From Nicks mouth today

(Written by Nick) In the last few days we have gone over the top of France – so to speak. At the altitude of 340m above sea level, some 100 odd locks up hill we entered the 5km long tunnel that links the Marne water shed with that of the mighty Soane. The tunnel was intimidating at first as there was only a metre or two of clearance all around the yacht – that is on each side, above our heads and below the water. A row of fluoro lights did a mediocre job of illuminating the way ahead but we had the big spotlight on hand in case of a power cut which would have left us very much in the dark. The tunnel is dead straight but interestingly it didn’t take long before we couldn’t see the daylight behind us. It took 32 minutes to transit at a speed of around 5 knots. As soon as we popped out into the sun on the Soane side we were greeted with a “ladder” of eight 5.5m locks to descend. We knocked these over in short order quickly realising that locking down is way easier than locking up as there is no turbulence as the water enters the lock. We are able to very casually sit in the lock and maintain our position with a boat hook fending off the walls. In the smaller locks no ropes are required at all.

Up until this time I have been doing the manoeuvring of the boat whist Blue has been doing all the deck work, jumping on and off, shifting fenders and handling the ropes. All of which was taking its tool on her back to the point that she has now quite willingly taken over the responsibility of driving the boat in and out of the locks and jetties. She has got the hang of it really quickly.

We have made really good time coming down the Soane and as I write this we are a couple of hours away from the second biggest city in France – Lyon. We have put in a week or so of long days travelling so are looking forward to arriving around lunchtime and spending a bit of time exploring the city and doing a bit of shopping. We will probably spend 24 hrs in Lyon before continuing on another 3 days or so to Port Saint Louis on the Mediterranean where we will replace the standing rigging (wires that hold the mast up) tackle the eternal list of boat maintenance jobs and put the mast back up before hotfooting it out of the Med so as to improve the timing of our passage across the Atlantic.

We have had a running battle with weed in the canals. Several times I have swum down to remove weed from the propeller after we have seen the boat speed reduced by up to two knots. Up until yesterday I have been happy to get in the water as the weather has been nice and hot but yesterday we saw a lab report that the local council had posted at the pier showing E coli counts of in excess of 10,000 and high streptococcal counts as well. I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that at the heart of Europe the water of the major rivers is poor quality. We have also had to clean a couple of cup fulls of river weed from the cooling water strainer everyday

We have had no mechanical problems so far – touch wood! aside from a minor inconvenience when the engine threw an alternator belt a couple of days ago. We reckon we have used around 450 litres of fuel so far on the canals for around 160 hours of motoring at between 5 and 6 knots. The price of diesel here is not fantastic – in Saint Jean Du Losne we paid 1.21 Euro per litre. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on 600L at the rate I negotiated for the Diamond Mine from BP right now!

Boyd mentioned to me that it interested him observing the boats wake in the tight canals and I have also been surprised at some of the effects. As the wake runs along the wall of the canal it creates all sorts of funny patterns shapes and sounds depending on the type of wall, we also noticed that as the boat pushes its way down the shallow narrow canal the water at the wall draws down a good 200mm in front of the yachts position and the water accelerates as it squeezes past the hull so that the impellor driven Speedo often reads a couple of knots faster than the GPS speed. Also the boat must be pushing a wave of water in front because when we come to a constriction in the canal such as the abutments of a narrow bridge you can see the speed reduce and watch the bow rise up a few degrees as though we are climbing a hill!