Tuesday was forecast to be the hottest day in the current stretch with a high of 39degrees. While this is not particularly high for an Australian, the extended hot period in France is testing many people and systems with a fortnight now over 30 each day and no end in sight. Lucky climate change hasn’t kicked in yet!

So Rita and I went shopping for noodles (tube floaties) just in case we “fell” into the river. While we were at Intermarche, we bumped into fellow illegal swimmers Don and Linda from Overture. They said that in the middle of the night, they saw an ambulance near the double lock, with ambulance men running back and forth to the lock. Hopefully, no one fell in, but at least that would be legal since that is part of the canal.

In mid-morning, the Australian hotel barge Colibri moored up next to us on the River Tarn quai, with a group of guests from Shepparton and Melbourne. We had a bit of a yack, although one of the women wanted to keep her husband away from Kanumbra because he kept getting ideas!! Later in the morning, the captain of Rosa came to talk to us to see if we could move Kanumbra back a bit, because hotel barges Rosa and St Louis were both waiting to come down to the Tarn and needed some extra room to tie up. Once everyone was tied up, it was starting to get a bit crowded on the quai, with two Pipers and three hotel barges.

So it was just as well that we had decided to go down the Tarn today, and anchor overnight in the River Garonne. Since we hadn’t yet used the anchor, I got some practice while we were at the quai, just to make sure it worked OK and that I know what I was doing. Better to make a mistake here than in the middle of the Garonne. But it was surprisingly simple, with just a few little tricks to learn. To let the anchor down, the handle is placed over one of the three lugs on the bow side of the anchor winch, and pulled clockwise. Care needs to be taken since the chain releases fairly quickly once it gets moving! To stop the chain, push the handle anti-clockwise. To raise the anchor, the handle is placed into the hole on the stern side of the anchor winch, and then pulled/pushed right or left (it works both ways) to raise the anchor. As the anchor is raised, the chain feeds back into the chain box and this is where a problem was sometimes encountered. Sometimes the chain kinked as it was entering the chain box and since the hole through which it goes is not much bigger than the chain itself, the kinked chain locked sideways in the entrance. Sometimes this could be solved by simply pushing the handle back and forth a little bit a few times, but since both directions will raise the chain, this sometimes caused the problem to get worse. The one thing NOT to do is use your fingers to undo the kink, unless you are not very fussy about losing a finger. Hitting the kink with the handle often undid the kink, but if all else fails the best thing to do was move to handle to the front of the winch and lower the anchor just a bit, which usually undid the kink. Doing all this at the quai was simple; doing it in a fast-flowing river of greater depth may be more of a challenge.

As an aside, these pictures clearly show a problem with the paintwork on Kanumbra. When it was repainted green in early 2011, it looked great. But with each following year, the green has slowly been returning (in some areas) to its original blue. This has not been a problem with the green paint, but with the second coat of blue paint previously applied (without proper preparations). The paint that is now peeling off is green on top and blue on the bottom - the green paint has adhered well to the blue paint, but the second blue coat is not adhering to the first blue coat. We will wait a few more years to fix this (probably just before selling), by doing a thorough preparation job, stripping off all the faulty underlying blue paint.

In the early-afternoon, we pulled away from quai, went through the disused lock (a bit of a challenge in a strong crosswind), then headed under Pont Napolean and cruised down the Tarn.

Once we reached the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne, we turned left, but did a wide arc to stay out of the shallow water on the left. We turned past the yachts anchored at the resort, staying about 200m off-shore. We then headed up the Garonne, staying to the left of the marker buoys along the islands on the right. Once we passed the campfire point on the left, we continued up river for another few hundred metres until it started to curve to the right. Since this seemed like a nice sheltered spot with clear views to the east and west, we decided to stay here overnight. It took us several attempts to anchor properly. The first attempt was too cautious and too slow, during which time we had drifted downstream and ended up anchored about 100m downstream of where we were meant to be. After we speeded up the process and made initial allowance for the drift, we ended up anchored where we wanted to be anchored.

All this was hot work, and so I was ready for a beer and a wet towel, and Rita was ready to test out the noodles.

Having recovered a bit, we set about setting ourselves up for the night. While the batteries were still well-charged, I thought I would just check that the generator worked OK. And guess what? It didn’t!! Nothing! Even the control panel showed nothing. I recognised this symptom from somewhere, but as it was getting late, I was hot, the engine room was hotter, and the batteries had enough charge for the night, I decided to do something about the generator in the morning.

Besides, I had more important things to do, liking taking photos of the sunset, the moonrise and the confluence of the planets. Not often you get the chance to do all these things on the one night from the same spot.

It was still so warm, and the surroundings so peaceful, we decided to sleep on the rear deck. So we cleared tables and chairs out of the way, dragged the mattresses off the wheelhouse seats and found some pillows and sheets (to keep the bugs away). I can’t think of many better ways to fall asleep than watching a near-full moon rising over a big river, listening to the birds and the frogs in the background.