Macon – nice city but do not go there
46° 18′ 24.782” N 4° 49′ 43.431” E
July 19, 2015
Our next goal is Macon – a city of 37,000 people – who were once a major exporter of wine to the Danes. But greed took over, the quality fell, and today it’s almost hard to find a Macon wine on Danish shelves.
It is a charming city. We arrived during Sunday’s relative obscurity but still got a good idea of the beautiful city with its sense of jazz, art and wines. We got to the tourist office and directed to a wine shop and a half kilometre out along the beach road, and there we tried several of the local wines, and we tested some really good Burgundy wines. When you are walking, and one of your feet is still struggling with an injury, you are unsure whether your energy will get you back to the ship. However, close as it was.
We had moored Ronja by a pontoon bridge in the river just outside the city centre. We should never have done that.
We had seen in the chart, that there could be some turbulence in the water at night in this place. We had also read a cryptic expression that the pontoon bridge was home to “.. rather unusual animation”. We had discussed, what this message could mean. Mice, rats, insects … special? It turned out that the bridge was used by several young couples dating in the dark at evening. The first came at 10 o’clock p.m. The last past midnight. On top of this a general noise from the city, some annoying speedboats that showed their strength back and forth with huge motors-swells to follow, and then a few large hotel boats docked behind us in the middle of the night with giant spotlights, that illuminated our entire bed.
Next time here, we will certainly skip Macon. The city do not master the mix of different types of boats. Speedboats and personal watercraft roars through the water far beyond the limits specified in the chart. The commercial river-crossing operating at the time, where the rest of us are trying to sleep. Poor cocktail. Stay away from Macon.
Log book: Today’s distance: 62 km. Sailed time 7:00 to 13:00 = 6 hours. Locks: 1. Weather: Rain last night and a proper lightning storm in the night broke the heat wave. We get a gorgeous morning with a bit of rain and clouds. And when the sun comes through at noon the temperature never got higher than 29.
