Le “grand” depart

I am writing this post sitting in the boat in the beautiful port town of Dole. Erewhon did get put into the water last Friday, as we were hoping, although she didn’t do quite the usual amount of flying to get there. Normally, Guy picks the boat up from inside the compound with the crane and takes us over the fence and straight into the canal. It’s a heart-stopping experience as we watch our boat (which is also our home while we are here) fly at a height of at least seven or eight metres on its way to the water. This year, however, there were too many boats between the fence and the canal, so they lifted us onto a trailer and then took the trailer canal-side and popped us into the water from there. There was still a heart-stopping moment or two, though… between them Guy and his new assistant, Michel, didn’t quite get the balance right before lifting the boat into the air and it swung around a bit, nearly – but not quite - crashing with the boats on either side in the compound. Whew!

As always, it was (and still is) wonderful to be in the water. It’s where a boat is supposed to be and it feels right. There is a softness, a gentleness about it, which puts the expression “on the hard” into perspective.

Of the nine days since then, we spent four in St-Jean-de-Losne getting ready to leave and, more particularly, waiting for the weather to improve. It was cold and windy for days – not at all the sort of weather you want for navigating! We happily spent our time socializing and entertaining, provisioning the boat and making final preparations before leaving. We froze as we watched the fireworks that accompanied the annual “Blessing of the Fleet” ceremony at St-Jean but eschewed the reportedly boring ceremony itself on the Sunday in favour of a visit to the market at Chagny with Brian and Liz. That was a good decision. It’s a huge market with everything from bread, cheese, fruit and veges to clothes, linen and mattresses – and most things in between. We found a really good restaurant for lunch and then returned to SJL just in time to stow our purchases and watch NZ’s astonishing World Cup draw with Italy live on their boat.

With a favourable weather forecast for the remainder of the week, we decided to leave SJL on Tuesday, as indeed did Brian and Liz, although they will stay on the stretch of the Saone near SJL as the bad weather has so hampered their navigating plans that it was no longer worth them paying their VNF (navigation fees). That doesn’t actually stop them navigating but it does mean they don’t have the right to go though any locks. Fortunately, though, there is a good stretch of the Saone around SJL with some lovely mooring spots, so they will get some boating done. We left the marina together and then parted company some four kilometres up the Saone, where we came up onto the Rhone-Rhine Canal. This is the itinerary we talked about before we left NZ - it will take us north east towards Mulhouse in Alsace and up to the borders with Germany and Switzerland. We will then turn around and come back again – but not before venturing across the Swiss border to visit Basel and maybe also do some visiting in Germany.

We have quickly and happily found our navigating rhythm – very slow! If you look at a map, you’ll see that the distance between SJL and Dole is around 23km. It took us three full days to cover that distance with lovely stops at both Abergement-la-Ronce and Choisey (2 nights) along the way. The latter was fascinating – a beautiful, well-kept old village right beside the canal but when we went up to the top of the hill, out of sight of the canal, we found the great commercial “parks” on the outskirts of Dole. That’s the best of both worlds for us – calm, romantic views from the boat but easy access to a supermarket and every other kind of shopping imaginable. We found a fantastic bike shop and treated ourselves gel seats and panniers for our bikes: the former will make longer sight-seeing rides more enjoyable and the latter will make transporting our supermarket shopping – especially some of the heavier liquid items - much easier. J also liked the look of a bike that has a little electric motor on it. She swears she’s going to save her pennies and go back for that one day, when “normal” cycling gets too hard… The people in the shop couldn’t have been more helpful and we went away with a free brake adjustment and along with a lesson in how to do it ourselves in future. When you know nothing about bikes and boats to begin with, there is so much to learn… but we are learning more all the time.

We arrived in Dole yesterday and are moored in what must once have been the moat around the town. It’s a gorgeous place with water all around – a couple of canals as well as the river Doubs run along the base of the town. The port is overlooked by the church with its huge bell tower. We hear church and/or town hall bells marking the passing time nearly every day in nearly every place we moor. The bells of the church here are relatively gentle and more melodious than most. We’ve explored the old town and been to market this morning. We hooked up to water and electricity today for the first time since leaving SJL, so we’ve done the washing and will vacuum tomorrow morning. We’re expecting Christian for lunch and have found a lovely leg of NZ lamb to feed him…It will also feed us for the next two or three days as there won’t be room for anything else in our tiny fridge. We’re planning to leave here on Monday morning, weather permitting. It seems fine just now but we won’t know until we can connect to the internet to get a forecast, which will happen at the same time as we post this. To do that that, we’ll need to climb back up into the centre of the old town to the Tourist Information Office. We need to take advantage of the free connections while we are here or it may be another nine days before you hear anything from us.

We hope the rest of our journey is as straight forward as this has been so far. We also wish you a New Zealand winter that is not too harsh and hopefully even enjoyable from time to time.

Up in the air

Finally, a blog posting! It always takes us longer than we think it will to get to the stage of being able to write. It’s not that we don’t want to or that we don’t think about it (a lot), nor is it that there is any shortage of subject matter; it just always takes us a long time to get settled and into the right space to put some thoughts on paper.

It’s always a mission to get here. We work to the last minute in NZ to make sure we have as much money as possible under our belts for the summer ahead and then we spend the last couple of days packing and tidying up the house and garden (if the weather allows)… Then there is the trip itself. This year’s version: home – Wellington airport - Auckland airport (LOVE the walk from domestic to international!) – Sydney – Dubai – Paris, Charles de Gaulle – Hotel Mistral near the Gare de Lyon. One night in Paris gave us the chance to catch up with Jean-Marc and Alex for dinner, if not yet with our own bodies and minds. Then, the train to Dijon the following morning, lunch (and a siesta) at Christian’s place before the final leg to St-Jean-de-Losne (via a supermarket to stock up on the most important – and heaviest – items).

And so we arrive at our boat late on a Wednesday afternoon, completely knackered. No matter that we have been wonderfully looked after en route – from the start when Graeme dropped us off at the airport in Wellington to Christian’s care at the finish. We’re still utterly exhausted and looking forward to a long sleep…

But the boat has been packed up for the winter, which means that it is perched on blocks and accessible only by ladder, (almost) hermetically sealed with a big tarp over the top and insulating panels covering every window. Every drop of water that could possibly freeze and split something in the freezing temperatures of an inland French winter has been drained. All clothing and linen has been packed in plastic bags to keep from getting damp over the winter, the carpets have been rolled up and stored away in anticipation of the electrician and mechanic undertaking the requested work over the winter, and open hatches and displaced belongings motor bits show that the boat was winterised but not yet de-winterised. Humidity removing packs are throughout the boat, having done their job and converted their original solids into slimy liquid. To get the bed ready for that long sleep requires just about everything to be moved, found, unpacked (the suitcases go under the bed in the main cabin and it’s a mission to get them there but there’s no room for them anywhere else), put away, temporarily stored…and just as we were getting started, the rain did too, which meant doing all the above within the confines of the boat itself. It’s difficult to convey just what an effort these apparently minor tasks can take in such circumstances… and enough to say that we were eventually rewarded with the sleep we so desperately needed.

The following day was something of a struggle as well. David Blanquart, the head of the boatyard, confirmed that almost none of the work that we’d asked to have done over the winter had been done. The battery charger had been replaced and was now making a disturbingly persistent whining sound in the living area and one part of our engine that needed checking and possibly replacing was sitting forlornly in the corner of David’s office awaiting attention, its odd English dimensions apparently giving reason for scorn. We obviously weren’t going to get into the water very quickly and it seems only the most vital work will get done before we leave… a disappointment for us but, now in our third year of dealing with the French boatyards, hardly a surprise. Also disappointing from our perspective was the lack of familiar faces in the marina, although we could hardly be surprised at that with our arrival here so much later this year. This was also another day of cleaning and organizing – with added frustrations as there were quite a lot of things we couldn’t put back in place or weren’t worth cleaning properly until the de-winterising had been done and the mechanic had finished working on the motor (which is under the floor in our living room). When Guy did arrive late in the afternoon to reconnect the pipes so we could at least have running water, the result was water running in places we didn’t want it – leaking out of the hot water cylinder, the shower rose and taps, under the basin in the toilet and, at one stage, shooting spectacularly out of the connection to the water pump (fortunately below floor level and therefore straight into the bilge without too much mess). Guy fixed the first problem, time fixed the second (we now know that washers shrink and harden over the winter but come right after the water has been in them a while) and I fixed the rest… None of it was particularly serious but it can get to you when your resistance is already low. We’ve had days like this before and, although they aren’t easy, we know that you just need to get through them and that things often look up in the morning.

And indeed they did. If we’d have been on the water, you’d say that we found our sea-legs. I don’t know what expression you should use for living in a boat on blocks but we certainly did hit our rhythm the next day. We developed a plan to paint the decks, and had begun sanding by the end of the afternoon. We were reunited with our wonderful bikes and delighted in riding them again, and to our great joy, several old friends (Brian and Liz, Heather and Dave, Steve and Treena) showed up in the marina at the same time as we were making friends with our new neighbours, Jim and Nancy from the US and Phil, Cathy and Anthony from Clevedon. To add to the joys of the day, Brian and Liz brought with them our new, portable twin tub washing machine!!! The Wonder Washer will, no doubt, do service to someone else…but Thomas (the wondrous clothes spinner) seems to be on his last legs and may be put to rest here. A good and faithful servant.

Incredibly, that was nearly a week ago. Since then we have finished sanding and filling the decks, and painted everything except the cockpit, which is quite tricky anyway as it is our main access to the boat but made more difficult by not knowing when a mechanic might turn up because he would certainly want to be working in exactly the place where we’d be painting, or had just painted…and they are not known for their careful movements. Anyway, what has been done looks great and it’s been a miracle of timing through uncertain weather and frequent but unpredictable showers of rain (and the occasional downpour). The rest can be done when we’re on the water. We’ve been out for dinner or drinks most nights, watched a couple of World Cup matches, including NZ’s draw with Slovakia, been to the book swap and replenished our supplies. We’ve stocked the cellar (the 18 bottles of wine costing well under NZ$100 in total) and the kitchen… and we are still waiting for the work to be done on the motor.

When I started writing this post, we were waiting for news of some special, difficult-to-source (read “expensive”) screws, which had been ordered and knew nothing beyond that. On a trip to the toilet block in the driving rain a little while ago, I called in to the office in the hope of an update. Good news - not only have the screws arrived but they’d like to put us in the water on Friday morning – which means there is now a nominal deadline for the work to be done… Fingers crossed that nothing urgent comes up to distract them from that plan – and that Friday will see our boat up in the air (on its way to the water) rather than us being in that situation, as we have been until now!!