Thursday 25th May - Ranchot to Besancon

We left the mooring around 8.30 in order to be ahead of our two slow neighbours even though another boat had departed at 7.30.  The first two locks went well but for some reason, at the third Skip asked Crew to lasso a different bollard.  When being questioned Skip said he didn't know why he asked that so Crew carried on as normal, with a shake of her head and eyes rolling!  On entering the fourth lock Skip misjudged the entry (to be fair the locks are quite narrow!) and lost a fender - luckily Skip rescued it.  It had broken away from its' rope so a repair job for Crew!!  Unfortunately Crews' knots must have beeen suspect as said fender broke away again in the next lock, only to be retrieved again......and repaired again (fingers crossed it stays attached this time!).  Shortly after our 6th lock came the Thoraise tunnel which was lit up with flashing lights.....very pretty! Everything went swimmingly until we reached Besancon - here we had two locks close together followed by our second tunnel of the day.  As there was a hotel boat in the lock due to come out we thought that we could go straight in but a young lady came to tell us that there were three more boats to come the other way before we could lock through.  So we tied off on a pontoon and waited.  Evidently the lock doesn't respond to the zapper as all the others do and I think she indicated that we should call up but we can't find a number anywhere! Anyway, we counted the three boats out, which took a while as there were two operations - the first a passenger boat, then two cruisers.  OK time to go - we untied and presented ourselves in front of the lock.  The lady came out and said there was another boat......5 minutes!  So back to the pontoon to wait yet again!!  It took altogether an hour to get through this last lock and tunnel - not what you need at the end of a longish cruise!  There are two places to moor in Besancon - where we used to moor we like very much but the last time we were there we touched bottom all the way to the marina so we decided to moor close to the town centre. We thought we'd stay for two nights after a tiring day but it wasn't an ideal situation and at €16 per night quite expensive, so we decided to move on tomorrow.  An even later lunch today so when it came timeto decide whether or not to go into town for dinner we decided against it and just spent the evening relaxing.

34 km 12 locks 7 hours