Our starting time was to be just before 9 o'clock but as Skip had not had a good night worrying about our fuel level, Roger offered to transfer 30 litres of diesel to us. We therefore left just before 10 o'clock. All went well until we reached our ninth lock where we found the small yacht which had left the port about 45 minutes before us, sitting in the lock. Oddly the gates were open but with a solitary red light - against our natural instincts we entered the lock to join the yacht. He said that they had descended the lock but the gates wouldn't open so they went up again and called the VNF. As we were talking a VNF van came haring along to the lock and the fast lady driver locked us through. We thought we would be held up by the yacht as they are normally pretty slow but the German skipper whooshed out of the locks very fast. All went well for the next few locks until we reached Beaumont. The top gates opened for us but the red light did not go off - could only assume that the gates hadn't fully opened. An elderly man was sitting outside the lock keepers' house and came over to talk to us in fairly rapid French. He said he was a retired VNF man and we think he said that he had called them but, not being sure, Skip called again. The lady in the control office said yes, she knew there was a fault and someone was on the way. We sat around in the sunshine waiting - a VNF van whistled past us at breakneck speed and disappeared into the distance!! So Skip called again and was told a few minutes. Altogether we waited for 45 minutes for help to arrive - the longest wait we have had! The elderly man told us that there weren't enough people to manage the number of locks.
The Germans decided they had had enough for the day and moored bow in by the side of the canal. We had thought we would stop in Reneve for the night (4 km and 1 lock on from Oisilly) but Skip had had enough for the day too, and as the little concrete quay was available we disturbed a fisherman with his two little boys and tied off. The little boys were thrilled to see the boat.....not too sure they were that keen on the fishing! They were chatting away to Crew who did her best to understand them when their father to.d them we were English, whereupon the older one (about 6) counted to five in English and then named some colours- absolutely charming! We enjoyed a couple of hours of lovely sun before it retired behind a tree - a very pretty, rural mooring.
The weather is properly autumnal now - cold and misty in the mornings, very warm during the day and cooling down quickly after sunset. So dinner was taken below - hopefully Crews' last cooking duty for a while! We couldn't manage to get a TV reception so DVDs again and not too late to bed. Our longest cruising day for a while!
30 km 16 locks 6 3/4 hours
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