When the Capitainerie office opened this morning, we went across to pay our fees, and then left port around 1045h, heading back down the Doubs. We went through the junction of the Doubs and the Canal du Rhone au Rhin and then continued on to Dampierre, where we moored for lunch in the shadow of the church, and for Rita to have a swim in the adjacent River Doubs.

A short while after we resumed cruising after lunch, Rita saw a feather from a bird of prey floating in the canal as we approached Ecluse 19. She was insistent that we try to "rescue" it. So I treated it as a Man-Overboard training exercise, and tried to manoeuvre the barge so that she could lift it out on the end of a broom. But feathers are very light, and every time I used the rudder or the bowthrusters to manoeuvre the boat, the feather skitted off in another direction. So I adopted a "softly, softly" approach and positioned the boat in front of the feather and waited for it to approach the boat by itself. And, voila, success! (PS: several weeks later, on our last day of cruising for the season, a gust of wind swept through the wheelhouse, and the feather once more returned to the wild. But this time on the River Saone, and not on the River Doubs. I hope it doesn't get too confused!).

After this interlude, we continued cruising and were once again impressed with the helpfulness and friendliness of the VNF staff, especially those operating the lift bridges on this stretch of the canal. As we followed the train track between Ecluses 21 and 22, we were passed by a long train set carrying Peugeot cars from the factory near Montbeliard. A perfect example of using the transport mode that best serves your manufacturing site. I have also heard that Peugeot still uses barges on the Centre Canal to transport parts between assembly sites close to the canal.

We called it a day when we reached l'Isle sur le Doubs, and moored just upstream of Ecluse 26. We once again moored in front of barge Risoco, who we met up with in Dole a few weeks ago. Once again they were very helpful with ropes as we moored.

As we finished mooring, someone from the boat ahead of us approached and said "Ah, I've been trying to catch up with you!". I was a bit surprised until they mentioned that they were readers of the Kanumbra blog, and had also met up with us in Moissac in 2011, our first year of cruising. Shaun & Lynne (from Elle) remembered a wayward hire boat heading directly for our newly painted Kanumbra, and my efforts to fend it off. They have much better memories than me! We chatted for a while, and later  found that we had a mutual friend in Ian McCauley, who was on the phone talking to them at the time.

After dinner that evening, we went for a quick walk around town (just to get the lie of the land), and found that it was a town of five distinct parts: the main town area south of the canal; the older area between the canal and the main River Doubs; the island between the main River Doubs and the sidearm of the river; a street of buildings to the north of the sidearm; and more houses on top of a ridge just to the north again. We look forward to exploring the town more in the morning.