What have i done to upset the French?

L

Leslie frank

Well-Known Member
Joined
30 Nov 2013
Messages
137
Location
live aboard
www.sailblogs.com
We are in France at the moment. Yesterday we were hit by a French boat. It damaged the toe rail. Last month we were hit by French boat.it bent the bathing platform. A few months before another chap smashed into the duogen. Is a 14m fat old Moody ketch somehow invisible here in France? Zut alors!
 
Par for the course I think. Fenders are optional extras over there. Over the years I have been struck and damaged on occasion by Germans, Poles and Brits, but the greatest number by far were the Dutch, who have an underserved reputation for seamanship, which is not evenly distributed through their sailors.
 
johnalison said:
Par for the course I think. Fenders are optional extras over there. Over the years I have been struck and damaged on occasion by Germans, Poles and Brits, but the greatest number by far were the Dutch, who have an underserved reputation for seamanship, which is not evenly distributed through their sailors.
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that! I think we witnessed the Duogen incident that Jules W reports (inside of the outer pontoon at Camaret Jules?) when a French flagged Wauquiez of about 48ft demonstrated a complete lack of basic boat handling skills.

At the time, we were on another part of the marina having just been hit bow to bow by another boat trying to moor (unnecessarily) downwind ahead of us. He drove our anchor back into the bow roller hard enough to split the 110mm diameter roller but denied any responsibility saying “it was only a little touch”.

The boat that hit us? Dutch…
 
Jules W said:
We are in France at the moment. Yesterday we were hit by a French boat. It damaged the toe rail. Last month we were hit by French boat.it bent the bathing platform. A few months before another chap smashed into the duogen. Is a 14m fat old Moody ketch somehow invisible here in France? Zut alors!
Click to expand...
Maybe you're flying your French courtesy flag upside down :LOL:
 
June, July and August are the months when the most accident prone French sailors take to the water.
It makes for interesting/entertaining viewing unless your boat is one of their victims.

Boats to look out for:
- grubby MAB with maybe one fender on either side
- shiny AWB with 8+ fenders either side (those will probably clobber you with their huge protruding anchor)
- boats with shouty skipper at the helm and assorted clueless crew on deck
 
Last edited:
We had our transom hung rudder-post clouted hard in Tregurier, but it was fortunately of traditional hefty construction so only minor cosmetic damage resulted.

We weren't even safe back in Old Blighty, though. A French boat crashed into us in Ramsgate. Dashed on deck to see what was going on, inspected our stern and couldn't see any damage, so just frowned disapprovingly at the culprits who were looking sheepish and trying to back away. Only later did I discover that it wasn't the stern that they had hit, but a guardrail stantion near the stern that was decidedly bent (and still is). They must have known we were looking for damage in the wrong place, these shifty furriners!

The French are still trying to get back at us for some perceived slight during the Hundred Years War, perhaps? :unsure:
 
capnsensible said:
As for those Swiss.....
Click to expand...
The lady who was travelling with me for the previous month is Swiss and, at one point, we had a bit of a altercation with a hire boat crewed by what I thought were a German family and I expressed my disgust about "bloody Germans".
"No, no", says she, "they are Swiss, they are the worst sailors, they only sail weekends when they come to the lakes and act like the own the ****ing place".
Only the second time she swore the whole month.
 
On the bright side. I warned the owner of a boat beside us that his anchor wouldn't hold in the predicted strong wind. I woke up in the night and hammered on his boat to let him know his stern was now inches away from the wall.

The response was immediate and three very young, very attractive ladies scampered on deck. All completely naked. They were clueless and I felt obliged to give them a helping hand.

The owner appeared, shrugged and went back to bed. I was in a better mood than expected for some reason and allowed them to set up lines so that our anchor took all the strain. It did take a while but I wanted to make certain they were happy with the result.

I certainly was.:D
 
Mistroma said:
On the bright side. I warned the owner of a boat beside us that his anchor wouldn't hold in the predicted strong wind. I woke up in the night and hammered on his boat to let him know his stern was now inches away from the wall.

The response was immediate and three very young, very attractive ladies scampered on deck. All completely naked. They were clueless and I felt obliged to give them a helping hand.

The owner appeared, shrugged and went back to bed. I was in a better mood than expected for some reason and allowed them to set up lines so that our anchor took all the strain. It did take a while but I wanted to make certain they were happy with the result.

I certainly was.:D
Click to expand...
Did you have your security cameras running by any chance?
(Asking for a friend)
 
Yes I reckon there must be something between French and Brits, sailing in France for about 30y I was never boarded by any other boat. More disappointingly I have never seen boats full of naked ladies (which seems frequent with my Brit friends, maybe a hidden message?), actually quite the opposite the odd overweight naturist males showing their family jewels to the whole anchorage. :(
Or people peeing from their boat rafted next to you while you are taking breakfast in the morning, or vomiting liters of alcohol&dinner mixture over your boat at night, but I guess there is no nationality affiliation for those. Isnt boating funny :)
 
To be fair.... it turns out the collision was a test sail of a new boat. The boatyard broker was on our boat at 0930 and the damage repaired by 1030. Very keen to avoid insurance / publicity which suited us. Vive la France!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top