Blog 8 2018

After breakfast a car came from the boat hirers and picked up the Aussie and his family who terminated their travels unexpectedly at Fleury and left the boat tied up once they had loaded their belongings into the family car. We were now on our own until the guingette opened at 7pm.

Fortunately a VNF van turned up later that morning to announce that the canal would be opened the next day as far as Decize, but boats beyond that would be stranded until the repairs were completed further down the line. SAVED!

Relaxed, we made Decize by midday the following day and moored to a pontoon in the huge modern harbour equipped with a restaurant and bar, and a good supermarket nearby, so we had everything we needed. EXCEPT SHADE!

A couple of days to re-stock the larder and we would be off on our way north up our beloved Nivernais and then to our home port. It would probably take a couple of weeks of steady travel if all went well but we would still be in St. Florentin well before the end of August.

The daily temperature was now upwards of 32 degrees and it was a 20 minute hot walk to the far bank of the Loire with its sand dunes, shallow water ( ¼ mile wide but with loads of sandbanks) and shady trees.  Laddie had a ball (literally) for several days and cooled down.

But then after 5 days of being fried alive out on our mooring in the middle of the harbour with no shade we saw the 7-day forecast was for the temperature to keep climbing every day towards 40 degrees and after much discussion we decided to abandon ship. A call to French boating friends Michel and Nathalie in St. Florentin and they came down the next day, Monday 30^th July and took me back to St. Flo to pick up our car. The plan was to pay 1200 Euros to leave Blue Moon in Decize over winter and start from there in 2019. Fortunately our luck was in and they volunteered to sail her back to St. Flo for us.

Their own boat had too big a draught to sail the Nivernais so it served their purpose as well as ours and everyone was a winner!

We should have called this story ‘Bordering on the Loire’

Get it?

More next year, au revoir

John Sue and Laddie