Hurry Up and Wait

The heat was back with a vengeance this week. Low 90's on Monday, July 22, topping out in the low 100's on Wednesday and Thursday, and a "cool-off" to the 90's on Friday. We tried--we really tried--to combine early departures with short cruising days so that we wouldn't have to deal with locks under a blazing sun. However, on several days events conspired to delay us unexpectedly and/or make cruising days longer than 4 hours the best of our available options.

The operating hours for the automatic locks are stated as being 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  We'd thought that perhaps we could push things a bit to get an earlier start--say, 6:30 a.m.--and if we ran into mechanical trouble with a lock we would just have to wait until 7 a.m. to get it sorted out. It turns out we were wrong on two counts.  First, the VNF turns the locks on and off remotely, so a 7 a.m. start time means that locks are totally non-functioning overnight and aren't activated until about 7:05 a.m. (as indicated by the lock signal lights.) Approaching Lock 15 at 6:45 a.m. as we left the port of Montbeliard on Monday got us nothing but 20 minutes of floating and waiting until the lock turned on. Ten minutes later we approached the bascule bridge at Courcelles and were stopped again. Many of the lift or swing bridges open automatically when a boat trips a sensor, but not this one. I called the VNF to request an opening and was told someone would be there--at 9 a.m.  So, we rested the boat against a concrete wall and cooled our heels for an hour-and-a-half.

The busy swing bridge at Courcelles. We thought the 9 a.m."appointment"

to open the bridge was a nod to rush hour traffic. Later events indicate that

that was simply the start of the work day for those particular VNF staff.

Lon making the best of our unexpected stop at the Courcelles

swing bridge. We would have preferred to have been cruising

in the cool morning hours, but time to relax with our coffee

wasn't all bad.

In early afternoon we stopped for the day on a wooden quay that was peaceful and felt like it was the middle of nowhere. The small villages of Colombier Chatelot and St-Maurice-Echelotte were actually behind the trees on the opposite side of the canal, but a walk through Colombier Chatelot in the early evening did not reveal much activity.

A Public Service Announcement by the mayor's

office of St-Maurice/Colombier: "Your dog

 cannot pick up his poop alone .  .  . Do it for him

and public spirit vis-à-vis your neighbors." Judging
by the number of "piles" we encounter on our walks,
this and similar efforts aren't having much effect.

A very short cruise the next morning got us to our mooring in the town of L'Isle sur la Doubs. Our stop in this town on our way "upstream" a month earlier didn't hold a lot of good memories for us. We were having bow thruster issues at the time, and the flaky electricity on the quay fried one of the fuses for our power inverter. After that 3-day visit we didn't want to spend more than 1 night this time around--but it was nice having shore power for our air conditioner.

What wasn't so nice in the stretches of canal approaching and leaving L'Isle sur la Doubs was the shallowness of the water and the large amount of weed that was present. We had noted the presence of weeds on our way upstream, but it's amazing how a month of little rain and warm temperatures can cause a weed "explosion." Six kilometers per hour was our usual cruising speed in the canals, but the weed and the shallow water significantly affected the efficiency of the engine and rudder, and slowed us down to less than 5 kph.

Weed infestation in the canal and shallow water were not

our friends.

The VNF was working on weed
removal in one stretch of the canal.

The weeds that were scooped up were deposited on the bank

When we left L'Isle sur le Doubs we were hoping to stop halfway between there and Baume-les-Dames so that we could avoid a 7 or 8 hour cruising day. Unfortunately, a remembered "possible" mooring turned out to be less than ideal, so we motored on.

Despite the length of the cruise, several factors made this a
 good cruising day: 3 hours of "cool" in the early morning;
 shade on Lon on the flybridge and an umbrella for

me as I worked the locks; and the fact that river cruising was

again part of the equation--going downstream gave us faster

 speeds (10 kph) and much less weeds to contend with.

Back in the Doubs valley with its towering cliffs

We stayed two nights in Baume-les-Dames. This gave us a mooring with electricity (hooray for AC at night!), kept us from having to cruise on an absolutely-miserably-hot Thursday, and gave us the time to visit the historic center of the town. On our previous stop in BLD it was also extremely hot, and we were so busy trying to track down bow thruster parts that we didn't have the time or energy to do any sightseeing.

The town of Baume-les-Dames owes its name to an abbey established there in the 9th century, in which the nuns from noble families in the region followed the order of Saint-Benoit. The historic center was charming, with many lovely old buildings.

The interior of the abbey, on which construction started in 1738. Although the religious order was wealthy, 

the ambitious project ran out of money before it was completed. The French Revolution closed

the abbey in 1791. The building was later used for "corn exchange, parties, and storage."

Today, the building is the site of events such as this art exhibition. 

In the town center of Baume-les-Dames

Monument to Claude, Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans,

inventor of the "pyroscaphe", the very first steam

boat to actually navigate.  Its first cruise

occurred in this area in 1776.

Lon being a kid again in the BLD bike park.

Decorative mailboxes on one of the old BLD buildings

Our stopping point in Baume-les-Dames. CARIB III is

the boat furthest back. 

Friday was also a very hot day.  The weather forecast for the weekend contained predictions of thunderstorms and rain starting Friday evening and continuing all weekend. We could have stayed in BLD and waited it out, but as much as we liked the town, the thought of spending up to 5 nights there wasn't too appealing. The city of Besancon was our next major destination, so we decided that 7-8 hours of cruising to get to a place with more services and touristic options was a better idea. All was fine until we got to the 2nd lock of the day about an hour into the cruise (shortly after 8 a.m.). No lights, totally non-functioning. We called the VNF help line and were told help would arrive--at the "magic" hour of 9 a.m.  It was frustrating to--again--lose out on some of the cool morning hours for cruising as we waited out the hour until help arrived.

Waiting for the VNF to arrive at Lock 41.

The rest of the cruising day went fairly well, although the flybridge shade system failed, which sent us indoors to drive. But our route kept us on the Doubs river for most of the day, which helped the kilometers to pass by fairly quickly. We were tied up in Besancon by 2:30 p.m. and have settled in for a 10-day stay. We're planning to finish exploring the city sights that we didn't get to during our prior stay here, and we'll be renting a car for a few days to allow us to travel a bit further afield for sightseeing and shopping.