As we left Choissey at 0920h, I noticed that the bowthrusters were not performing with their usual strength, despite being charged with the C7 charger. But I hoped they would re-charge as we cruised during the day. We cruised through the locks near the Solvay chemical plant with no troubles (unlike in 2019 where we struck trouble at both locks) and it looked like we would arrive at the lock down to the River Saone before the eclusier's lunch break. However, we encountered upcoming boats at the last two locks, which created doubt as to whether we would arrive in time - it all depended on whether we had to arrive at the lock before 1230h or be cleared from the lock by 1230h. We arrived at 1229h, and were relieved when we received a green light to enter the lock. We handed back our Zapper and cleared the lock at 1240h. But as we left we saw that another boat had been waiting to go upstream (possibly from before 1230h), and we were pleased to see that the eclusier allowed them to enter, even though it would mean that he would be taking a very late lunch. Nice VNF service!

We enjoyed the cruise up the river to the Auxonne lock, where unfortunately I noticed that the bowthrusters were even weaker than they were at Choissey. But we cleared that lock and then headed onto Auxonne. As we approached the port, we heard shouting from the shore, and realised that Peter and Judy were moored in their boat at the riverside moorings. They signalled to us to come join them, but given the state of our bowthrusters there was no way we could manage the two u-turns required. So we continued on to the entrance to Port Royal. This is often a tricky entrance, and today was no exception given that I had to do it with effectively no bowthrusters. I was embarrassed by my effort, but at least I didn't hit anything (I did go very close to the end of one of the visitor pontoons - luckily there were no boats moored there at the time). I was pleased that Alain had told us to moor on the hammerhead at the end of Pontoon B, since that would involve less manoeuvring. But having tied up the back of the boat, I then found I could not bring the front into the pontoon without the bowthruster (in hindsight, we should have tied up the front first and then used the rudder to bring the back in). However, having tied up the back of the boat, Alain then said just to apply low forward power and that this would slowly bring the front around to the pontoon, which it did!  Alain is a very good instructor, as I was to observe many times later as he guided hire-boat skippers as they made probably their first ever mooring after leaving the Le Boat marina in St Jean de Losne that very morning.

After catching up with Peter and Judy for a short time, we then drove the Scenic over to the secure carpark at St Jean de Losne and collected Vanumbra, because we remembered that the secure carpark would not be open tomorrow until after we were due to be in Dijon for the van inspection. After we returned to Auxonne, we went to dinner with Peter and Judy and some Queensland friends of theirs. As we returned to the port later that night, we got a very different night-time view of the port under moonlight.