I woke early to join a Zoom meeting about MicroGrids back in Victoria, but I had mistimed the start of the meeting. So, when I joined at 0630h, the meeting was halfway over, having started at 0600h (2.00pm Melbourne time). Nonetheless, I had a useful conversation with one of the participants after the formal meeting had finished. And my early rising was not entirely wasted as I got a good photo of the sunrise over the misty River Saone at Mantoche.

And when I turned around I saw the morning sun illuminating part of the Chateau and gardens.

We departed Mantoche relatively early at 0830h because we wanted to get a few kilometres under the boat today and explore some new waterways. We cruised north towards Gray, where there were lots of swans gathered for the morning on the river just above the barrage.

We twisted the twister just below ecluse 16 and waited, but nothing seemed to happen. So I pulled across to the stone bank and Rita went up to talk to some VNF workers who were doing some work on the lock. They twiddled with some controls and Rita returned and soon the ecluse doors opened for us. We continued to ecluse 15 just below Rigny, where we caught up with the boat that had gone through the previous lock just before us. But now we were both delayed, because the barge that was coming down from ecluse 15 was having some trouble getting the ecluse doors to open and let them out. About 10 minutes later the VNF van arrived, and the barge was released from captivity. As they cruised past us, I thought it was ironic that the barge was called Baron d'Ecluse.

We continued on our way past the Rigny mooring and, as we passed the signpost at PK303, we entered new water for us, because this is where we had turned around in 2019. A few kilomteres further on, we reached the entrance to the tunnel at Savoyeux. The countryside around here is not particularly hilly, and so the tunnel was a bit of a surprise, but it does cut a few kilometres off following the river past the towns of Savoyeux and Seveux. We passed through Ecluse 13 and waited for the green light for the tunnel, and were soon on our way through the tunnel.

We had earlier phoned the capitainerie at Port de Savoyeux to see if they had an available mooring space for us, and they explained that the port was mainly private moorings, with just a few visitor spaces for boats under 15m. When we said we were 16.7m long, they said they would look to see if one of the longer private moorings was available, and that we should check again with them on arrival. When we emerged from the tunnel, we phoned again and they told us that a private boat owner was away for a couple of days, and we could use the space at the head of the final pontoon. So we slowly made our way past the rest of the pontoons and tied up at the end of the last one. Kanumbra was still a bit long for this pontoon, and we knew it would sway a fair bit if there was a cross breeze, so we put extra ropes from our side railing to the end of the pontoon to try to minimise the swaying.

The wind did pick up a bit later in the evening, so we were glad we had used the extra ropes. After a relaxed dinner, I spent the evening creating a memorial video for our good friend from Pans on Fire, Anne Kantor, whose funeral service was being held in Melbourne later this week. We seem to be using our recording of Amazing Grace as a backing track a few too many times in recent years.