Lock of Licey, n°33 nach Auxonne

We continue our journey south, our planned destination is Auxonne.

The last two days have undermined morale quite a bit, just the sight of a lock brings back memories of the past few days. As expected, we were baited with the first lock, but then it continued just as it had before. Our yellow angel had by now turned into a little devil. She had an adjutant in tow who had to do the work while she herself took notes on the deficiencies in her book. We were sure it was only because of the combination. When we got stuck in the lock chamber again because the gate didn't close, we were able to observe how such a repair is done. Simply pull out the tufts of grass from the gap until the gate closes, and the journey continues. The next ones will be happy.

We found ourselves stuck at about 5 or 6 locks before the Saône again, called the control center, and yes, someone is coming and then nothing happened. As we then realized, we were right in front of Engel's construction site and when the workers returned from their lunch break, one of them took pity on us and freed us from our prison.

My first officer thanked him, we are friendly travelers after all, when the answer came in fluent German with a slight French accent, this is now the last lock that will cause you problems. Downstream there is no more grass in the canal, so you will get through fine.

After a short exchange of words, we continued on our way, and as announced, everything was fine, except at the last lock where we had to hand in our remote control, there was a brief hiccup.

From the last lock it is still 500 m to the Saône and directly behind the junction to starboard the first lock on the river comes immediately.

Here a rope with a pole is stretched across the river. The pole has to be turned to request the lock.

The lock itself is a bit outdated but already a bit bigger than what we encountered at the last 200 lifts. The walls and also the gate were quite high and the first impression was that they had too much money during construction and just kept going.

After the exit, the Saône spreads out over the entire valley in front of us. Wooded on the right and left, it felt like the river was 200 m wide. Finally, we were able to pick up speed again with our Gustav, and I didn't have to constantly brake because the next lock blocked our way forward.

So we drove towards Auxonne, with one more lock still ahead of us on our route.

We made good progress in terms of time. When we were in sight of Port Royal, as it is called, we had to pay attention to the channel markings for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

With some experience in harbor entrances, I cautiously approached the entrance. We couldn't find a description for the entrance. In the river itself, the water depth in the channel is between 3 and 7 m. The water level is significantly below the high water mark I. In the harbor, there are some ships with a draft larger than ours. So it should work. Keeping an eye on the water depth, how does Gustav behave, what does the current do? Suddenly a man waving excitedly on the jetty, he calls to us, but it always takes some time for the translation to reach me. That immediately reminded me of our first entrance in Lorch am Rhein. There I followed the ferry, which turned out to be a bad idea in hindsight.

So I focused even more on the depth gauge, which remained well above 1.20 below the keel. The current in the Saône is negligible at this water level. We then entered the harbor and were immediately assigned a spot.

I was still very focused on the experiences during the entrance. The wind contributed to that, so I reached the jetty on the 2nd attempt. The result was instructions from the harbor master, on the one hand, on how to moor, and on the other hand, on how to secure the ship.

I had to detach myself from that, from my point of view, only one line was missing, which I then secured. I passed on the chew out from our neighbors to the harbor master.

In the time it took, you could easily have drank two mooring beers. My concern was that he would charge the briefing with the harbor fee. That didn't happen.

So shortly afterwards we set off on a land excursion and visited the city. Because we wanted to stop for a meal, we only had our backpack with us.

In the small restaurant la fringale on Rue du Bourg we were excellently served. The 5 stars on Google, as we later found out, are justified and we can only confirm that.

Across from the restaurant was an antique shop. There was a lot going on there, the staff seemed to be celebrating a good ending. A gentleman of our age joined us. It was obvious that we were discussing the goings-on, so this gentleman felt prompted to speak to us. The conversation was one-sided, because once he realized we were German, he quoted the relevant writers who made life difficult for us as students. Presumably, his repertoire ran out at some point, and he simply moved on.

The city is surrounded by a fortress wall, which is still well preserved in many places. The city within the walls is characterized by a barracks of the French Army, which occupies a large part of the old town.

Back on Gustav, we stored our loot and let the day come to an end.