Why I Hate J. K. Rowling & Other Tragedies of This Cruising Life

One of our dock neighbors is a kindly French woman who puts up with my extremely bad French and likes our dog.  When we are out on the dock, she will stop by to pet Yogi and try to have a conversation with me despite my garbled French sentences.  So far, I’ve come to understand that she is from Bordeaux but lives in Madagascar during the winter and she’s come to understand that I have few language skills and am not very bright.

For over a week, I stared at the name of her boat, ‘Gryffindor‘, looking it up in both my French/English dictionary and my plain old English dictionary.  I began to think that it was an ancient, obscure French word with perhaps a double meaning.  Duh!

I literally slapped myself upside the head when I realized why my grandchildren have been nagging at me to read the Harry Potter books.  Those stories are so much a part of the world now we’d (I’d) better get used to them, no matter how old, cranky or backwards we (I) may be.

Gryffindor - one of the four houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry which, in particular, epitomizes courage and chivalry.

Almost every evening our marina capitain, Jean-Pierre, serenades us boaters by appearing on his second story deck with his alpenhorn and belting out a few tunes.  He usually blows melodies I am not familiar with but last night we heard Amazing Grace and the Marseilles coming from the end of his long horn.  How nice to hear live music; we look forward to his twilight concerts and are disappointed when he misses one.

The marina up a creek

 Even though Corre is the tiniest, sleepiest of towns it boasts two marinas.  Our marina is up a creek (literally not figuratively) but the town marina sits right on the Canal De Vosges.  As Yogi and I took our evening walk through both marinas, we were approached by a local man who, with his granddaughter, was walking from boat to boat peddling fresh fruits and vegetables from his garden.  I said sorry but I had no money with me.  No matter, he said, reaching into his basket for 2 tiny peaches which he presented to me with a flourish.  Juicy, sweet and gone in a gulp - merci beaucoup, monsieur.

The town marina alongside the Canal de Vosges

Our local grand-pere isn’t the only enterprising spirit along this canal.  On our way to Corre, just as we had pushed the lever to begin a locking process, a grandmother with fresh haricot vert, a picture perfect head of lettuce and newly dug potatoes perched in her motor scooter’s carrier roared up to lock side.  We were too busy line handling to dig out any money so she revved up her motor and peeled out to find boaters with looser pockets.  Bon chance, madam (although with her kind of get-up-and-scoot attitude, her chance is already bon).

Then we ran across that damn selfish dog.  A group of men stood talking together alongside a lock and, as our boat entered, I noticed a wire-haired Fox terrier beside them sniffing the ground, digging a bit, then eating what he found.  I pointed the dog out to Dwight, wondering out loud what that puppy was chewing. His owner looked up and said “truffles”.  Truffles, those little black gems worth hundreds of dollars a pound and that dog was not sharing, nor was his owner ripping the food out of its mouth to sell on the open market.  At last we’ve met a dog even more indulged than our Yogi-dog.

The canals aren’t all ancient scenery or scary times in the locks.  Sometimes they are cornucopias yielding freshly picked vegetables, sweet golden honey or just laid eggs with orange yolks that stand at attention in your frying pan…..but not truffles.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (isn't that title already taken?)

The Good
The birds left earlier than usual this morning.  Here in Corre, raucous crows fill a few trees across the marina from us.  The quarrelsome, noisy birds fly off in the mornings cawing loudly, then in the evenings fly back to roost in their favorite tree complaining all the while. 
I enjoyed them when we were in Corre 8 years ago and they still please me so I listen for them.  But all was quiet when Yogi and I walked by the trees on our regular morning stroll.  
I don’t know where the birds were I just know that I missed their fussing.

We are finally where we are supposed to be.  We’re leaving on a jet plane in just about 2 weeks and little Echo will stay here safely tucked up for the winter.  We hadn’t planned to return to Corre, we were off to Niderviller which is close to Strasbourg, then, after listening to some cruiser friends sing the praises of the new owners of this marina, we changed our minds and headed south instead of east.  And we are glad we did….sort of.  Never have we found more accommodating people.  Corre is a small village with no facilities, so the capitain, Jean-Pierre and his wife Doris, today are driving Dwight to the dentist in the next town, driving Yogi and I to the vet next week for an International Health Certificate and will be driving us to catch the high speed train to Paris.  That is service!

The Bad
We are only sort of glad to be here because of an incident in one of the locks coming down the Canal de Vosges.  We’ve been through hundreds of locks both going up and going down.  Down is always easier, gentler, except for this time.  I cannot explain why the water wasn’t going in the right direction….it was rushing into the lock from the downward side, where it was lower than we were, creating such turbulence that our aft line broke under the strain and the boat repeatedly crashed into the side of the lock.  We had no control whatsoever  Standing on deck, I clutched the handrails trying not to fall off at each shuddering bang.  All of a sudden, I head the engine start and Dwight was driving the boat forward despite the end of the broken line being wrapped around the prop, using all of our 70 horsepower to keep the boat from being slammed into the lock gates behind us.  Meanwhile the two young VNF lock keepers, who we suspect caused the problem, just stood at the top of the lock frantically calling their supervisors (we hope) on their cell phones.  Finally the downstream gates opened stopping the rush of water into the lock chamber.  The propeller somehow cut through the wrapped line and we moved forward, out of that damn place.

We would like to say a few things to this boat of ours:

• thanks for being steel because a fiberglass boat would have been destroyed
• thanks for having a strong propeller
• thanks for keeping Yogi-dog inside during all this otherwise he would have been thrown from the deck and drowned in that turbulent water
• thanks for taking good care of us, we will return the favor

 I, Fran, who’ve never been particularly fond of this boat have a new respect for it and also for Dwight for his quick thinking and driving skills.  Whew, glad that’s over….well, not quite.  We are pretty sure that the shaft was damaged in the melee.  Our accommodating hosts here in the Corre Marina have composed a letter in French and sent it to the VNF in hopes that they will take up some of the cost of new lines, a new shaft and renewing the paint scraped off by the lock wall.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

The Ugly

The nasty blister obtained while trying to hang on

Poor, poor boat

Two Pictures Worth A Couple of Words-Maybe

Occasionally, due to a lack of parking space at a halt, we raft up to another boat. Getting Yogi-dog to shore for his morning emptying session presents a problem as small dogs do not cross wet slippery decks easily. So our dog is snapped securely into his life jacket so we can then safely and easily carry a bundle of Yogi. 

 

 

 

 

A French Laundry.  Yes, that is a urinal right next to the washer and dryer--sigh.