Wednesday 8th July 2009 jnc St Gilles canal to KP282 nr Fourques Petit Rhône.

13.8°C much cooler overnight. Still hot and sunny. The Nautic moored behind us was off before we got up at 8.15 a.m. Two more hireboats went past before we untied at 9.45 a.m. winded and headed for the junction. Mike called the keeper at St Gilles lock on Marine VNF channel 18. He replied and Mike said we were for the Petit Rhône and would be at his lock in fifteen minutes. Turned left at the junction, there was a big patch of yellow water lilies growing at the junction. Passed a silent dredger (no one on board). A flight of little egrets took off in front of the boat as we carried on down the Rhône à Sète canal to the lock. (Strangely we’d seen not a trace this time of the famous pink flamingos) The gates opened and, after seeing the sign that said lifejackets must be worn, we donned ours as we motored to the top end of the chamber by the lock cabin. Dropped the centre rope on the rungs of a ladder as the gates closed what seemed like half a mile behind us. The keeper came down from above and asked boat name, owners name and asked if we had got a vignette. He told us the rise on his lock was only 20 cms and the debit (flow) in the Rhône was only 800m at Beaucaire. The top end gates opened and with a cheery wave he wished us bonne route and we were on the river. It was 10.25 a.m.

The level of water in the river looked low as we could see the tops of training walls made of wood or concrete, slotted between H-section girders driven vertically into the bed of the river. Nasty things to hit as they are usually out of sight, a very good reason not to stray from the marked channel. At 11.00 a.m. a high speed fishing boat went past, also heading towards the Rhône, just before the bend at KP295 the site of the big breach which flooded the Camargue in 1993. The North wind was too much for our sunshade so we took it down as we passed a small island where fishermen were camped (their inflatable boat had deflated) by KP293. Two black kites were catching the thermals to soar and move on. The fishermen who had just passed us were moored a little further upriver, fishing from a little beach. We put the sunshade back up as the wind had dropped again. At KP284 there were clouds of dust from a combined harvester hidden from view behind the trees. Two red kites were following it to harvest any flushed rodents. The mooring at Fourques by the suspension bridge was no good for us. There were two posts about 40m apart on the left or a couple of little posts on the right by the bridge with steps up to the road, which would have meant no satellite TV. It was very noisy by the bridge due to the traffic crossing it. 

We winded and went back downstream by about a kilometre and tied the fore end to an old dead tree stump (memories of moorings in Poland!!) and threw an anchor out off the stern. It was 2.15 p.m. An hour later a loaded 900 tonner called Manet went past heading downstream with another load of sand and gravel. A cruiser went downstream shortly after. Mike retied the side rope off the bows as the tyre on the old tree had slipped sideways and sprayed ant killer on a colony of very large black ants that were exiting the tree stump and heading for a new home on the boat. I put an extra rope from the bow stud to the tree. Stiflingly hot. Later, another loaded commercial went past, then an empty, Gravian (again), went upstream. The latter had been motoring hard because we went back and forth a lot. The cabin corner nudged the dead tree and took most of the bark off it, fortunately it was soft stuff, but it broke the string on one of the two tyres – which sank. Mike put another rope on from the centre stud to the tree and I added a hard sausage fender (one we’d stuffed with expanding foam when it burst). Things calmed down. Amazingly the TV didn’t go off!