We're not sure how it can be that each "Florida season" seems to pass by more quickly each year. It seems as though we just got to St. Petersburg, but in less than 4 weeks (April 14) we depart for France and 5 1/2 months aboard C.A.R.I.B. III. At the moment, our intent is that this will be our final European cruising season, so our first "go" at a proposed cruising route, shown in the map below, was created with that in mind.
Our barge spent the winter in the town of Toul (circled in blue on the map above). Ideally, getting the boat systems up and going, cleaning, and provisioning won't take us more than a couple of weeks. That, and favorable water conditions, will hopefully have us cruising by the beginning of May. We'll depart Toul and head east briefly on the Moselle River to join up with the Canal de la Marne au Rhin Est at Nancy. We'll take that canal as far as Strasbourg, then turn around and head back toward Toul. From Toul we'll work our way west and north in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, with the goal of ending our boating season moored in the Dutch city of Rotterdam with a "For Sale" sign. Our return to Florida is currently scheduled for September 30.
The proposed route includes some canal sections we've been on in previous summers, but it has a lot of new-to-us waterways as well. As always, circumstances can change, and with that, routing may have to change as well.
Most of our summers have included "end of season" travel somewhere off the boat. Last year it was Kenya and the Netherlands/Luxembourg, the year before it was Greece, and so on. This year we aren't planning an extra trip in August or September. Because of the strong possibility that we'll be prepping the boat for sale, we decided that it would be wiser to keep our time as flexible as possible. We'll go on those other adventures when we're no longer boating for months each year.
Now to get a bit more French vocabulary in hand before we leave . . .
