Yes, an almost disastrous day... our second major scare since buying the boat, and one that could have seen us in deep - literally.

It started beautifully. We had moored in the country on the Canal du Midi on a peaceful stretch of water, on the doorstep of the next lock which we anticipated going through first thing in the morning.

During the night I'd got up for a call of nature and decided to peek outside to see what I could see. In a nutshell: stars, and lots of them. Plus a half moon as a bonus. So I decided to quietly sneak on deck so as to not wake Liz, and admire the heavenly view - the same one I grew up with for the first almost-15 years of my life: the northern hemisphere night sky.

Now, let's get this clear from the start; the southern hemisphere night sky is a lot better than the northern, mainly because it's facing more towards the centre of our galaxy, which is what is generally known as the Milky Way. That's because it looks, to the casual naked eye, a bit milky, a bit fuzzily-white, but in reality that fuzziness is made up of millions and millions of stars, so densely packed together as to seem - from this distance - like breath on a bathroom mirror.

From northern latitudes however the night sky is less dense, but not necessarily less interesting. Last night for example, I viewed the half-moon's 'seas' and craters through the boat's binoculars, then identified Jupiter and saw three of its moons. Over to the east, glowing an fiery red was the planet Mars, very close to Earth at present, so particularly bright red. Above me was The Plough - which the Americans call The Big Dipper - and off to one side Cassaeopia, the Big 'W'. I found the North Pole Star, and identified Castor and Pollux, my birthday Gemini Twins. It was magical, and all of France's southern frogs noisily agreed with me. And then I went back to bed.

The morning dawned bright and sunny, and blissfully calm. We were first through the lock when it opened at 9am, being right at its gates, and sailed on through avenues of leafy plane trees still under stay of execution (see previous blogs), shimmering in the morning sun.

By the time we reached the lock at Bram though we had caught up with two hire boats waiting to go into the lock, so we gallantly let them go first, knowing that it always pays to know thine enemy. They wern't too bad actually, and tied up reasonably well, so we cruised in slowly to take our place behind the one on the right. The phrase Devil Take the Hindmost now springs to mind, because as Liz was securing our bow rope to a bollard I eased the throttle forward to make it easier for her, only to find the boat went dramatically, suddenly, definitively and horrifyingly into full reverse, just as the lock gates were closing behind us.

We went from graceful arrivals to panic-stricken no-hopers within a second. The lock-keeper shouted something, I certainly shouted something, and Liz's face was frozen in horror, not understanding why I would choose such a moment to put Liberty into full reverse.

The reality of it was that I was giving her all she had forward (Think Scotty on Star Trek: "I'm giving her all I can Cap'n, but I canna hold her much longer!") yet the boat had decided as though she had a mind of her own that she was going to go backwards. And she did, at an alaming rate of knots.

The starboard davit, which hangs with its port twin off the back of the boat struck the closing lock gates first, followed by an enormous BANG as the stern of the boat, the swim platform, followed. The noise was horrendous - I thought we had completely crushed the stern and would start sinking, or at least had written-off the lock gates. No matter what I did with the throttle the boat wouldn't respond, which I tried to explain in my limited technical French with frantic arm-waving to the eclusier.

He manipulated his remote controls, seemed satisfied that the lock gates weren't damaged, and proceeded to finish his task. Meanwhile, Liz was tugging the boat as hard as she could from the side of the lock to inch me away from the lock gates, and - as soon as he could - the eclusier helped. They tied the boat up and we waited while the water in the lock rose up to meet the level on the upward side.

Meanwhile, the occupants of the two hire boats, while seemingly worried about our plight, looked equally relieved that it wasn't them who had just made complete asses of themselves. When the lock gates in front opened they took off as fast as they could to escape the two wayward Kiwis who obviously knew nothing about boating.

I tentatively tried the throttle forward and backward, but apart from revving the engine it had no effect on motion whatsoever, so I gave a verbal and physical shrug to Liz and the eclusier. It was left to her and the lock-keeper to then physically pull the boat (and me) out of the lock and up to some bollards where they tied us safely up. The eclusier then went back to his duties to let a lovely 100-year-old barge downstream, while Liz and I wondered what the hell had gone wrong with our equally lovely yet less-than-20-year-old boat.

It's at this point I need to acknowledge having grown up with motorbikes since the age of 15. Like most teenagers I had to start with second-hand older bikes, which of course broke down now and then. My stepfather refused to help, thinking (I believe) that since I'd chosen a motorbiking life I could damn well suffer the mechanic's life that goes with it. The best - and possibly only - thing he ever did to help me was to give me a set of ring spanners for a birthday present. The rest of it he left up to me.

So when my various motorcycles had problems, I quickly came to realise that what was required was a process of elimination, where you work backwards from the problem, eliminating issues as you go until you're left with what's really wrong. It's the Sherlock Holmes principle: After you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - now matter how improbable - is the truth (problem/answer/challenge).

And so it was. We lifted the carpet, the flooring and the sound baffles to reveal the engine bay in all its glory. I got Liz to operate the throttles from the flybridge and inside the boat - in forward and reverse - and could quickly see that it was having no effect on the gearbox mechanism. Tracing the cables back I discovered that a small plastic clamp that held the throttle/gear cable in place had perished. In fact it lay in pathetic pieces on the engine bay floor, a shadow of its former self. Looking at some of the other clamps still in place I could see what it used to look like - and I also knew that we had nothing like it on board. So, McGyver Time...

We began searching the boat for anything small and clamp-like. Within a few minutes we'd found a smallish hose clamp, but not small enough. So, next thing we found was a clip on the fuel line to the diesel-powered heater, which was the perfect size except that its bolt wasn't long enough. It then took us the best part of the next two hours to scour the boat - every drawer, cupboard, nook and cranny, even down to unscrewing the handles off the pots and pans - to locate something as simple as a tiny two-centimetre bolt.

In the end Liz pointed to the nut and bolt holding the boat's horn to the equipment rack, and hey presto, it was perfect. Within minutes it was fitted, Liz tried the throttle/gears from above while I watched what happened down below, and it all looked fine. Putting everything back in place we started the engine and tested tne throttle and gears... success!

Wine time! It was glorious weather; the sort of perfect day where we should have been cruising and smiling from ear to ear. But sod it... we had made a temporary repair, got ourselves out of a hole, and we were still afloat and alive, so we had a glass of wine on the aft deck and toasted my motorbike upbringing along with Liz's observational skills. We also drowned our sorrows at having suffered a badly-damaged davit and a dented swim platform... problems which will still cost hundreds of Euros to fix - eventually. But at least we hadn't ruined the lock gates and put the whole of the Canal du Midi out of action.

I'm glad I went out on deck the night before, to count my lucky stars.