Today is Swiss National Day, so you’d think I’d let Rita win Pinch’n’Punch, wouldn’t you? Nup!

Now that all the guests have left for the year, and we are staying close to Moissac for a while, we decided to do a bit of house cleaning and putting things away, so that the final bits of work on the house could be completed over the next few months, including final painting. Along the way, I happened to catch the final quarter of the AFL game between the West Coast Eagles and the Gold Coast Suns. It was a close game all day, with a final score of 83-all. It was important for the Hawks, having lost yesterday, because if the Suns had scored just one more point to beat the Eagles, that would have left the Eagles just one game ahead of us and next week’s game between the Hawks and Eagles would have been for outright second on the ladder. Just one point was all they needed! Now, even if we win next week, we need to rely on someone else also beating the Eagles in the remaining 4 weeks.

In the afternoon, we went for an Up-Tarn cruise with Andre and Francoise. As always, the best place to appreciate the water (away for the engine noise) was up the front of the barge.

On our way up river, we swapped positions several times with a young boy practising his water skiing. He would surge ahead as his tow boat picked up speed, then we would catch up with him when he fell off and had to wait for his boat again.

After we got home, we tried out the video link for the Trinidadian Pan Conference. All seemed to go OK, except that the password didn’t work. Video conferences are great in theory, but the devil is in the detail.

Now that the very hot weather has abated, we decided to move back to the barge. The house is great for some things, but we were missing the cosiness of the barge. So we packed the car with lots of stuff we had moved (in bits and pieces) to the house, and moved back on board. As we did, we noticed the strange coincidence of having two boats with a home port of Melbourne moored together on the other side of the world.

Once again, the sunset cooperated, and we got a good shot of our Melbourne neighbour, Rovi 1, with the setting sun. Rita called Bern and learnt that her dad had been released from hospital and was feeling pretty OK. Finally, we felt like we could relax for a while.

That evening, we went up town for another Parvis concert, where a four-piece band was playing French Jazz very well. On our walk back to the quai, we captured the full moon over the canal and port.