Charlie in the Canal du Midi

In order to get to the Mediterranean, we decided to take CHARLIE through the famous Canal du Midi which goes from Bordeaux to Port La Nouvelle on the Med. The canal has 125 locks which you operate yourself with the help of canal guides. You can see here that the depth is about 2 meters and the water ahead of us is much higher than we are. The gate behind us is closing and we then wait for the water to come pouring in very fast and very hard. We had to be careful to protect our sides from the wet and rough lockwalls as we bounced around. The locks ranged from 60 centimeters to a huge one of nine meters (where we couldn't even see the top). The lock attendents were extremely friendly and helpful, but we learned to do the work ourselves and didn't have any accidents.