August 28, Langres to Villegusien
We left at 8 a.m. on another overcast day. Today we will go through the tunnel at the top of the plateau where the Marne ends and the Saone River begins. When we got to the lock before the tunnel, the lock keeper informed us that we had to wait for a boat coming through the tunnel in our direction. As soon as we got through the lock, we passed a small boat coming our way, we didn’t know if that was the boat of which he was speaking but were sure when we got to the tunnel entrance there would be some signal. Well, there was a light but it was not working. I called the VNF but couldn’t understand what the woman was telling me about the approaching boat – if we had passed it or if there was another. So we waited. No boat came through but we were not going to enter the tunnel without knowing so we asked a local fisherman to call the VNF for us and ask –of course he didn’t speak a word of English either but we determined that we were clear to enter the tunnel. As soon as we got into the tunnel all the windows in the wheelhouse fogged up and Dave couldn’t see a thing – the aft handrail on the starboard side kept banging into the side of the tunnel (we now don’t have to worry about the curves on the outside of that handrail!) and he was frantic. I wound up sitting on the deck in front of the wheelhouse wiping off the windows and telling him where we were in terms of the sides. It was over an hour through the tunnel and it was cold and drippy in there. After the initial shock passed, the formations on the sides of the tunnel were rather pretty – if we had a black light they would have been iridescent.
As soon as we exited the tunnel we went through 8 down locks in rapid succession – all 5+ meters. Of course there was no rhyme or reason to the locks except that the water went out very gently. After the first two locks, the rest on the starboard side didn’t have second bollards in the lock wall so I had to switch to the port side. In the first one that didn’t have a lower bollard, I left the line on the top, rather than running to the other side of the boat and reattaching the line to a lower bollard, and we had to take it off with the boat hook. After that we were fine and I wondered what all the fuss was about in these locks. I realized that for a smaller boat, they wouldn’t have lines big enough to be able to flip them off a bollard so high; but I also realized that their method of looping the line around the bollard and thus having two lines running up and down was what could cause them to have their lines cross and thus need to be cut if that happened.
We reached Villegusien around 3 in the afternoon and tied up next to a silo. It was still pouring rain and I took my dripping wet clothes off and took a shower. We played some cards, I did some ironing and Dave took a walk into the Village to see what was there. After about an hour, and the rain had let up a bit, I went in search of him. He was on his way back to the boat having found a bar/tabac. We went back there for a glass of wine and then found a plum tree on the way back to the boat where we filled my hat with plums.
We fixed chicken quesadillas for dinner and watched a movie. By 9:30 we were both exhausted and got ready for bed. When we had turned off the generator and the lights we saw the church steeple lit up in the village under a beautiful starry sky. It seemed very pastoral and peaceful until we heard a bunch of cats fighting and howling close to the boat. We were too tired to investigate so we got in bed to read and listen to them.