Left Rhone and entered Saone!

The first river on the journey is now done. Yesterday we entered the slower river Saone and with a new crew member onboard. Anna-Karin came with a flight from Stockholm and joined us in Lyon. She has proved herself to be a good and steady helmsman and did not complain about my fried fish that we had for supper last night. Altogether we  now have made 460 km of the anticipated 1920 km to Travemunde.

Dead tired!

 Oh my, very hard work today. I am dead tired. BUT. The mast is now packed for transport. Now we are just trying to get hold of the guy who is going to drive it from here to Travemunde.
Tomorrow we have to get some diesel. We only have 75 liters and we need to fill up the tank, that is about 200 liters. Unfortunately the guy who comes with a mobile filling station does not want to come if we don't buy more then 300 liters. So we have to move into the marina of the town of Port St Louis and walk over to the filling station with our two 20 liters fuel cans a couple of times to fill up. I guess I will be as tired tomorrow as today. But it feels very good to soon be leaving for the Rhone river. /Mari

The route is set

So now we have decided on the route through France and Germany. We will start in Port Saint Louise (blue dot) and the Rhone, 395 km with 13 locks, then Saone, 406 km and 23 locks, Canal des Vosges, 146 km and 96 (!) locks, Moselle/Mosel, 395 km and 28 locks, Rhen 190 km no locks, Rhein-Herne, 47 km and 6 locks, Dortmund-Ems, 92 km and 1 lock, Mittellandkanal, 252 km and 1 lock, Elbe-Seiten 115 km and 2 locks, Elbe, 5 km no locks and finally Elbe-Lubeck, 61 km and 7 locks and we carry on to Travemunde. That is around 2100 km and 187 locks. We will start from Öckerö on Saturday and if everything goes well we will be in Port Saint Louise late Monday evening. One day to go through the boat with the old owners, one day to take the mast off, wrap it in plastic and send it off. And then maybe around half a day to get food and other stuff in the boat. Then we hope for good weather. We got a report earlier today from the boat - the Mistral is blowing so hard at the moment they can not even hang the washing outside! Hope it calms down! /Mari