Summer...what's that?

We are having such a wet spring - this is truly the weather for ducks! The Yonne River is in flood and the hire companies are not allowing their boats onto the river at the moment which must be putting a lot of strain on the Burgundy Canal as even the Nivernais Canal is closed in parts. I feel for the people who have paid a lot of money for their holiday only to find rain, more rain and cold temperatures.

We returned after a long stay in the UK to find that one of our friends's barge had sunk in the Yonne near Gurgy.  It has to be one of the worst sights for a bargee...  our thoughts are with Charlyn and Simon.

Tree felling

One of the trees on our mooring has started to fall over and as this meant it would fall on our back cabin, sadly we had to take it down.  Our neighbours. Alain (in the tree) and Francois, very kindly offered their help...

We are sorry to lose it, but couldn't risk damage to the barge if it fell during a storm.   Also it was easier to do it before the leaves came out.  But we have taken some cuttings and will grow some new ones!

Fire!

We had a fire in the little port where we moor last night.  At 2am we heard some strange popping noises and when we looked out we saw that the building behind us was on fire...

This building was used to store reclaimed doors and windows and so, luckily, was uninhabited.  But it certainly created a blaze.

Picture courtesy of  Alain

The Pompiers (firemen) and several fire engines arrived and after a few hours the fire was under control.  But we have not had much sleep and at one point were wondering if it would spread to the other buildings and we would need to move the barge in the pitch dark which would not have been fun!  You can see our barge in the foreground...

Picture courtesy of  Alain

When daylight arrived, the Pompiers were still wetting everything down using water from the river.  The building looks a bit like a write-off with the roof mostly gone and the floors all collapsed into the bottom floor and as the electricity for the whole area came in via this building, we are without power at the moment!
(thankfully now restored).   You can see all that is left of the floor on the upper level...

Picture courtesy of  Alain

What a night!

A blast from the past

I found some video of our very first cruise in 2006 and for us it brought back memories of the learning curve we went through on our first foray into the canals.  I don't mention it in the video, but as we moved off our mooring for the first time, the bowthruster broke down and couldn't be used at all.  We had to do a 3-point turn from our mooring area into Lock 1 on the Yonne River and were going to rely on the bowthruster for help in this first turn!  Scary stuff but Roger managed it very well thank goodness so we did not have anything go wrong.  With hindsight it was a good thing really as we then had to spend the first cruise learning how to manage our barge without the help of a bowthruster and enabled us to really learn our barge handling - what to do if the wind suddenly takes the bow just as you are entering a tight lock; how to manoeuvre into a mooring; how to turn the barge round using windage and rudder only etc.  We were much more confident at the end of the first season when we went into the shipyard to have a new bowthruster fitted.