceau-les-Mines
4th of July 2007

Updated the 04.07.2007