The morning dawned sunny, and we were getting ready to leave the mooring after breakfast, when an older lady approached the boat and asked Rita if she knew of any dentists in neighbouring towns. Apparently, the Dampierre dentist had recently retired and this lady had a tooth abscess that needed urgent attention. While we knew nothing about dentists in the area, Rita got onto Google and started searching for dentists around us. Within 10 minutes she had found about 6 dentists in easy driving distance, and the lady went away happy. Ah, the power of Google!

So just a little later than planned, we left the mooring and entered the first lock. As we were tieing up, a VNF worker approached Rita and started to chat. Initially, Rita thought it might be Jerome, the father of the family that we gave a ride on the barge in 2019. It turned out not to be, but this guy was a friend of Jerone's at the VNF. So be promised to pass on our best wishes to Jerome and his family.

We made good time along the canal, which was relatively free of weed, and arrived at the lifting bridge around 1030h, much to the pleasure of the VNF controller! However as we got to the next lock, we saw that another boat was in there, coming downstream. So having registered our presence with the new Zapper, we pulled back and across to the side to let the boat depart. We then went into the open lock on the green light, but when we got in there, the blue tirette did not seem to do anything to start the lock operations. So Rita called the VNF, and got onto our "good friend" at the lifting bridge. He explained that he couldn't come at the moment, because he was waiting for the downstream boat at the lifitng bridge, but explained that somehow our presence at the lock had not been registered. He recommended that we back out of the lock, and then come in again past the electronic eye that detects the boats. So we did that, and it worked! We were soon through our last lock before Montbeliard.

When we arrived in port, we saw that the mooring by the quai was still available, so we did a little 3-point turn and reversed into the mooring spot. It all looked like we knew what we were doing! It's always easier with bowthrusters. While the mooring had a bollard on the quai at the stern of the boat, it had no bollards at the bow. But there was a huge pot plant, which we then used as a bollard, and festooned our ropes with orange flags to avoid walkers or cyclists tripping over the ropes. Quite a tropical mooring!

I procrastinate for quite a while, but eventually realised I had to do something about the toilet. So I adopted my best Kenny* attitude and got stuck into it. After lots of diagnostic tests to identify the problem, I turned the toilet water and power off, and started pulling the toilet apart. However, unlike the last time I had to do this in 2014, this time the problem was much simpler with a blockage in the discharge pipe at the point where it connected to the macerator. So it was a relativley simple matter to clear this blockage and reconnect everything, and everyting worked OK.

* Kenny was a 2006 Australian film, about a plumber who was an expert at unblocking toilets

Since we now had a working toilet we felt safe to repay last night's hospitality and invite Rob and Anna to dinner on board Kanumbra tonight. Unfortunately, they didn't need to use our newly fixed facility.