Wednesday 5th September - Piepape to St-Maurice-sur-Vingeanne

Aphrodite left at 9.30 as usual with Cornelis k. following on a little later.  With two fewer locks than yesterday and a perfect cruising day under a cloudless blue sky, we made good time ambling down our eleven locks, even though Crew got her rope jammed in a crack in the wall of the third lock, which required skilful use of a boat hook and some brute force and ignorance from Skip!
Unfortunately when we reached Cusey, there was simply no space at all for us, as most of the moored boats there were liveaboards.  We have stopped there two or three times before and just managed to tie off on some metal struts of the toilet block but even that was occupied!  So, onward and upward.....three more locks to Crews’ dismay!  The upside of that was three less locks tomorrow though!
The ‘mooring’ consisted of two blue dolphins, really meant for commercial barges, so we manoeuvred between them and moored on the bank with pins.  Twenty minutes or so later we helped Henk in, then a very well deserved beer was imbibed,  followed by our usual lunch.  Another upside of being here was that a little restaurant was just by the lock in front of us - bonus for Crew!!  I wandered over to see if it would be open and was very happy to see a sign to say it would open at 7.30 for dinner!  However (there’s always a ‘however’ isn’t there!). When Skip went over around seven o’clock to ask for a table at 7.30, he was told a definite no......not without a reservation!!  Words fail me!
At the same time a commerce appeared to cause us consternation as we were moored on his space really.  We watched him, or rather his wife, manoeuvre the barge right up to the lock gates and tie off there - have never seen that before!  The bargees were Dutch so Henk had a long chat with them.  It seems that they were making for St. Jean de Losne too so we were afraid that he would slow down our progress somewhat.....we will see.
There was a small outboard powered boat also moored in front of us with an American crew and a couple in a motor home with a British number plate, all of whom would have liked to eat in the restaurant, making a total of nine people the restaurateur could have provided for......entrepreneurship eh!!
In the end Crew put some potatoes in the oven to bake, cooked some peas with bacon and onion and Henk broke out his barbecue to cook our steaks, which we enjoyed on the back deck as the evening was balmy.

19 km. 14 locks. 4 1/4 hours