Heavy overnight rain gave a welcome relief from the recent hot weather, and provided a cool start to the day. Early in the morning, I followed the AFL game between the Hawks and the Roos, won convincingly by the Hawks 121-75. That makes three wins in a row, admittedly against the lower teams in the competition, but at least they're showing they know how to win. After I got out of bed, I checked the bowthruster batteries and found they were both above 12v, So I raced up to the wheelhouse and checked the operations of the bowthrusters and they both worked with moderate strength. But we decided to stay another day to make sure the batteries were at full strength. However, now it appeared that we needed two C7 chargers for everyday use; one to keep the generator battery charged and one to keep the bowthruster batteries charged. So in the late morning, I hopped on my bike, while Rita was at the piscine, and rode out to the Feu Verte store in Montbeliard and bought another C7 charger, having earlier tested the C7 when it was connected across both bowthruster batteries and charging at 24v (as advertised). It automatically detected the change from 12v to 24v, so all was well. When I got back from Feu Verte, I connected the charger across the 24v battery pair, and later in the day saw that it had raised both batterieis to float level, above 13v each. So all was good with the world again.

We had enjoyed the big brass band so much last night that we decided to go see some of the students playing as a quartet tonight just up the canal from the mooring. So we jumped on our bikes and within 5 minutes had arrived there to find a crowd of over 500 spread out across the parkland grass listening already. We grabbed a couple of the Mairie-provided chairs and set up towards the back. The students had obviously been well taught because they played and presented very well. After they finished, we wandered back to a restaurant in the park and managed to grab one of the last available tables for dinner.

After dinner, we thought we'd catch the second act on stage tonight and got back just as they were striking up. This was a very different 10-piece Afro-Rock band, and they played with great enthusism. However, it was failing to keep our attention until, just as we had decided to leave, we saw a mass of young people appearing from around the side of the stage. We quickly recognised them as some of the students that were at last night's performance. It appeared as though they had finished their classes for the day, and been able to grab a few drinks before coming along to this gig. They danced and cheered from the edge of the audience, until they decided to create their own moshpit by dancing across the front of the stage. This single move transformed the performance, with the band feeding off the moshpit, and vice versa. Truly, the crowd maketh the band.