It's Time for Plan B

Well, that didn't take long. Only five days on the water and we need to make a significant change in our cruising plan. But first . . . 

We stayed in Gray on Sunday, July 4, with the weather forecasts promising significant rain all day and possible thunderstorms. We probably could have cruised, because although it was foggy and rainy very early that morning, it only rained for about an hour the rest of the day. 

Time for a walk and a lovely view approaching the historic
center of Gray from across the Petite Saone River.

We left Gray in a light drizzle on Monday morning, but the weather cleared pretty quickly and it was quite a nice day to be on the water. 

We're cruising through a largely rural landscape, and
that means cows

It was also "tunnel day" for us, and we were treated to a passage through the 640-meter long Tunnel de Savoyeux.

Approaching the tunnel

It wasn't bad inside. Some tunnels have
no installed lights, so we have lights on the
boat to light our way, but we didn't need the
boat lights here.

We found a nice spot for our overnight just upstream of
the tunnel exit

                         

A walk later that evening, and Lon is
standing on an observation deck above
the tunnel exit

Most of the "urban life" around these parts is just small villages. A half-mile walk from our stopping point was the village of Seveux. Archeological digs have found evidence that a settlement has existed on the site since at least Roman times, and the apparently abandoned warehouses speak to the previous involvement of the town in river commerce. These days it's rather quiet--a church, elementary school, bakery, and a rather nice looking (modern) restaurant are primarily what constitutes "downtown." It also has a chateau that is registered as a historical monument.

The Chateau de Seveux, or at least what is left of it

The weather remains unsettled, but we don't have the luxury this summer of being "fair weather boaters", so even though there was off-and-on light rain today we cruised for about 4.5 hours. This meant that most of the driving was done from inside the boat. Aside from the reduced visibility to the rear it worked out rather well.

Evidence of a well-used lock. Years of exposure to
lines from passing boats have resulted in
deep grooves worn into the lock wall

As we sat in the boat this afternoon, halfway up the Petite Saone river, listening to the rain patter on the roof and thinking about our remaining few days of cruising on the Petite Saone before transitioning to the Canal du Vosges, we received an e-mail advisory to boaters from the French inland waterways authority VNF (Voies navigables de France) that upended our plans. It seems that some of the hydraulic machinery underlying the Vosges Canal between the locks at Pont-du-Bols and Selles was damaged and resulted in the emptying of the canal between these two locks. The Vosges Canal is now closed to navigation until the problem is fixed and the section of the canal re-flooded. There is no information at this time as to exactly how long this will be. Days? Weeks? We don't have the luxury of time to sit around and wait for it all to sort itself out. So our "sort of" Plan B means that we will turn C.A.R.I.B. III around tomorrow and backtrack down the Petite Soane River as far as the town of Heuilley-sur-Saone, where we will then turn onto the Champagne et Bourgogne Canal. This is the start of an alternate route north and we'll have to make some further decisions later regarding which additional canals we'll try to use as we attempt to get to the Belgian border.

Disappointing, yes, but it could have been worse. We might have already been all the way up the Petite Soane. And as the photo below shows, it's a beautiful evening in France!