The morning dawned cool, and we took the time to relax a bit with no schedule pressures. Rita kept working on her literature review for her music therapy thesis, while i got a bit of work done on this blog. After lunch, we decided to make a move and headed towards Ille-sur-le-Doubs. We met a VNF guy at the lock in Ille-sur-le-Doubs and he told us about all the work they had been doing in the canals to clear up the weed - it certainly seemed to be much cleaner in this town. As we cruised through the port, we saw Antonia moored on the left and stopped in mid-stream to have a conversation with John, and to find out their onward plans. Looks like we shall catch up again soon.

While the weed situation was better in Ille-sur-le-Doubs (as shown above), it was not quite so good in the next bief where they were still actively clearing the weed. This meant that there was lots of chopped-up, floating weed, especially around the entrance to the next lock. As we entered that lock, very slowly, I lost all steering and reverse thrust as a result of the weed, and just kept heading towards the front gates. Luckily, the VNF guy had followed us to this lock and was standing on the quai, so that when Rita threw him a rope he was able to grab it and loop it around a bollard, thus bringing us to a halt (thankfully). But with no steering on the way in, I had clouted the side wall and lost one of the solid rubber fenders on the the stern port side (which promptly sank to the bottom of the lock). So I quickly made a temporary fender from some old mooring rope that I had on deck, to stop our rubbing strake from hitting against the lock wall.

As we approached the lock at Colombier-Châtelot, we noticed a bunch of teenagers jumping into the canal from near the lock, but they stopped as we came closer. Once we had tied up, a couple of the boys came up and started talking to Rita. When they learnt that we had come from Australia, they got very interested. So Rita started telling them about the WOOFERS (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) program, and how many young French people had come to Australia on that program. This piqued their interest even further, and as we left the lock, one of the boys raced back to his mates to write down all the details before he forgot them! We continued on and passed by the lifting bridge at Columbier-Fontaine.

We were reaching the end of the day, and our intended overnight destination at Dampierre-sur-le-Doubs. And when we got there, we were grateful to find our mooring spot vacant. So we were soon tied up in the shadows of the church, and looking forward to a restful night.