Being in a new port again last night, we kept hearing new noises outside, especially since it was Friday night in a largish city. But the morning dawned sunny, so all was good with the world again. However, as we were preparing breakfast, we heard the water pump making different noises to what it usually sounds like. So I went down into the engine room to find water leaking out of the pump and filling the bilge. I got to work pumping the water out of the bilge, and then examined the pump to try to find the problem. But I could not see either the cause of or solution to the problem. So I emailed Iain Noble, who replaced the previous pump, to see if he had any advice. He responded quickly, but with no immediate way of resolving the issue. But he suggested that the first thing I should do was to stop the leaking, by turning on all the taps to empty the water tank, since he remembered removing the valve at the base of the water tank when he removed the water gauge fitting which was leaking some time ago (I must get a new valve fitted in the engine room to the water line coming from the tank, so that I can stop the water flow more easily in the future, without having to empty the tank, which I have now had to do twice this year!)

While all this was happening, Rita had been talking with Sarah about coming to Besancon today, but she quickly decided to change plans and meet up with Sarah and her boys at La Malate for a swim later in the day.

As I was contemplating the water pump issue, I heard a knock on the wheelhouse door and met Cindy from barge Emily moored behind us.

Later that night, there was another concert being performed across the river at the bar/nightclub, but this time the music was more upbeat and doof-doof. As we were to discover tomorrow, when we saw the nightclub being dismantled, this was the last concert for the year, since it was the last day of summer, and everything stops once Autumn arrives in France.

Later in the day Rita called from la Malate saying for me to come up for a drink with Sarah before she went home. So I jumped on the bike and rode up, only to find that the cafe/bar had closed 5 minutes earlier, as they prepared the restaurant for the evening trade! So I said goodbye to Sarah without a drink, and Rita and I rode back to Besancon. We rode back on the right bank, because I had seen and heard music coming from a big marquee as I rode on the left back up to la Malate. We followed the sound of the music and found the marquee. Rita enquired with a couple just leaving, and found that it was an annual weekend of old-time music and dancing. So we parked our bikes, bought a beer and watched in admiration at a tradition that I think died in Australia in the fifties or sixties!

We talked for a few minutes and I mentioned the problem with the water pump. Without prompting, she offered me a spare water pump that she had on board, which she had recently switched over for a different model. Her spare was a different type to ours, but perhaps it might work. She went away to find where she put it, but her offer prompted me to contact Phil Tyson to see if he had the same type of pump as us, and whether he might also have a spare of the same type. He replied quickly, and while he did have a spare pump it was not the same as the one we currently had (at bottom of photo below). But it was the same as the one we had previously replaced (at top of photo below), so it should be able to fit to the same connections etc as on Kanumbra. He offered to jump in our car and bring it up from Auxonne within the hour. These two offers from Cindy and Phil are great examples of the commraderie between Piper barge owners, who always seem willing to help.

When Phil arrived, we got to work to replace the pump. Having drained the tank, I was confident that we wouldn't get soaked when we disconnected the input pipe to the pump, and that proved to be the case. But when we removed the outlet pipe, water squirted everywhere (particularly over Phil who was removing that pipe!). We had forgotten that the outlet pipe also went to the accumulator, which gives an initial burst of water under pressure before the pump turns on - a lesson learned for next time. So, having quickly pushed the outlet pipe back into place, we opened the taps again to release the accumulator pressure. Then we removed the outlet pipe without further incident. We then fitted the new pump, after realising that the pump was located in a very awkward position (naturally!). After filling the water tank a little (just in case we had to empty it again), we turned the pump on and opened some taps, and it seemed to work, even though the water pressure was not as great (because it was a smaller capacity pump (11 litres per minute instead of 16 litres per minute), and it seemed to run for longer after closing a tap (probably need to adjust the accumulator pressure later). But Phil had to get back to Auxonne, so we declded to call the job a success, had a quick beer, and then Phil headed off.

After about an hour, we jumped on our bikes again and rode back to the barge. On the way, as we crossed the pedestrian/bike bridge across the river, we spotted the architect's barge office under the Citadel again. Superb workplace!