Cruising Stats 2026

It's rather sad to consider that this particular blog posting could have been written over two months ago. It was definitely NOT normal for us to have been done cruising in late June. It's even sadder to look at a map that lays out the stark reality of the route we'd hoped to take this summer and what we actually were able to accomplish.

The route we'd intended to take encompasses both the red and the blue: blue shows what we 
did on the Marne au Rhin Est Canal (Toul to Saverne and back) and the red shows all that
we didn't do.

So many factors created the conditions that forced us into a second season of extended time in Toul. The main factor, of course, was the drought conditions that began with a dry winter and continued into a spring and summer with extreme heat and barely any rain. But we might still have been OK had it not been for several contributing issues: a nearly 4-week delay in the start of our cruising due to insurance woes; our decision to start our cruise with the Marne au Rhin Est Canal rather than immediately heading west out of Toul; lock maintenance on the Moselle River that probably extended our stay on the Marne au Rhin Est by a week beyond what we might normally have done; and extreme heat waves that made staying put and plugged into shore power a much safer option than cruising.

To be fair, in theory we could have spent some time in July cruising on the Moselle River. The canal lock from the shipyard basin to the Moselle was still open at that point, as were the locks on the Moselle. It would have involved repeating a cruising route that we did last year, and while Lon would have enjoyed it because he loves cruising for its own sake, I was not quite as enthusiastic about the prospect. Too much heat and "been there, done that" for me. So, we stayed in port and came up with other options to enjoy our summer in Europe.

It was good that we were still able to get C.A.R.I.B. III listed for sale, and mind-boggling how quickly it attracted interest and a sales offer. We are currently continuing to work through that process.

Drum roll, please . . . the stats for our short, but sweet, cruise this summer are:

                                  Number of cruising days:    15

                                  Number of engine hours:    65.6

                                  Distance traveled (out and back):    274 km/164.4 miles

                                  Locks:    80

                                  Tunnels:    4

                                  Mobile bridges:    4

                                  Inclined Plane passages:    2

The following graphic shows the altitude changes along the route. The horizontal axis comprises the 274 km distance travelled. It looks like a mirror image given the simple out-and-back-nature of our cruise. 

The smaller "steps" are normal locks spaced at normal distances. The short vertical sections at the
top of the "hills" are our ascent and descent in the deep Rechicourt lock. The flat horizontal
lines are the canal summit. The long vertical lines in the middle reflect our passage on the
 Arzviller Inclined Plane. The steeply slanted lines in the lower center are the 9 closely
 spaced locks between Lutzelbourg and Saverne.