single handed thru the french canals

[cimo]

yet more good points since my last viewing. thanks again.

Should the unmanned locks become too much like hard work - could my stratedgy be to just hang back until a friendly likeminded boater comes along?
(slow I imagine - but whos rushing). Like the western med in general, I'm assuming that August is busy season in the canals too.

Not sure about bottles of half decent wine, though willing to trade in half (drunk) bottles of decent wine.

rgds
c

 

[Grehan]

Manned or unmanned, I doubt you'll have a problem after 'learning the ropes' and sorting out your basic technique on the first one or two. If you're taking the trouble to think ahead and post questions here, to get the lie of the land, you'll be fine when it actually comes to it.

 

[Seajet]

St. Louis,

I probably did not make myself clear, my experience upon a Hotel Barge was restricted to Burgundy.

We would depart Dijon, Canal du Burgogne, River Saone to Chalon then the Canal du Centre to St.Leger, back the other way the next week.

Our guests were indeed American millionaires, but it doesn’t take an awful lot to be a ‘millionaire ‘ these days ( or 1994 when I did this ) – though it doesn’t seem to include me !

Most guests were taking in the Burgundy trip as part of their ‘European tour’, we had a minibus driven by the tour guide which would take them to Vineyards & Chateaux etc, fine wine was a major focus; one week we we had an enthusiastic – but very pleasant and polite – group who drank our stocks dry, necessitating a discreet emergency top-up, previously unheard of.

I remember the tour guide recounting to me, as he picked up a group of guests in Paris and they travelled though the city, a slightly elderly American lady asked , “ Is that the Thames ? ” !

Our barge, 1 of 4 belonging to the company, was tailored to the high end of the market, $6,000 per person per week in 1994, 6 double cabins.

Or the whole barge could be chartered for $37,000 a week, this happened once when I was aboard; there were 3 generations of the family, the grandparents who’d organised and paid for the trip were delightful, their adult children were Californian nut-cases, and the grand-children were rude obnoxious brats !

Charters were considered bad news by the barge crew, as it meant much reduced tips; I received a pretty reasonable wage considering I had a cabin ( basic, certainly no aircon so VERY hot even at night, shared with the tour guide ) and the same food as the guests, without the presentation – but it was pretty hard work including some evenings, and weekends refitting & painting, so it was as well that my salary was usually doubled by tips, all shared equally among the crew – this enabled me to save decent money.

I knew another company with 2 barges which was pricier than us, and several companies which took a lot more guests per barge, charging a fair bit less; I remember chatting to the off duty crew of one such barge, which had been chartered by the LAPD – they didn’t look a very cheery bunch, like the SAS but with seriously bad attitude, certainly not people to argue with !

St.Louis, I am glad to hear you’re getting plenty of Australian guests, not just because I like them ( I like Kiwi’s and indeed Americans too ) but because I suspect that relying solely on the American market is a bad idea since 9/11; reading the comments in ‘Narrow Dog To Carcassone’ seems to bear this out.

For anyone who hasn’t read Terry Darlington’s book, it’s a wonderful, humorous read, NOT a guide / pilot, though some information comes through; thoroughly recommended especially to people ‘doing’ the canals ( I have no connection ).

Air cooled generators; yes, in fact we had TWO on deck, it was considered kind to the neighbours if we shut one down at night !

Why we had these, instead of at least one being much quieter water cooled, remains a mystery to me; I suspect they were a good deal at the time.

When we arrived at a village or town with shore power ( I had cables with a different connection for every such place en route, none were the same ) it was not unusual for us to trip the whole boat supply circuit breaker for all craft, only a few but we were not popular !

Engineering knowledge was definitely in short supply, they relied totally on calling out engineers from St.Jean De Losne; it seemed I was the only person in the company who could work so much as a screwdriver, not that it did me any good…

When I arrived at the barge, a large side window was jammed open covered with plastic sheeting, after a collision with a spar protruding from a moored boat.

During a weekend I managed to straighten the alloy window frame and get it ship-shape; the French chef, a great guy, exclaimed the skipper would be delighted.

Not so ! The British skipper, clueless with such things, had already reported ‘major damage requiring a shipyard’ to the owners, and this made him look stupid…sometimes one just can’t win.

Talking of major damage and shipyards, this barge had a whole new bows fitted some time before I got there, after repeated ‘contacts’ with locks etc over the years – it was originally built as a commercial barge in Strasbourg as part of German War Reparations, then later converted for Hotel use specifically for going through tunnels.

Another barge from the same company had fallen for the old trap of drying out with her stern / rudder on the shelf as the lock emptied, the result of course being when a certain angle was reached the barge – 280 tons – shot forward and significantly disimproved both the bows and the lock gates, while giving the guests something extra for their money !

A Hotel Barge from another company had, unusually, twin screws but one engine was usually out, resulting in even worse handling for her very experienced French skipper; we always knew if she was just ahead, by the fresh red paint on the lock gates…

It should be borne in mind that just like British narrow boats but on a much larger more sensible scale, these barges are built to make use of every usable inch of standard locks; hence 38 metres long, 2” either side.

It was standard practice for me to warp her in until the bower anchors were not quite touching at the forward gates if going downhill, there was a certain paranoia about drying on the rudder; but then the bows can get caught too.

Incidentally, after a bit of discussion with the skipper who spoke good French ( my standard is just ‘O’ level schoolboy, but I think courtesy gets one far ) we decided I should ask certain lock keepers ( eclusiers ? ) to pass me the paddle handle, as skipper couldn’t remember the term, it became ‘passez moi le truc s’il vous plait’, ‘pass me the thing please ’ !

I doubt this would work for passing yachts however, they knew us. I often regret not getting to know a certain lock-keepers daughter better, she was lovely, and I was about to get a divorce anyway !

One thing which may – or may not – be of interest, and I suspect will have St.Louis smiling as I came to believe experienced people don’t do this, was ‘counting into locks’.

The crew, Moi, would lean over from the side deck beside the helm, and look along the straight side of the barge, a little like sighting a rifle.

As one approached a lock or narrowed canal at a bridge, usually in a swinging turn ( the French sense of humour seems to put most locks at an angle to the direction one has just got used to ) the crew would call “ Plus 2 ” if the aim was spot on, ie 2 inches clearance either side.

There are no fenders of course, just thick steel runbbing bands at waterline level, repainted every weekend for cosmetic purposes.

Strangely enough, steering a 38 metre 280 ton barge within 2inches is much easier than it sounds, a part water-cushioning effect, but still definitely not for novices !

‘Plus 3’ means ‘ too much clearance here, you’re going to hit the other side’, while ‘minus 3’ means ‘you’re going to hit this side !’

Obviously the greater the figure, the more the potential collision with terra firma, usually in stone; the most I ever called was ‘plus 4’ when the tour guide fancied himself helming - the result was surprisingly spectacular, with a sheet of spray flying up between bow and stone lock pillar, and hostesses lucky to stay on their feet.

For info’, our barge had a helm which took 33 turns side to side (‘lock to lock’ as in a car could be confusing, I’m talking about turning the steering wheel ) – so as to give a mechanical advantage if the rudder should be in silt.

Sometimes it was indeed in silt, on the Burgundy Canal as the local farmers put in huge bore pipes with suction pumps to irrigate their fields; on one occasion they got the level so low – just by the Mirage fighter base south of Dijon, with them merrily blowing our deck umbrellas over with jet efflux - that we only just powered through, drawing 4 feet with a lot of weight and torque to help.

Also, engaging reverse gear urgently caused massive prop-walk at the stern, another reason for yachts to keep well clear of Peniches, they have difficulty stopping even if they want to.

We never had any particularly near misses with other ‘users’, though the Swiss hire boats were always good for either a laugh or a raised blood pressure; they always flew huge Swiss flags, and were completely clueless as to boat handling.

They should not have been let loose without more instruction; their usual response on seeing us coming was to panic, grab a lot of throttle, and either stuff themselves into the bank or stall in the middle…fortunately we were expecting them in that area.

One thing which did cause me to worry was that we didn’t have lifejackets for the guests; fine on canals, but if something like a collision had happened on the wide River Saone it could have had a nasty outcome; we had a small dinghy I used for repainting at weekends, a couple of emergency floats and a lifering or two.

I came to a quiet arrangement with the skipper ( we were both quite fit physically ) that if someone went over the side – a lot of the guests were getting on in years – I would grab a lifering and jump after them, leaving the skipper to manouvre and recover us.

I hope it doesn’t sound too much of a ‘Mickey Mouse’ outfit, though I had some misgivings coming from a small boat salt water background, in fact we were certainly among the top of the top…

I hope that has not wasted too much of people’s lives reading, I thought it may be interesting to see ‘from the other side’; and I’m sure when St.Louis has stopped laughing he can give a modern, skippers’ point of view !

 

[Saint Louis]

The Hotel Barge perspective

We are digressing a bit from the Single Handed theme, but overall just like any other waterway user hotel barges can probably be divided into "good", "bad" and "indifferent", and we hear some tales of hotel barge actions that are, frankly, shocking. It is up to the professionals to set the standards, and good old-fashioned seamanship (and manners) goes a long way. It can though can be quite frustrating when other canal users put themselves and others at risk by reckless and selfish behaviour.
I think hotel barges do have something to offer other users of the canals. We cover the same parts of the canal system many times in a season, we develop good local knowledge and contacts, and we see all sorts of boaters' attempts to carry out straightforward manoeuvres with unwelcome results! My memoirs will include full details!
One word of caution for anyone navigating single-handed is the extra importance of having good ropes and good rope techniques. Each year we learn of yet another incident in which a single-handed navigator sinks his boat by allowing the bows to get stuck in a lock gate when going upstream, and then because he is on the boat he cannot reach the emergency button to stop the locking cycle.
For a glance at REAL single-handed navigation, have a look at the blog page on our web site some two years ago - a really impressive Swedish navigator whom we met at Castets-en-Dorthe.
Saint Louis

 

[Seajet]

So much for hoping for further views from 'the other side'...

As a yachtie, when on the canals I was convinced that I could take my easily driven 22' lift keel Anderson 22 through with a solar panel or two and electric outboard ( in a well in my boat's case ) for the quiet canal stretches.

I met a couple with a Magyar 7 metre where the husband would take a long tow line and walk down the tow-path, no real effort at all once the boat was moving.

I'm sure a singlhander could do this with a lashed / locked helm if necessary, or fancying some exercise, but practice would be required well before approaching lock gates or bridges where the canals narrow.

Another young couple were rowing / self towing through in a Hurley 18, stopping at places en route busking for money - they were both accomplished musicians, and had what sounded like a castle to return to in UK, it was a sort of extended 'gap-year' / hoot for them...

One needs a decent engine for the river stretches though, and of course the usual provisos re. long lines, fender boards etc.

I would emphasize that for anyone used to the UK, the high temperatures - even at night - are quite a surprise - a good hat, and spares, is essential; I got serious sunstroke working on deck, and I can say wholeheartedly it isn't much fun ! Obviously not at all good if alone...

Our little cabin on the barge was a hot tin box in the day, necessitating open portholes ( which had to be closed sharpish at turbulent locks, something for a mental or written check-list for all crews, let alone singlehanders ) and a good powered fan was nigh on essential; I'd take quite a few in case of failures !

The midges didn't seem to bite, unlike Scotland, but I'd take plenty of cream and treatments, a priority; like all healthcare, even more important alone.

I did find in our tiny 'en - suite' shower there was a thick layer of midges to bathe ones' feet in, on stepping into the shower tray...

There are some relatively powerful flying insects compared to the UK, I never knew of any problems but it would be wise to carry a very good first aid kit; if one runs into problems it's amazing how far from help one can be on the canals, and there's the added factor the last thing a singlehander wants to happen is to be dragged to hospital leaving the boat defenceless.

I've heard of transitting yachties having metal grills to set up at hatch openings, I would definitely have these if doing the trip with limited crew, let alone singlehanded; some places like Dijon have a bad reputation for druggies / muggers / burglars...I thought this nonsense as I'd found Dijon a wonderful, sophisticated, friendly place...

Then I found our hostesses had been threatened by junkie stalkers ( still not sure how much to believe, as they were the types to invent trouble if they couldn't invite any ) - then I was semi - attacked by what I took to be an Algerian type, apparently high on drugs. No harm done, I managed to shrug him off, but he was very odd; when I got back to the barge they were on a sort of 'yellow alert', another barge had been set adrift, apparently not that rare.

Then again, that used to happen to yachts at Wareham, Dorset until those responsible were given The Message !

 

[Saint Louis]

Discretion

Sorry, Seajet, that's as much as I can give from the "other side", we have to be the epitome of discretion.
You will have to wait for the memoirs...
Meanwhile, the sun shines, 19 C forecast, and we are busy getting the Saint Louis ready for the season

 

[Seajet]

Saint Louis,

We'll have to compare memoirs one day - there is of course a great deal I haven't mentioned !!!

To the OP, I'm sure it will be a hugely enjoyable trip, and as I say the book 'Narrow dog To Carcassonne' is well worth a read, just for the humour...

Have fun !