Cruising donkeys

After visiting the market in Langry, the best so far, produce looked wonderful and clothes better than usual tat, we stopped for the obligatory coffee and people watched. Then down river we wandered to Nogent sur Marne, saw some impressive homes and even though we were only 15km out of Paris some lovely wild areas. We also saw a loaded barge coming very slowly towards us on a very narrow piece of the canalised river but we found a wider section and just waited for it to pass, so glad we weren’t the cruiser stuck behind it, it really was s...l....o....w.... We stopped on the Halte Public in Nogent and walked around town and visited a museum that had lots of those old sepia postcards of the area, showing the 1910 flood, activities taking place on the river and the main focus of each of the surrounding areas be it agriculture, industry, tourism. Unfortunately once we returned to the boat, another cruiser arrived and told us they been told they could moor where we were, I called the capitainerie and the Marina rep came to us and said we couldn’t stay, the marina, and the halte public were all closed due to Covid. I pointed out that he had told someone else to use the space but he said we must go.
We travelled further downstream looking for possible moorings, nothing and Joinville Port were not answering the phone. We try to look around the Port for a space and as we are easing along on tick over CRUNCH CRUNCH. Obviously the sign indicating that there was a depth of 1.80 was wrong we were stuck Bugger. Reverse didn’t work, so next we tried putting out the secondary anchor so we could winch ourselves off, the anchor wouldn’t hold. OK we’re not out of ideas just yet, we detach the 40kg Rocna from the chain and tie it on with rope and carefully lower it onto the kayak to be paddled out by John and tipped overboard. He manages this without tipping the entire kayak a feat in itself. The Rocna holds so now we need to winch ourselves off using it, well the hand winches aren’t going to be any use so we rig the anchor rope between the starboard stern bollards up forward to the bow bollard and back to the electric anchor winch. Fingers crossed 🤞. John is on the throttle and I have a foot on the winch control and am pulling the anchor rope to stop it slipping, no movement, more revs, nothing then shudder and we’re moving a little more and we’re off. Now to make sure we don’t snag the rope in the prop and can release the anchor from the rock it’s embedded itself into. All change I’m on the controls John’s on the anchor and ...... it’s up.
It took us about 2 hours but we are free, we get a standing ovation from the spectators in the Port. We tie up on the commercial boat waiting pontoon exhausted 😩 but happy 😊 and have well earned drink.Read more