Tales from TWO HOOTS TWO ’ s summer season 2016 - by Pauline and Dennis Church
Nearly a year ago we threatened to report on our summer adventures on the French canals last year and with thoughts turning to our plans for 2017 it is time get it done !
As outlined in the preamble , we had made up our minds to move on from our base of some six years in St . Jean de Losne in Burgundy and meander northwards through other parts of France with the intention of ending up back in the north of Holland at Aquanaut ’ s factory where “ Two Hoots Two ” ( THT ) was built in 2006 .
By this time she will need a thorough check up and a possible re-paint .
So , after a farewell lunch with one or two other “ residents ” of Blanquart ’ s marina , and after our extra crew had arrived , we departed on the 18th of May on a gentle first leg upstream on the Petite Saone to Auxonne involving only one lock and covering very familiar ground .
The current was quite strong with some minor debris which gave the engine a reasonable workout . Violent squalls and a thunderstorm were the features of our first night – a sign of things to come – so we decided to stay put on day two !
After early morning fog had cleared we got away on a calmer day 3 and reached Gray after a 6 hour non-stop run , apart from four locks , covering 44 km over the ground and having recovered the schedule we “ celebrated ” with a good meal at a restaurant near the mooring .
Day 4 came with better weather with a 26 km run planned to Seveux including three locks and a 643m long tunnel .
You may be thinking that these daily runs are very short and by planing boat standards , pathetic even , but bear in mind we were experiencing an adverse current of some 2-3 knots and each lock , even if it is in your favour , takes at best some 15 / 20 minutes to negotiate ( sometimes double that if a wait and other boats are involved ) so , essentially , progress is governed by time .
We like to stop at the latest by 3 o ’ clock for a bit of sightseeing and shopping and so on and importantly to find a mooring as nothing can be booked . I digress ; just downstream of our destination was the tunnel which is light controlled .
The sacred French lunch time intervened so we bank moored with our pins , had lunch ourselves , which neatly took us through to the 1.30 opening of the tunnel .
There is plenty of height and the reflection of centre lights in the roof guide you along the straight and narrow ( Six metres approximately , giving just under a metre clearance either side – concentrate skipper ) until you see the “ light at the end ….”
By now the river had become much more friendly and rural but not quite the same thing could be said of the weather , rural maybe but certainly not friendly .
A sunny start saw us through four locks with minimal rise which were really there for flood control ; it was difficult to imagine that by the end of May the gates would be closed and they would be full to some three to four metres .
Then came a 680 metre tunnel and by the time we reached our mooring on the cut at Scey-sur -Saone , a very pretty village about a mile away on the old river , we were almost blown into the marina where fortunately there was plenty of room to manoeuvre .
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