Rita was scheduled to have a shorter day in Dijon today, to allow other students to get home tonight, but before she left the barge she called me to have a look at the fridges which all seemed to have stopped working. On opening the fridge doors the light went on, so power was getting to the fridge. But they were not "fridging". I had noticed the butter was soft when I used it last night, bit had not noticed whether the fridges were on or off. Probably they were already off. So I found the Manual for the fridges, and saw that the compressors have an automatic cut-off system if the input voltage drops below 21.3 volts. Even though we were connected to shore power, the fridges are 24V systems, and are run from the house batteries (which are themselves charged from the shore power). So I checked the state of the batteries and saw the house batteries were on 21.4V (while the engine starter batteries were on 25.2V). I also saw that the house betteries were only at 40% charge. So something was going wrong with charging the batteries from the shore power. I checked a few things, but could not find any obvious reasons.

I thought I might try running the generator to try charging the batteries, but the generator battery itself was flat (as often happens when we return to the boat). I tried the emergency jump-start battery pack, but no luck. I was about to try  jump-starting the generator from the engine batteries, but then remembered seeing a H2O mechanic looking at some bornes on the pontoon yesterday and thought that maybe there was a problem with the shore power. So I went over to the Port Captain's barge, but he was not there. However, his wife came over and checked the shore power on our pontoon and all was in order. So I decided to wait till Capitain John came back from St Jean de Losne.

In the meantime, I realised that today was calm and an ideal chance to remove the tarp off the front deck, even if it was getting hotter by the minute. So I went around and removed all the elastic cords and the retaining straps over the top, then started folding the tarp back on itself from front to back.

Soon enough the tarp had been folded into a neat parcel, leaving only the supporting structure to be dismantled.

Once the supporting structure was removed, it was then possible to reinstate the dogbox flytent.

As I was removing the tarp cover, John Stevenson arrived back in port, and I explained my electricial problem to him. He admitted that he was not an electrical buff (I already knew that from his wife), but he did give me the name and phone number of Phillippe at the main H2O base in St Jean de Losne. He advised me to call, but not to expect any action today, since the French staff tend not to work on hot Friday afternoons. So I called and Messaged him, and got a response saying that he could send someone over on Monday morning - the best that could be expected. John also said we could put food in the Port Office fridge until ours were functional again next week.

The only good thing today, unexpectedly, was when the Hawks played Collingwood in the AFL. Despite Collingwood being near the top of the table this year, and the Hawks being at the other end, we managed to beat them, after trailling for most of the day. Indeed, as the graph below shows, it was a classic Muhammed Ali rope-a-dope strategy, being behind for all of the match and then coming to life in the final 20% of the game.

In the evening, we went down the river to the Auxonne Night Market, in the hope of getting some food and a cold drink (given that our fridges wern't working). But the range of available food was very limited, and we saw no one we knew, so we headed on into town in search of food and drink. We stopped first at the Renaissance Bar and got a table, but after ordering drinks we found that they had no food available at night. Oh well, the drinks were good and cold! We then went around to the Crepe restaurant, but found that at 930pm they were not taking any new customers. So we headed back to a little Asian resataurant we'd seen, and this turned out to be a good decision. The food was simple, but the drinks were cold, and the Vietnamese owner and chef was amazingly friendly. He gave us free entrees and dessert and carried on a lively conversation with us and a few other customers. We found that the restaurant would be closed for the next five weeks while he went back to Vietnam to see family for the first time in ten years (maybe that's why we got the free entress and dessert - maybe he was just clearing out the fridges!). But it was a lovely experience and we will definitely return there after he re-opens.

On our way back to the port, we ran into Roy (the previous Port Royal Capitain) and his dog, who we had seen following John around the port last week while Roy was away. We had a great discussion with him about the history of the port and his life as a freight barge skipper in France. He still lives in port on his barge, and had just returned from a couple of weeks sailing around Norway. Despite being English by birth, he definitely sees himself as a Frenchman.