Niffer lock to Biesheim                                                           

Canal de Alsace all north, zero on the dial for 40km

We were back on the motorway.

From Palma to the Rhone, Lyon and then the Soane river to St Jean, sideways across the Canal Rhone du Rhin, at last we turned north on our adventure of being marooned in the Mediterranean with canals closed to Paris that were overrun with algae and had no depth. This was the route to the Rhine, water from the Swiss Alps. Boats here mostly Swiss and German. For that matter we had never seen another English boat since the Mediterranean.

Turning north from the Niffer lock we put zero on the autopilot dial, heading all north, a wide commercial canal, the Grand Canal de Alsace that would run alongside the Rhine river to Germany where the river would merge with the Canal to be the Rhine proper. This was a powerful river for EDF producing 8 billion KWhs of electricity every year. Not just kilowatts but controllers of the mighty locks.

Eleven thirty on the clock for the all north turn. First of three locks was Ottmarsheim, hydro power plant wall, giant weir, two lock gates, mighty rising walls of metal. The canal was running the small locks. 185m by 12m wide, that’s a small lock! Wow, it was huge, what a joy. Rising cleats of metal floated up the wall as easy to rope as eating rice pudding with a ladle. We were back on the motorway!

Downside of the commercial world of water is yachts must wait for commercial priority, we were back in the land of thirty minutes and an hour to be granted space to go through.

The canal d’Alsace was wide, easy autopilot steering, eight meters deep, we rose our MAN engines to nine hundred rpm each and got an easy ten knots.

Fessnheim lock followed, again a mighty affair, gothic, slabs of concrete larger than cathedrals and theses mighty rising end gates. An illusion as the lock water fell, the gate then began to rise, to the eye we were going back up as the gate move. We were a downstream boat running for the North Sea, it was downhill all the way from here.

Vogelgrun was our third and final lock of the day, asked to wait on the outer wall. A commercial tourist day barge came out of the lock, the skipper waved, pointing around, we did not understand. The locks here are all marked EDF, the EDF lockmaster asked us to stay on the wall. Ahh, it’s a tourist day boat, the barge circled, and returned into the lock, this was a day trip and the lock were a fun photo shoot.

‘Come in’ called the EDF lock master, we were quick to drop rope, fire up the MAN engines, so much room in the lock, the barge was left port side and we were edged up toward his stern starboard side, space on a grand scale. Tourists took photos of us, the lock and themselves in the selfies.

Biesham yacht harbour beckoned only a kilometre from the lock, it was 16.45hrs. Folk had told us is you make Biesham by mid-day its worth pushing for Strasbourg, can’t for the life of us see how on earth anyone could have got here for twelve. We had lost much of three hours on three lock entries

Time for tea then, we turned starboard into a river head, red and green cans marked an easy entry in to the yacht basin, signpost for visitors to go to pontoon G, half way down the run of moorings, the first hammerhead long pontoon was empty, thrusters on and ropes out, we tied up with a whole two meters of water below the boat, luxury. Hook up cable, power on, mug of tea, and the mug had a handle, but that’s another story.

Bieshheim 48:01.79N 07:34.21E