lock and load

There is nothing worse then trying something for the first time and having an audience. With the canals in France come locks. After mooring about two hours from Agen, where we picked up the Saint Christophe, we had an early start and made it back to Agen and our first locks, by the time it opened at 9am. The locks are automatic, which takes out a lot of the confusion, but that doesn't mean going through them doesn't bring about five opinions on what we're supposed to be doing.

The locks are big enough for two boats and as we approached the first one (one of four in a row at le passage), another boat slotted in behind us. Although we didn't struggle too much, it was nice to have a helping hand from the experienced cruisers behind. About 100 metres from the lock is a pole hanging from a cable across the river. As the boat reaches it, one person turns the pole about 90 degrees. This activates the lock. Then you wait until the light goes green. We let one person, in our case Dad, off before the lock. We cruise in and rope off at the bow and stern (Kim and me). Once the boat behind is ready, Dad presses the button at the cabin at the lock and the process begins. Through the canal the water level drops so we wait while the boat drops, loosen the ropes and once the next gate opens, we collect the ropes and cruise out. Then we do it all again at the next one. Each lock takes about 15 minutes to go through.
The people in the boat behind us have the job of taking hire canal boats to where they're needed. For example, the one they had today needs to get to our eventual destination for a customer, so these people (a Kiwi and the fattest French bloke I've seen) take it there. To speed up the process they offer to go in front and guide us through the next three locks. After doing four in a row we're fairly confident in what we're doing. Today we had about five hours of cruising to get to Buzet-sur-Baise. We're mooring in the port to get electricity. In the canal we can moor anywhere, on the Baise river, which we'll get to in a few days, we are only allowed to moor in a port.

Looking from the bridge in Buzet-sur-baise

Buzet-sur-Baise has all the basic amenities but is still a pretty small village. We explore it to stock up on groceries as we're eating on the boat now. It's still extremely hot most of the day, although a breeze in the morning called for a jacket. I'm hoping it will cool off later so I can go for a ride along the bike track that follows the canal. Kim, Toby and I have planned our stopovers for the next week...I won't share them here in case Mum and Dad are reading..it's all a surprise.

The Saint Christophe when we moor in the canal to look around.

Buildings in Buzet-sur-baise