Itinerary

  • Mon 28 April Christchurch to Le Havre.
  • Tue 29 April arrived in Le Havre
  • Tue 6 May Mast Down. To Risle via Tancarville Canal.
  • Wed 7 May Set off for Paris
  • Sun 12 May Arrive Paris Arsenal
  • Thu 16 May Paris to St Mammés
  • Mon 20 May Leave St Mammés on the River Yonne heading for Auxerre
  • Mon 27 May Leave Auxerre on the Canal du Nivernais heading for Dezise
  • Mon 16 June Leave Dezise on the Canal latéral à la Loire heading for Digoin
  • Wed 18 June Leave Digoin on the Canal du Centre headining for Chalon-sur Saône
  • Sun 22 June Leave Chalon-sur Saône heading South on the River Saône
  • Tue 23June Leave Givors on the Rhone heading for Port Napoleon and the Med
  • Wed 2 July Port Napolean, scrub off, mount mast, set up for sea etc.
  • Thursday 10 July Sail for Toulon

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Short diversion up the Petit Seine


Spent 3 nights in Moret-sur-Loing. A pretty, friendly little town with all facilities including a great fish shop and a reasonable supermarket. The mooring is high quality pontoons at only €9 per night – and the third night is free. All with water and electricity thrown in. We met a lovely Irish couple – Mike and Roseanne on Aquarelle and also swapped stories with Sandra and Don on Gadabout – a fascinating little long boat.
On Tuesday, we decided to go up the Petit Seine part of the way as we only really have to do 10K to Montereau for Wednesday night to pick up Mike and Linda. Above the Yonne, the Seine gets considerably smaller and faster. It is also much more rural, winding through apparently deserted forest – until every now and again you come across a small patch of heavy industry – mostly sand and gravel quarrying but also some silos. I expected that the commercial traffic would die away – but it really hasn’t. We meet small ro large Peniches at every lock either going the same way as us or the the other and sometimes both. We passed at least one per hour going the other way too.
The locks are mostly fairly easy although they are mostly higher than on the Haute Seine. One of them is corrugated Iron which makes life more interesting with the fendering. Thank heavens for the barge boards!

When we got to Jaulnes, there were Peniches everywhere. 4 in the lock going up, 3 more waiying to come down and another huge one in front of us waiting to go up. It looked like a long queue and we couldn’t raise the lock keeper on VHF so I suspect he was manning 2 or more locks and had got into a bit of a pickle! We gave up on Noyen as it was already 1745 and there was still another lock to go.
We returned to Bray and moored at the halt de Plaisance which is a basic but functional pontoon. Lindsay tried ferry gliding in the strong current for the first time with considerable success.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Melun to St Mammes

We did a short uneventful journey of only 30Km.
We finally got wise to the fact that everything from distances to speed limits is now going to be in KM so recalibrated our instruments. Very confusing at first but we soon got used to the idea of running at 10KpH rather than 5.5 Knots.
As expected there was absolutely no sign of fuel even when the Navicarte said it would be there. When we finally arrived in St Mammes – there it was exactly as Lawrence had said. We bought a full tank, filled our 3 10L spares and bought and filled an extra 22L spare. That should see us to Lyon! They also sell several varieties of gas including Camping Gaz.
The three locks are all easy. Straight, smooth concrete sides and none of them with a rise much greater than 3M. All of the lock keepers were helpful and polite on the VHF. We passed several good mooring places – particularly one at Samois-sur-Seine which was “Reserve au passeaurs” with nice small boat sized cleats.
We decided to go down the River Loing to Moret-sur-Loing for no better reason than that it sounds nice in the Navicarte. We weren’t disappointed. It has an excellent and very cheap set of pontoons for visitors for only €9 if you are under 12M and that includes electricity and water. The village is lovely. An unspoilt ancient town with medieval gateways, a beautiful mill and a fascinating church with flying buttresses and huge gargoyles. There is a fabulous and very old organ inside. On Sunday night we went to a concert there given by a harpist and a French soprano. The acoustics in the church were magical.
The town has pretty much everything you could want – Bakers, butchers, charcuterie, patisserie, veg, fish, chemists etc. There is even a smallish supermarket if you are so inclined.
It’s so nice that we’ve decided to stay 3 days and set off to Montereau at the junction of the Seine and the Yonne on Tuesday where we will meet Mike and Linda.