Threatening weather with rain clouds in the south. Kaz and Iain not working today till 5pm, so Stuart suggested we check out tonight, then leave for Castelsarrasin in the morning. So, looks like another day of assignment grading, although we might go for a short run down the canal to check out the systems later today. We informed Mme Akla that we wouldn’t be able to take the kids for a ride today, but will do so when we get back to Moissac in a couple of weeks time. After grading a bunch of assignments and taking the car down to the house to store in the garage while we are away, we decided to go for a short cruise to blow the cobwebs off the boat and ourselves.

There is a rain storm going round and round France, but mostly it has missed Moissac today, apart from some showers. So while it has looked threatening for most of the day, it hasn’t been too bad here. We hoped it would hold up for a couple of hours while we did our run in Kanumbra. So we went out to the west though the swing bridge, down past the new house for the first time on the barge, and then through one lock, before the clouds looked very threatening further west, so we decided to do a u-turn in the canal and head home, getting back after a 2-hour run. All went OK, expect we were a bit rusty with our steering and ropework, and the generator battery was flat again (3rd time in 3 years).

When we got back to Moissac we moored alongside Hilda May again, and I borrowed a battery charger from Stuart. Hopefully, that will be enough for us to get the generator running tomorrow. We got by for most of last season without a generator (with the blocked cooling water system), but I’d prefer not the have to do it again this year. Must remember to buy a spare battery from Iain as well as a battery charger.

As we were doing our test run on Kanumbra today, the thought occurred to me as to whether it would be possible to use a barge like Kanumbra in Australia. There are no canals in Australia, but there are lots of rivers, lakes and sheltered coastal bays. For example, would it be possible to live on Kanumbra in nearby Lake Eildon or at a marina on Port Philip Bay in Melbourne? Would it be possble to cruise on the Murray River, where there are lots of RiverBoats and HouseBoats? Given that the length of the Murray River from Albury to the ocean in South Australia is over 1500km (longer than from the top to the bottom of France), there may be possibilities. Something to think about for when we've finished cruising in Europe?