Finished with canals after the Canal des Vosges

Where are you from?

A little outside Saint Mihiel we approached a residential area. When we got very close, some children waved at us and shouted:;

-Where are you from?

We pointed to the stern flag and shouted 'Danois', after which children and adults hugged and patted us.

At the end of the afternoon we ducked the pontoon bridge by the town. As usual we were the only boat.

It was cold and raining. Nice to sit down sheltered in the heat from the electric heater we had bought in Maastricht.

The next morning we fell talking with a man who walked by. He told us that he had a boat almost like ours, wanted us a good trip to the Mediterranean and gave us a few tips on the trip.

8 May in Commerce

After 4 hours we ducked the pontoon bridge at Commercy. On the opposite bank, a mini rower darted off at the water's edge. Its appearance perfectly matched the description Thue had given us of Ondatra Zibethicus or the muskrat as it is slightly less exotically called in Danish. Whether it was a swamp beaver or a beaver we had seen at Verdun is still uncertain. (BigFoot as one of the readers of this blog has very imaginatively suggested may well be omitted, at least for this time).

The next day it was 8.maj. In France, it is the anniversary of the end of 2. World War. All stores were closed. Flowers and wreaths were laid on the memorials and the town was left in a dormant state.

It was still cold and rained. We took a business day in Commercy. It was cold and we let the heat be on all day. In the afternoon, two boats breathed. While we talked to the skipper on one, we saw a bishop's arrows again. This time on our wide in a suspicious short distance from Heron.

The next day we woke up to sun from a cloudless sky. It had gotten warmer and the weather forecast promised over 20 degrees during the afternoon.

We had laid an ambitious sailing plan - 17 locks and a tunnel of 686 meters in one day.

Horror Story

When we had worked our way through the first 6 locks, we reached the tunnel. We set off at good speed into the dark hole. Although we could see the light at both ends, after a short time it became pitch black around us. The chart plotter dazzled and we lost sense of the distance to the tunnel walls. We slowed down. We shouldn't have done that. For now we were overtaken by our own tail wave. When it hit us Heron lurched to starboard and slammed twice into the railing. There were some nasty noises. They could only mean that the freeboard and search rail had received a few decent scratches. With difficulty we found the projector in the dark. Pia groped her way out onto the foredeck, shone alternately on the starboard and port walls and guided us with the messages "starboard", "port" and "keep the course" to safety and daylight.

Well out, or just to say outside, we sailed for 11 locks into Toul Harbor.

Toul a nice city

Toul is a cozy town and one of the focal points of the French canal system. There we stayed a few days and enjoyed that summer had finally come to France. In one case we found and tried one of the family restaurants you read about in the food reviews, where the man is in the kitchen and the wife serves. The food was simple and delicious, the atmosphere cozy and we became involved in the conversations between guests and family as much as our French skills allowed it.

The day before we were to leave, we were visited by Søren Lænkholm and his wife Anne-Grete, who were on their way home by car from their house in the south of France. It was Søren we had met by chance in Travemünde, when he was about to end a 4-month trip on the canals in his boat "Havhesten", which also has its home port in Humlebæk Harbor.

Nice with a (sorry expression) French visit and getting laughed and spoken through.

On the Moselle to the Canal des Vosges

When we left Toul we came to the Moselle. The river is lovely wide, has good depth, a beautiful nature and after just 24 kilometers it meets the Canal des Vosges.

Canal des Vosges, built in the 1880s, is 124 kilometer long, has 93 locks and connects Saône with Moselle. The highest point of the channel is 340 meters above sea level. From here the water flows towards the Mediterranean Sea. The canal is narrow and winds through a landscape with soft hills, villages, fields, meadows and forests. On the relatively short distance, cities with new residential areas are passing through prosperity and prosperity. A few kilometers after, villages that pass away with dull and abandoned houses pass the opposite.

With so many locks on such a short stretch, the date is stated neither in kilometers nor miles, but in the number of locks traversed.

Charmed after 21 upward locks

After 21 uphill locks, we reached the tired city of Charmes. For once, we were not the only boat. Now there were no vacancies on the short dock.

... hmmm

We hailed an English boat and were allowed to lie outside. But as we got closer, we hit the soft mud bottom. We couldn't lie there. There was also nowhere else we could moor between the two locks.

The only option was to try if we could find a better depth without on one of the other boats.

To moor outside on a French boat

We slowly approached a French boat and came straight to it without touching the bottom. There was nobody on the boat. We breathed gently, moored and put the cockpit tent up. Then we were in shelter for the rain that had fallen into the buzz that had lasted most of the afternoon.

We were about to go ashore to get shore power when a middle-aged couple boarded. They looked at us angrily and scribbled a few sentences we did not understand. We explained to them that we had to lie outside on them because it was too low everywhere else. They were not more lenient by that. They suspiciously examined our moorings and fenders and then disappeared down the shelter, while occasionally scowling at us.

We regretted that we had not followed the advice to use the winter to learn French. Maybe the couple had explained to us that we had broken some unwritten rule. Maybe they had not understood why we had chosen to lay outside on their particular boat. Not good to know and a little angry with a neighbor who was so furious that we found it wise not to even try to go over their boat, to get ashore. Actually a bit of a shame because after Charmes there were 4 day trips ahead of us before we could refill water and get shore power.

During the night, the couple underwent a metamorphosis. The next morning they had become kindness themselves - to such an extent that it bordered on the fiddle.

The man explained to an imaginative blend of German and French about the next 3 days route, filling us with water just with their water hose and telling us about the weather forecast that he had taken for us while the wife eagerly appointed a storker and helped the moorings .

When we left us, they waved as if we were old friends, not to be seen for a long time.

The water flows towards the Mediterranean

After 30 upward locks we reached the top of the Canal des Vosges after 2 days. On the last part, we sluiced up to 14 locks that are so close that we sailed from one lock straight into the other. At the top, the canal is even narrower and the landscape is almost like in a fairy tale. We passed the large water reservoir at Bouzey, which is used to regulate the water level in the canal. Not far from there we found a cozy place to lie down and celebrated that the water will now flow into the Mediterranean, which is the goal of our travels.

After 42 locks on 2 day trips we reached the town of Corre, located between the Canal des Vosges and Saône. In front of us are the two great rivers Saône and Rhône, which we will sail alongstream until we reach the Mediterranean Sea.

Finished with channels

So now we are done with channels