Locks and Tunnels

Late start this morning as I didn’t even wake up until 0800. We parked up last night next to the lock, so before we slipped the ropes at 0830, I pressed the remote control button to set the thing working, but it didn’t. In the end two red lights came on which meant it was broke. We went up to the control booth and pressed the remote intercom and tried to explain in French which lock we were at and the problem. A while later a man came to the lock while we were back at the boat. The lights changed to one red and he went again. When we pressed the remote it still didn’t work. While I went back to the intercom to explain again, Mayuri set it working somehow. I ran back down to the boat and just as we were going through the lock the man came back. I think he thought we’d pressed the button to go down instead of up but he wasn’t too unhappy.
The route is really nice and after a couple of locks, we were caught up by a German boat. We went further forward in the lock so he could come in behind us. Everything went ok in this lock but the next one didn’t have a mooring cleat in the right place and we were forced near the doors at the front of the lock. When the water started coming in to raise us the boat became cross ways on in the lock as neither of us was strong enough to hold it in place against the turbulence, and two new scrapes were added. The next lock was as bad although no damage was done so we decided to stop for dinner and carry on our own after and stay toward the back of the lock and choose the best mooring bollards for our non canal shaped boat.
After 19 locks we finally came across the German boat again. Him and about 6 other boats were all tying together in a convoy to be pulled through a 5.7km tunnel by an electric barge. It only goes twice a day so they’d been hanging around for ages. We threw him our ropes and set off. It took 1.5 hours to get through and we were freezing by the other side. We decided to stay at the next convenient place to moor up. An hour later we came across another tunnel. We didn’t know how to tell if there was anything coming through in the opposite direction but luckily saw a barge ahead of us going in. We went a bit faster to catch up and just followed him through. It was about a kilometre and after we came out this one we had to moor up as it was 2100. By 2110 we found a spot although we’re touching the bottom as its not very deep. Just hope not too many big barges come past in the night as it’s a concrete ledge which doesn’t go too well against a fibre glass bottom!