Calais to St Omer

As usual we were rushing around at the last minute this morning to get everything ready . We cast off at 0755 ready for the bridge that opened at 0802. The rain that had been really bad all night had stopped but it was still really windy. We were the only boat to leave the marina. The sea was really rough as we motored around to the Carnot basin after getting permission from Calais port control - things were even getting thrown around inside the boat! As we entered the narrow channel that leads into the basin the bridge hadn’t been raised. With the engine in neutral the wind kept us going at a good speed and as the bridge started to lift we squeezed under. At the other side of the basin, we waited at the lock gates, just floating around. After a while the guy who had just opened the bridge for us arrived on a scooter and went into the control box. Ten minutes later he was on his phone and twenty minutes later two more guys arrived in overalls. Just after nine the gates opened and we entered the lock. After the checking of all our paperwork and licence, the water level rose up and we finally locked out into the French canal system.
We pulled up straight away and went as directed the day before into the VNF building to see the lady who did the licence. The next four bridges along the route are low and have to be lifted. She called the bridge guy (students on summer holiday) and arranged for us to meet him at the first bridge in 45 minutes. He arrived early and took all our details again and the opened the first bridge. We motored through and he came past in his van and did the same thing another three times over the next few miles.
The canal was fairly narrow with big patches of weed. A few times the engine nearly died as something got wrapped around the prop. We switched to using just one prop - the one nearer the centre of the channel but it still kept happening. Our first meeting with a boat was a motor cruiser from Bristol coming in the other direction. Shortly after we had our first meeting with a peniche. As he approached I noticed behind the cargo hold (and in front of his mobile home) a speed boat that he could lower into the water - then a scooter - then a jet ski. As we got level with him we saw the new Peugeot 406 parked on the back. A few hours later we caught up with another going in the same direction as us. I stayed behind him for ages but eventually got bored and went for the overtake. I couldn’t remember the sound signals for overtaking so I just started to go past. The gap wasn’t as big as it looked from behind and by the time I was halfway past I was starting to wish I‘d stayed behind. We hit a thick patch of something and the engine started to labour. I pushed the throttle forward and hoped for the best. The revs stayed the same but the engine didn’t stop. By the time we were past there were leaves & all sorts in the cockpit where the starboard hull had been a little too close to the side. I don’t know what was hanging off the props but it really slowed us down and took ages for us to pull a gap on him. Just as I was starting to though, another low bridge came up. I went into the lock cut thinking we might just squeeze under but the radome was just too high. By the time I’d reversed out the peniche was waiting too. A while later a girl came and opened the bridge and we went under. Now I thought we would get out of the embarrassing situation of continually getting in this guys way but a few hundred metres later we came to a lock. We both went in and he said hello again.
As we had no map, we kept taking either the biggest fork at each junction or the one that was pointing south. It felt like we were going in the right direction but in the afternoon we saw another catamaran with a british flag moored up so we stopped to check. He had a spare canal book so we bought it off him for 10euros. We were on the right canal too.
As the day had gone on I’d gone from shorts with two teeshirts and a fleece to just the shorts & sunglasses by dinner. By tea I had a good sunburn. The guy in the peniche overtook us again later in the day on one of the big canals and at 1815 we pulled into a slip and tied the boat to some trees (as my stakes made from offcuts of wood from the mast support don’t seem to work too well!) and called it a day. We’d done 28 miles on the log and were near a town called St Omer.