So Many Firsts
We spent three relaxing days in Decize; walking, reading and visiting with new friends. It was exhilarating and yet, after a few days in a marina I am always ready for a more remote setting. Leaving Decize, we continued on our way stopping in quiet, countryside nature haltes over the next few days.
Tom helps the lock-keeper in order to speed things up.
We moved ahead on a rainy wet morning towards the town of Nevers. After nearly 5 hours of locking in the rain we were both hungry, crabby and tired. The Port of Nevers is on an embranchment canal, in order to reach it you must lock-down through two, deep, automatic locks.
We thought we’d timed our arrival perfectly for once, but it turned out we were a few minutes early. The Port Captain eventually arrived (a bit late) and told us we were welcome to take any available slip, so we tied up along a pontoon in the back of the marina which, as it turned out, had clearly been previously occupied by a waddling of ducks. The entire dock was covered in duck droppings and by the time we were secure, Meraki’s wet decks were covered too. It was impossible to step onto the boat without tracking stinky, grey-green excrement onto the deck. Suffice it to say this did not improve our already grumpy (fowl) moods. I walked back to the office to inquire if we could use the dock water to hose off the pontoon. The captain’s English was minimal, as is my French, but I managed to, somewhat comically, get my point across (canard…merde…quai). Minutes later he showed up on his bicycle with a bucket and a brush and the three of us set to work in the rain, scrubbing both the main dock and our finger pontoon. This was followed by Tom and I thoroughly cleaning the decks of Meraki, after which we could finally sit down, relax and have some lunch.
The town of Nevers is a typical old provincial town that has been modernized. It is home to a small satellite university and has a long industrial tradition.
Known for it’s ceramics, earthenware was first produced in Nevers at the end of the 16th century, due to the settlement of Italian craftsmen. Coming from Italy, glass craft also developed and a unique enameled glass technique was developed in Nevers. These pieces were made of multiple glass sticks heated and mixed together to create various objects and figurines which were assembled in decorated boxes along with moss, shells, paper and fabric, producing 3D miniature dioramas.
We spent several hours one afternoon in the Earthenware and Fine Arts Museum, Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts. The collection includes ceramics, sculptures, paintings, coins, posters, and prints, as well as 300 pieces of enameled and spun glass. We found these pieces strange and somewhat gaudy but amazingly intricate and detailed.
As we left Nevers we once again tried to recalibrate our compass in the broad basin of the port. It seemed prudent to try given the opportunity, though it was becoming clear that doing the same thing over and over again would not produce a different result. Tom switched our autopilot to our weather station compass - despite being laid down on the roof it does not wander and outperforms the Garmin Reactor compass. The recalibration project is now shelved until we reach salt water.
We were fully prepared to lock-up when we entered the first of the two automatic locks to exit the embranchment canal, but the bollards were so far away, despite repeated attempts I was unsuccessful at securing the boat before the lock began to fill. We’d never been in a lock completely untethered before and I found it quite unnerving - I’d prefer not to do that again! I was determined to do better on the second exit lock but it became clear as we approached that the bollards were again too far recessed and too far above my head. At the last minute, Tom let me out at the ladder, I climbed to the top to secure the boat and climbed back on once the lock was full. That was far more excitement than anticipated first thing in the morning.
After a few kilometers we crossed a long aqueduct and went directly into a double lock - which we’d also not seen before. When the downstream gates of the first half open, you move directly into the next chamber. Surprisingly, these locks were operated by a woman lock-keeper - also a first and a very nice surprise!
We had finally learned to plan suitable lunch stops to accommodate the mid-day closures and we tied up one day in a delightfully deep pool alongside a small café. We had the perfect canal side picnic table to enjoy the sunshine and a sandwich.
An hour or so later we stopped for the night in the small commune of Beffes. There wasn’t much to this little hamlet; a church and community center and a few houses. But there was a Boulangerie just three minutes from the halte!
The next morning was sunny and 25ºC (78ºF) and we busted out our shorts and t-shirts. We entered our first lock of the day where a young boy was fishing. Once inside the lock I noticed a man filleting a huge fish. I’ve been curious about fishing in the canals so I asked him about it. He explained his son had just caught a larger than usual Sandre (Pike-perch) and it was 70 cm (27 inches) long! This was very exciting to me but also very distracting. As he and I were talking, the lock had begun to empty and both sides of the line I was holding slid into a crack in the concrete wall and got wedged tightly in. I tried to yank them out without success. Meanwhile Meraki was moving down as the lock drained and the line was stretching to near it’s breaking point. I yelled to Tom that I needed help and seconds later he was beside me with a knife and in an instant he cut the line! At least one of us always has their wits about them - and is not distracted by fish tales!
That afternoon we began looking for a place to stop for the night. We checked out one town as we cruised through but it was quite crowded with boats and the only empty spots had sloping concrete sides which is not conducive to Meraki’s hull. Just beyond this town was an embranchment canal which led to a small harbor. We turned up this super narrow channel and under a low bridge hoping to find a suitable place. We passed several old rusty barges - it looked like a barge graveyard. Around the next bend were a handful of pleasure boats. It was so tight in there we could barely spin around, but once we did we attempted to get ashore. The canal was far too shallow and the sloping banks were made of stone. After three or four unsuccessful attempts, going aground each time, we decided to try tying up next to the barges against the vertical sheet pile. We managed to get close enough to disembark - though we had plowed through the mud to do it and were again aground. We hammered a crowbar into the grass as a stake to tie onto. We would not have electricity here, but at least we were secure and in a nice shady spot for the next few days.
We hadn’t been there long when a man walked by and stopped to say ‘hello’. Chris is an 80 year-old British man who lives aboard, Marius, the barge we’d tied up behind. He was quite a talkative chap and we learned that he had bought his barge in the Netherlands and brought it this far into France 12 years ago. Unlike the other barges, Captain Chris’ boat was inhabited by himself, his Latvian girlfriend and her teenage daughter. Apparently the town mayor and Port Captain were eagerly trying to clean up the marina and get rid of all the rusted out junkers. They had levied a hefty fee upon him, which he had refused to pay - instead assuring them that he would leave as soon as the boat was ready. The problem was that the 125 year old, 22 meter (73 foot) barge had not moved for 12 years and was firmly aground! We offered to lend a hand in any way we could and later that evening they came back and asked for our assistance. It took a fair bit of pushing and pulling but we managed to get them unstuck. The next issue was that they were not yet prepared to leave and there was nowhere for them to go other than the spot where we were moored, so we agreed to move Meraki into the space they had just vacated. Switching places proved harder than expected because their hull had just dredged up all the mud from the bottom - it was no small feat getting close enough to tie off again. We succeeded eventually though we were now too far from the water spigot to fill our tank which we’d hoped to do the next day.
The next afternoon they began readying themselves; running the generator, charging batteries, buying fuel, hauling water. We had decided to stay home that day in case we could lend a hand - the canal was barely wider than their barge and they would need to turn around in order to exit. About an hour before sunset we were visited by the Port Official. She encouraged us to move further into the harbor where we would have access to electricity and water. We explained it was too shallow for us but we decided we would try again as this would give Captain Chris more room to turn his barge around.
We slipped the lines moving further into the port and tried again to get ashore. As we were hard aground still 1.5 meters (5 feet) from the bank, we thought we could just use one of our fender boards as a gangplank (our passerelle is firmly secured to the roof). We tossed one end of the board onto the grass but just as Tom stepped onto it I noticed a large knot in the wood beneath his foot. I had no sooner realized this was not going to work, when the plank snapped in two under Tom’s weight and he landed in the canal. Once I’d determined he wasn’t hurt, it was all I could do not to laugh. There he stood, up to his waist beside Meraki! Because of our temporary dinghy davit, our swim ladder is unusable at present. I fashioned a rope ladder for him to use to climb back aboard. He changed out of his wet clothes and we returned to the mooring we had just left.
It was just a few minutes later that Captain Chris and his entourage appeared at our boat informing us that they were ready to go. It was nearly dark, but they too had been visited by the Port Official who was furious that they were still there. Captain Chris had a plan: he would back his barge into a small recess in the bank behind one of the junkers, and slowly swing the bow around until he was facing out of the channel. We sat on Meraki’s back deck and watched the careful maneuvering and finesse it took. The Port Official stood by and watched as well. Somehow Captain Chris managed it and the front of the barge squeezed past the opposite bank and began to slowly exit the port. At some point there were words exchanged between him and the Port Official, Malana, the Latvian girlfriend jumping in as well and gesturing angrily. We’ve no idea what was actually said but the next thing we knew the police had arrived. We stood by and watched the scene unfolded, until the barge was finally no longer in view and darkness descended.
We thought we’d seen the last of the eccentric old Brit, but a couple of hours later, around 11pm as we were getting ready for bed, we heard shouting outside and there was Captain Chris, Malana and daughter Eliana there to say goodbye.
It had been a long, odd, eventful day and we were ready for sleep. Tomorrow we would finally get off the boat and go for a hike. I was ready for something a little less dramatic.
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