On our way back to Dijon, our bow thruster stopped working. The bow thruster is a hydraulically-driven-propeller placed in the centre of a tube that runs sideways at the bow at the bottom of the barge. It allows for fine tuning – to move the bow slightly sideways when moving slowly and a tiny steering correction is needed. We also have a stern thruster. You’ll hear about that one later.
Not having a bow thruster made threading Aleau into the tight confines of a lock (Remember, just four-inches of clearance on either side.) even more difficult. Of course, the thruster failed in Dijon. We had 21 locks to get through before we would be back in St. Jean-de-Losne to have the thruster looked after. (21 and not 22 as we would need to stop at Atelier Fluvial, before the final lock, in order to get the thruster repaired.)