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Monday 16^th. August it had been raining for most of the last 2 days, so we  decided to hold out for better weather before moving on.

We received a message from Peter off ‘Hiner’ the twister, who we met in Le Havre, he was en route to Charterettes from Port aux Cerises and intended to spend the evening with us, a welcome renewal.

Hiner arrived just before the lock shut at 1845hrs ‘Pops’ the dog Peter had rescued when he was working as an NGO in Ethiopia, was pleased to get ashore and was howling with eagerness. We were introduced to Wesley , a friend of Peter’s who had joined him for part of the journey south. We shared a beer or two on Fandango and the boys went off in search of a pizza shop.

The following morning we arose early just in time to see Hiner and crew leaving, Peter had resolved to reduce his mileage to Montargis so left earlier leaving us a note explaining his strategy, he was due to meet another friend in Montargis , we left at just before nine.

By the time we reached our first lock of the day, we could see Hiner as she exited the lock and soon after we overtook Hiner and pushed on to Nemours. The canal de Loing has a series of low bridges, and it was at one of these that we finally had to concede defeat on keeping the wind generator erected, It was at a particularly low bridge that the realisation hit that damage might be caused , so a quick reverse towards the bank to moor and our first use of the bank pins.

Half an hour later with the wind generator stripped down we continued with our journey.

Our arrival at the Nemours lock was shared with Hiner and as we exited the lock we could see that the Hautte Nautique was busy, there was one space available and although we offered to raft with Hiner, Peter decided to keep going so we once again bid him farewell.

Leaving Nemours we left the Seine and entered the Briare Canal. The Briare is a smaller canal with smaller locks of a varied design, some are automatic, passing sensors on the bank triggers the lock gates to open and the rest of the process is completed by pushing a rod inside the lock to close and fill it, other locks are staffed, the boat lines picked up by the operator on the end of a hook or boat hook. The operator notifies the next lock of your arrival as you leave the last.

We soon learned that the Canal de Briare also had its hazards, with sloping sides and narrow in width, mooring was difficult and was not suited to Fandango’s bilge keels, passing other craft was also hazardous.

Our first night on the Briare was spent tied up on a very small pontoon just before Souffe Lock, in order to get to the pontoon we had to pass the lock sensors which triggered the lock to open, we spent a few anxious moments wondering if this would trigger a visit from an angry lock keeper but our concerns were unfounded when the lock automatically closed and shut down at 8pm.

We spent a peaceful night in the middle of nowhere.

At 9am the following morning (Friday) we left Souffe lock and continued our journey along the Briare, but this would be our mad Friday, and proved to be the hardest day yet. 

We managed to make 19.5kilometers during this journey our intended destination was Briare.

The traffic on the canal was unusually heavy, various lock keepers (Eclusierres)remarked on the weight of traffic and warned us of particularly heavy commercial traffic on the canal with 3 very large barges due to transit through the locks.

During Friday morning our progress through the automatic locks was reasonable but with the traditional lunch time closure,(when the locks are closed between 1200hrs and 1300hrs ) things changed, without anywhere to stop we were forced to pace out the 3.5k distance between two locks so that we arrived as it reopened at 1300hrs.Waiting in a turning area before the lock we were aware that traffic from the other direction was being allowed to enter the lock which further delayed our progress. As the lock became free a Belgium barge called ‘Agnes of Brugges ‘ left its mooring behind us and pushed past us and took our place in the lock forcing us to wait . We learned later that he was challenged by the eclusierre but was told that we were only a little plastic boat

and that we could wait. Our opinion of Belgian sailors was already of a low level, as we have found them generally rude and selfish.

As we followed the barge through the rest of the day it was clear that this attitude continued towards other canal users with bank fishermen being forced to move for fear of their equipment being damaged. 

Further down the canal we encountered a very large commercial barge as it exited our next lock, as it came towards us it took the centre ground and forced us into the side, as the barge passed us the starboard keel dug in causing Fandango to spin her stern into the barge, fortunately i was able to push off and the stern balloon fender took the force and damage was caused.

We resigned ourselves to making our destination and were forced to consider Rogny as our destination. Rogny has a bad reputation for its unfriendly attitude to leisure sailors, as commercial hire boats are preferred. So we took up our wall mooring with some trepidation. Seeing a bar close by we adjourned to wash away the trauma of the day.

When we arrived back we found an invoice already served on us, it instructed us to make payment to the Captainierre’s office before departure.

We decided to let the traffic die down and to remain in Rogny until Monday.

We later attended the office and was greeted by a very friendly Captainierre who advised us that we were elligable to a free day/night and that we would pay for two days with electricity and water thrown in. Our stay was further enhanced by some fantastic weather and a visit to the historic flight of ecluses was most interesting.

We enjoyed a fantastic meal in a local restaurant and left as planned our opinions well and truly changed for the better.

If anyone is considering a visit to Rogny I would certainly recommend a stay and to ignore the comments made by several publications.

We left at 9am on Monday refreshed and ready to challenge the numerous locks ahead of us on our route to Briere.