Saturday
19th July
Boofzheim
to Breisach
Grand
Canal d’Alsace- Day 1
Day
1
3
locks, 37km 7 hours
We
set off from Boofzheim at 7.50am to go along the last section of the Canal du
Rhône au Rhin (Nord) to get to the lock (Ecluse du Rhin) that would take us
back onto the Rhine. We were there
early, before 9am, so we moored up and went to have a look at the Rhine, to see
what the river flow was like. It looked like there was a stronger current compared to when
we came down the Rhine two weeks ago, but it didn’t look too bad, so we decided
we would go that day. We knew going
upstream it would take us longer so we’d have to do it over two days. We just hoped we’d get a mooring at Breisach,
our half waypoint.
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| This mooring is just at the lock for the Rhin off the Canal du Rhone au Rhin (Nord) We could have moored here the night before but we weren't sure it would be available |
The first big lock on The Rhine for us was just near to where we joined the river, but we had to wait 1 hour floating around before the light was green. A big commercial eventually came out of the lock, and another commercial arrived behind us. Lock control luckily spoke to us in English. He said we would be going in the smaller lock, and entering after the commercial that was just arriving. Even though this commercial looked huge there was still plenty of space for us to fit in behind.
The current was quite strong and instead of achieving 12-14kph going downstream 2 weeks ago, we were only managing 5-8kph. We saw a lot of big commercial traffic and one huge hotel boat, we were overtaken by quite a few commercials which although they didn’t cause us a problem, it was quite scary. You can see them behind you in the distance, slowly catching you up, it feels just like you are being hunted down.
Harvey and Sandra on Hoop Doet Leven couldn’t start from Boofzheim until after 9am, as they had to get through the lock there, but they weren’t too far behind us and we kept in constant contact via text message and phone calls.
We arrived at Breisach with everything crossed that we’d get a mooring at the marina, and we were hoping that, there would be space for two barges. We arrived there at 3.10pm, and yes there was a perfect space for us. We quickly moored up, Kev leapt off the boat to speak to the Captianaire to make sure where we had moored was ok and to check there was a spot for Hoot Doet Leven….hurray!!! yes there was and they arrived 20 minutes later. It was such a huge relief to be off The Rhine and moored safely in a marina. We had a lovely evening with Harvey and Sandra, sharing our experiences of the day. The weather had been perfect, sunshine all day. After too much wine, we went to bed with feelings of trepidation, knowing that the weather forecast for Sunday was for rain later in the day.
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| Turqouise commercial leaving the lock and Stromtid the black and red commercial just arriving for the lock |
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| Going up this time I look happy and relaxed......I'm not! |
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| Our first lock companion 'Stromtid', we have a commercial with us in each lock on both days |
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| As we exit the lock we are stunned at how many commercials are waiting to go down Thank goodness we had our lock companion 'Stromtid' to follow, he just went through the middle The yellow commercial on the right started to head for the lock, we had to put our foot down to get out of the way |
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| We are being overtaken by Panamera, and another commercial was heading up stream, it looks like they are on a collision course! |
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| Kevs view of Panamera as she overtakes us |
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| We share the next lock with Panamera |
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| 'Vision' over taking us, impressive bow wave All the commercials give us a friendly wave |
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| Hoop Doet Leven arriving at Breisach marina (Vision was moored up behind) |
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| Hoop Doet Leven's spot for the night |
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| Our welcome home for the night on the french side of the Rhine The town Briesach on the German side of The Rhine, looked like a nice place to visit but it was too far for us to walk We plan to go there sometime in the future....by car, train, bike...anything but by boat! |
Sunday
20th July
Breisach
to Niffer
Grand
Canal d’Alsace Day 2
4
locks, 45km 9 hours
We
woke up early, before the alarm, nerves woke us up. As we were just getting out of bed there
was a heavy downpour of rain and flashes of lightning, and big rolls of thunder.
It wasn’t looking good. We had planned to leave together with Hoop Doet Leven after 7am, but by
6.40am the weather looked a little better, the thunderstorm had passed over, so we thought we should get
going. So we phoned Harvey and Sandra and said we
thought we should go now, so we all set off, luckily our first lock was just around
the corner. We had three to more locks to do on the Grand Canal d'Alsace.
We
had a more stressful time today. When we started the engine, it didn’t want to
start, that’s never happened before, it did start after a few tries but if made
us feel unsettled all day; the weather wasn’t at all good, lots of heavy downpours, it was breezy, and the river current was strong. We started to push the boat a little harder, with higher revs but we found we had a vibration
so we had to ease off back to around 1700 rpm.
We
travelled all the way with Hoop Doet
Leven. They have a bigger engine so were ahead most of the day but we
caught up at the locks, which we shared along with commercials. All the lock controls speak German,
but we seemed to manage ok. When we came
downstream we never had to share any lock, coming up stream we shared every
lock with a commercial.
It
was such a relief to get though the last lock of the day, Niffer Lock, which took us off The Rhine and onto the Canal de
Huningue, the Niffer/Mulhouse canal. The person we spoke to on the
VHF at Niffer lock was a lady and she was French speaking, it is so nice to be speaking French
again. We were told to go into the big
lock, which was perfect as it had floating bollards, the small lock at Niffer
doesn’t. It was amazing to be back on a
canal again, no flow, so we were bombing along.
There
are two possible moorings on this section of canal before we get to Mulhouse, (we felt we just needed to stop), the first mooring had a boat moored on it, they said
they were leaving in around 2 hours, so we carried on for another few km to the
next pontoon. It was around a corner,
and it seemed like an eternity before it was in view and we could see that it
was empty. We moored alongside Hoop Doet Leven and breathed a huge sigh of
relief.
We
cracked open a bottle of fizz as soon as we arrived, we were so happy to have
made it, safe and sound and with no dealings with the river police.
We
had a delicious chicken BBQ dinner beautifully cooked by Sandra. We had quite a few huge commercials go past on their way to Mulhouse port, some in the dark, so it’s not a canal where you could
use pins. We had another big thunderstorm,
and this one was more enjoyable to watch now we were off The Rhine.
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| A busy lock, one commercial, one small cruiser, and two dutch barges weather looking ominous |
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| Gloomy looking skies |
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| Hoop Doet Leven followed by Roma coming up to Fressenheim Lock, in front is the Fessenheim Hydro Electric Plant, we turn left off out of the strong current to the Fessenheim lock |
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| We had a visitor as we were travelling along |
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| leaving another lock behind Hoop Doet Leven |
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| A photo of Rangali being overtaken by a commercial taken on Sandra's iphone |
Monday
20th July
1
lock 10km
Kev
and I had a little bit of a lie in this morning, and then we all left for the Mulhouse
Port du Plaisance. We rang ahead and
they had space for both boats. We will
stay here now for at least 3 days, and we are going to take a very slow return
trip along the Canal du Rhône au Rhin/The Doubs. I think it will take us quite a few days to
get over the trip up The Rhine, nothing went wrong but the stress of it was
immense, and it’s definitely not something we will be repeating. I am afraid in the future we will now only
ever visit Strasbourg by car or train, never again by boat!!! We did love Strasbourg though; it is now one
of our top favourite cities.
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