Humber Barge Waterdog
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This is Tilly looking for reassurance as a big noisy barge approaches our mooring.

The Canal des Ardennes is beautiful with a changing landscape along its length.

We stopped in Rethel for 2 days to pick up our best friends Pete and Tracy due to arrive from England. Our second day in Rethel brought long hours of thunderstorms and whipping winds lashing into the boats. The side decks filled up to overflowing and we watched in wonder as lightening strike after lightening strike hit all around in rapid succession. Tilly cowered under our wheelhouse table and then there was a flash and a crash simultaneously which had us looking for burn marks on the boat, the shore power blew as well. A Dutch boater told us later that the lightening had hit the water just across the canal from us and that's when the power blew. The surge may have gone from our boat to shore since we found our power lead was also melted at the shore socket and needed replacing when the power was restored. There were a lot of storms around and we were told of a tornado at Dieppe to our northeast which did a lot of damage. We saw plenty of trees blown down into the river as we continued our cruising but nothing that we couldn't go around. Soon after the storms left us it was sunny and hot again so we continued our policy of cooking outside on a camping stove with legs.