As we prepared to leave Dampierre this morning, a small sailing boat approached from the south-west and asked if they could tie up against us for a moment. The crew was two young Swedish guys who were sailing from Greece (where they bought the boat pre-Covid) up from the Med through the canals to The Netherlands, then out to sea again to get to Sweden. Because their boat has a keel, they had been having a lot of trouble with weed in the canals as it wrapped around the front of the keel and slowed them almost to a stop. So they tied up to us, then one of them jumped overboard and did some diving to remove the weed from the keel. Then they set off to catch up with their mates on another sail boat which was waiting for them in the next lock. Both very nice young guys, who spoke perfect English, which was just as well because we spoke no Swedish (even thought Rita is often called a Svede rather than a Svisse!).

We had an uneventful morning's cruising, and around lunch time we reached the long mooring near Ecluse 23. We had often seen this mooring as we went up and down the Doubs, but never used it. So today we decided to test it out as we stopped for lunch. It turned out to be quite good, because even though it was a hot day we got shade and a breeze. Luckily, we took the front-most bollards for mooring, because as I went for a walk along the long deck, I noticed that wasps had made a home in one of the bollards that we were originally thinking of tieing up to.

After lunch, we continued on into a westerly wind. Luckily the wind was mostly blowing up the canal, rather than across it, because the crosswind can make for some pretty tricky entrances into locks. We were now going downstream, and hence falling in the locks rather than rising. This was a much simpler and more gentle process, providing you ensure that the ropes can't get crossed and hence locked. However, the overall process was much slower, because all the locks were set for boats going upstream when we arrived, even when we had recently passed a boat going upstream, and hence the lock had to be filled before we could enter. This seemed like a waste of water, as well as our time. So given my modelling background, I thought about creating a simulation model of the operation of a canal with locks, to test a variety of operating strategies, given a range of objectives. Once a modeller, always a modeller!

During the afternoon, I got a message from Phil saying that as they were entering their last lock for the day, they heard a loud bang and their bowthruster stopped working. He accused my bowthrusters of being contagious!

As we approached L'Isle sur le Doubs, I noticed a row of silage bales that were wrapped in LGTBI+ plastic. .

As we went through L'Isle sur le Doubs, we stopped at the mooring near the Intermarche supermarket, and Rita dashed across for some top-up shopping, while I minded the boat. Then it was out of the canal and back onto the river for the final dash to our favourite mooring at E29 (Volker's mooring). The water below the barrage was again rather soapy, but the wind and the currents were creating interesting patterns which reminded me of Van Gogh's Starry Starry Nights. But this then just reminded me of Van Go, and would probably never be returned to us )-:

So I took my mind off the stolen campervan by making a start on varnishing the wheelhouse timbers, starting with the shady port side tonight and finishing with the starboard side in the morning.