The plan was to leave at 9 a.m. but unfortunately, a commerce beat us to it. So we gave him 15 minutes or so to clear.......not enough time I'm afraid as he was very slow and we caught him up at our first lock resulting in a lengthy wait. Not good news at all as it will elongate our day by some hours - we had three locks to ascend, the Mont-de-Billy tunnel to navigate and then 8 descending locks - our only slim hope was that he could stop on the way but it was a slim hope! During the 5 km run between our third lock and the tunnel we managed to catch him up, reducing our speed considerably! The only good thing is that the yellow orb in the sky was shining down on us at last and although the wind was a little chilly the day was warming up nicely.
Another commerce came by in the opposite direction causing our man in front to move to,the right of the Canal and once they had passed each other the commerce in front stayed to the right and slowed down even more, allowing us to overtake. Hence we got to the tunnel much quicker than expected. Two boats emerged from the opposite direction and then we got the green light. It takes around 20 minutes to pass through the tunnel and gets rather chilly!
After the tunnel the chain of eight lock went smoothly and we moored stern to in Conde again but this time on a low pontoon, really meant for smaller boats.
As we know that are no available victuals Skip had visited the boulangerie in Sillery for our lunch bread. We had hoped finally to be able to dine on deck but unfortunately it was too chilly - I suppose at least it was not raining! Our Sky box had decided not to co-operate, so DVDs instead of TV after dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment