Truly in the canal system

Summer 1998. Bridges like this are why we had to take Bijou's mast down. If we wanted to travel in the system, we needed to be "short" enough to get under them.   

Typical lock. usually only a couple of boats can go at a time, and usually the "lift" or "drop" was only 10 to 20 feet.

Carl guiding Bijou into a lock. We were alone in this one. He pulls in, throws me a line which I secure to the bollards on the top of the wall. Then either a lock keeper initiates the lock action--either up or down, or we did it manually. Although the manual locks were more work for us, we liked having the control.

On manual locks Carl's job was to get Bijou safely into the lock and secure the lines to Bijou. Lori's job was to open and close the lock doors and push the button to either let the water in or out. Also she secured the lines to the bollards at the top of the wall.

In all, we did 257 locks from the Netherlands to Roanne, France, where we stopped for the winter. We often asked ourselves if this was a good idea. We saw some really outstanding things, but this trip was hard on Bijou. She was not built to be in a canal system, and she sustained damage before we finally stopped.

In many places, we could just pull alongside the canal edge and tie up. Bijou has a deep keel, which is a big disadvantage when in canals. While the center of the canal is deep, the edges often were too shallow for Bijou. When we found docks like this, it was amazing.

Crafts of all sorts cruise the canals. We were always entertained and sometimes intimidated by the huge peniches that use the canals to haul goods. They are big and squeeze us little guys to the edge. Did I mention that the edges were sometimes too shallow for us!! That's when we kept our fingers crossed that we'd get passed them without hitting bottom. In most places the bottom was cement or rock!