Tucking Armida In

Strasbourg.

Armida will not be travelling any more this year.  Today I will change the oil, winterize the engine and drain all the water systems.  Next week they will haul her out of the water and put her inside a shed until we return in April.  We have been cleaning and packing the last couple of days and last night we moved out into a hotel.  We were trying to remember the last time we had unlimited internet and hot showers we could leave running and are enjoying those small luxuries.  Now as for French TV…..

After we are done with Armida we will spend a couple of days exploring Strasbourg and then take the dogs on the TGV to show them the sights of Paris.

Late Season Travelling

We usually rented boats in the late season to avoid the crowds but this is our first experience with Armida and it is later in the season than we have done before, and we are further north so, you guessed it, it’s colder.  As I write this at 9am the sun has just hit the boat and is almost up to 0C (32F) outside after a minimum of –4C overnight.  It was still that at 8am. Armida has good insulation in the hull and the roof but the windows are not double glazed, nor are the walls around them insulated. With us inside generating moisture this means there is substantial condensation, so our morning task is drying down the windows and walls.  Today is a little hard as some of them are covered in ice, even though we had shore power and ran an electric heater all night and the inside temp stayed above 7.  We were cosy, cuddled together under our warm duvet, dogs on top under another blanket.  Any budding plans of wintering aboard Armida were put to rest – these cruisers are definitely 3 season boats.

Late in the season means less rental boats but this canal is a popular one and it is School Holidays in France so they are still about and will slow us down a little on our trip to Strasbourg.

Later that day – Today we went through 2 tunnels, the boatlift again, 21 locks and covered 33km so it was a long day.  The warmest if got was 7C and that was in the tunnel!  Still we are well on our way to Strasbourg and hope to the be there on Sunday, when the weather will add some rain.

The easy way out

After musing over all the work we need to do to prepare Armida for winter here in Nancy where they can expect up to 8 inches of ice and who knows what other type of weather we are taking the easier path by heading to Strasbourg where they will lift her out of the water and keep her inside for the winter - and I will sleep a lot better for the next 5 months.

It is a bit of a shame as we were looking forward to two weeks of getting to know Nancy better, a town we really like so far, and also the other boaters in the port who have been very friendly, helpful and interesting.  Never mind, we will be back this way in the spring.

So tomorrow we set off down the Canal de la Marne au Rhine yet again, down a path we have already done twice.  This will not be a fun trip this time as the weather is cold and the best day in the forecast has a top of 11C (51F) with some showers mixed in.  We can stay warm by steering from inside but we have to go out for the locks every 15 minutes or so in some stretches.  With luck we will be in Strasbourg in 6 days

The Blog is back

We haven’t sailed off the edge of the world we have just been slack. After about a week in Nancy organizing things for leaving Armida for the winter and preparing for guests, the Udpegroves arrived.  They were our first guests on the boat and we didn’t know how well it would work.  Before they arrived had to clear out all the stuff from the V-Berth (the front cabin) that we had been using as a pantry and general storage room, and find other places to put that stuff – we did.

As it turned out it was fine and Craig and Susan where considerate guests and we all got along well – and the weather cooperated which can make a huge difference, so we could manage aperitifs and sunset on the back deck almost every night. We cruised out of Nancy on the Canal du Marne au Rhine.  This is a relatively recent canal and does not follow a large river. It passed through some industrial areas on the way out of Nancy and quickly became very rural and quiet, sometimes a little too rural.  The villages where very small and most did not even have a bakery, which disqualifies them from being a real village in France.  Fortunately we had supplies. 

After Lagarde we hit the main cruising area which is well served by rental boats and the first such area we have encountered this trip so we got to make fun of the novices and their antics, and remember our first cruises when we were like that.  Fortunately we did not have to share the locks with other boats very often.  This canal was  interesting for it’s technical features: there is one lock that is 15m (50’) high in one lift, two long tunnels (one 2.7km) and the famous Arzeviller boat lift where you sail into a trough that then slides 45m down the mountain side – it was very impressive. Craig has some good video

The canal then goes through a beautiful stretch of forested valley out of the Vosges mountains and into Saverne where we moored right opposite the Chateau de Rohan.  This put us in Alsace which is the most German of the French provinces, having been fought over by both countries for hundreds of years and only reverting to France after WWI.  And it looks very German with half timbered houses and bright colour.  Unfortunately the food starts getting very German too with lots of meats and sausages.

On the Updegroves last day we rented a car and drove down part of the “Route de Vins” to Colmar where we said goodbye.  The county was beautiful with Vineyards seemingly everywhere and absolutely gorgeous villages and huge ruined castles on the hilltops.

It was fun being in a car after two and a half months and seeing things you cant get to by boat but it also felt like we had left our little water world for the other bigger, faster world where there is traffic, big box stores and lots more people.

Now it is nice being back on Armida retracing our steps to Nancy.

We had our first “dog overboard” incident when Rosie stepped backwards off the dock trying to get on the ladder.  Fortunately is was a low floating dock and Terry was there to fish her out. But as we had no hot water they both had a very cold shower to clean off the canal water. 

The weather is still lovely but getting colder fast and with rain predicted for Friday evening and below freezing temperature by Sunday night.  The forecasts here are not reliable but it is feeling like it is time to start tucking Armida in for the winter and preparing to head home to head home to California.  We should be back in Nancy in a few days to start doing that.  So now the blog is back but it won’t be for much longer as we head home on November 3rd.

Some boring (for some) technical stuff

Now that we have left the Meuse/Maas river it is interesting to look back on how far we have come and what has changed.  According to our GPS we have travelled over 522 km since leaving Roermond in August.  I don’t know how many locks that has been but I think we climbed over 650 feet before we left the Meuse and came downhill into the Moselle valley.  Coming into Toul we went through 11 locks in 2 hours. In contrast,  our first trip in May from Sloten to Roermond was about 550km and we probably went through 5 locks in total for a net gain of maybe 50 feet.

The locks have been in all shapes and sizes, from the giant ones on the Meuse that were 14 x 146m to the “Freycinet” standard in France of 38.5 x 5m and level changes from 6 inches to 50 feet in one lock.  The big ones, while daunting being in there with the very big boats, are are often the smoothest as the little boats (us) are in the back and don’t get the wash.  The smaller French locks can be the roughest as the water can come in quite quickly and move the boat around a bit.  Then there are the bollards.  Having a firm place to tie to is important and when going up it is not always easy to obtain.  Sometimes there are bollards set into the walls of the deeper locks and in some of the big ones bollards that float up with you.  In others the lock keeper will drop a hook over the side and take your ropes up -  better make sure they are long enough - while many involve scrambling up a ladder, rope in hand to drop around a bollard up high.  Most of the time the it has been possible to loop them on from the boat.  The trouble is that just when you think you have it figured out and you think you know where the bollards will be they change it on you – got to keep on your toes.  Going down is a lot easier than going up as you just motor in and drop your ropes over the bollards but … you have to make sure the ropes are long enough and they don’t get caught, otherwise you have have your boat hanging on its side in the lock as the water goes down and it doesn’t.

Armida’s engine is cooled from river water that comes in under the hull through a filter and a heat exchanger that takes the heat out of the closed cooling system that goes through the engine.  The water from the heat exchanger then get’s mixed with the exhaust gases and goes out through the pipe in an arrangement called a “wet exhaust”.  This helps keep the fumes down and means that you can tell if the cooling system in clear by looking over the stern at the exhaust.  In Holland I would check the water filter once a week when I checked the oil and coolant and would occasionally find a small stick or a leaf.  Since entering France with the smaller canals and locks there is a lot more debris and I have been removing the equivalent of a  nice house plant every day.  One more thing to do.

There goes the sun.

From Saint Mihiel the weather stayed warm and sunny and the cruising was lovely and relaxed and we said to ourselves, “Does it get any better than this”?   And the answer was no!   We stayed at the surprisingly nice town of Commercy, an overnight in a small village and then left the Meuse valley via an 800m tunnel and dropped 50m through 12 locks into Toul.  This was surprisingly relaxed and our first downhill since leaving Holland.  Toul was a pleasant enough, fully fortified town with a nice mooring but after one night we were ready to move on to Nancy so I walked over to let the lock keeper know we were leaving the harbour.  Mais Monsieur c’est une grieve.  Another general strike and the two big locks on the Moselle were closed.  Oh well, the weather was still nice and we spent another day in Toul.

That night the clouds came in and we were treated to a thunder storm and the next day was cold and rainy.  We left anyway and spent the day on the Moselle and then into the Canal de la Marne au Rhine to Nancy and doing locks in the rain.  With the bimmini on the back it wasn’t too bad but one of us did get pretty wet. 

Since then it has been cold and grey but the rain is easing.  We  are hoping that this is not the end of the autumn and that we will see some more sun.  Nancy is a lovely town with a pleasant harbour and we will write more about it soon.  We will either leave the boat here for the winter or in a little town called Lagarde a couple of days away that we will check out soon.

Here comes the sun

After weeks of cold and grey we have been blessed with four days of glorious Indian Summer. I’ve got washing on the line, Rob needed the dry weather to get some work done on the teak deck, even the dogs are happy not to have to walk in wet grass.

We’ve just spent two nights moored in a little town called St. Mihiel. They call themselves “The City of Flowers” and we saw some beautiful gardens scattered throughout, flowers line both sides of the bridge over the river and the outlook off our boat was stunning along the path in both directions.

This weekend they held the regional Petanque finals, similar to the Italians Bocci Ball but with metal balls, just next to the Town Hall. We visited the Benedictine museum with its collection of religious art. Next door, behind glass, we were able to look into the very long room that has France’s best collection of old books, collected by the monks over the centuries. For me the most impressive part of the library was the ornate Rococo ceiling depicting lush scenes from garden to jungle. Later that evening we attended a concert at a 16^th Century church performed by the students of the local school of music. The “students” ranged from 12 – 70 years of age. All have been playing less than two years. They tackled six pieces some better than others. A Tchaikovsky number was actually quite good and the audience gave them a well deserved long applause. Some of the other pieces didn’t sound any better than Skye’s middle school band. The second half was a quartet of the better players. It was fun.

A Danish couple that we met at a mooring a few days back also attended. They are in their 70’s and have been on the canals for 13 years. In winter they have a small apartment in Malaga, Spain. Spring and autumn on their boat, July, August in Demark where they have two married children and one grandchild. They tell us it’s too hot and crowded on the canals in the summer. They are the first to say that, but I think it might be true.

As Rob mentioned there was horrific fighting, particularly during WWI, in the valley of the Muse River. In the 1920 there where whole towns to repair and build. Few have the former charm of the lost 17^th and 18^th architecture. But in this town, one or more architects had a say as to what style should be used and they chose Art Noveau. The structures run from grand homes to small businesses that are just so lovely I wanted them all. Sadly many of them are now vacant going to ruin. The pigeons are moving in.

Just as the state of Michigan has such high employment that people have walked away from homes, so it is here. And by the looks of it, it started here many years ago.

Real estate is not very expensive here. You can buy an apartment for 35K Eros, a three bedroom house for 160K and for 495K you can buy a beautiful three story 14 fireplace home on an acre river front. We walked past the house. Manicured garden with large old trees, a pond and the house itself so pretty and in nice condition. It’s sad that no one will probably buy it.