FRENCH CANALS TO THE MEDITERRANEAN Part one

failing Jeffie episode three all about the French cows the next couple of episodes of saving gently are going to be about the French canals about how you get your boat from the English Channel down to the Mediterranean through the waterways of France and having done it a thousand times in both directions I have to say it is one of those wonderful experiences that you can have with a boat I've just always enjoyed it enormously it's just lovely it is just lovely although we talk about the French canals that's only one third of the passage through the through France the northern part is growls the middle part is the river Somme and the final part third part is the Rhone the Somme and the Rhone are major commercial waterways they have giant barges on there that are capable of carrying the equivalent of 85 lorry loads cruise liners and will carry hundreds and hundreds of passengers on cruises is the canal part is mainly the second depends what route you take but if you take the the most popular route which is from larve up the River Seine up to Rouen then through Paris and then down the canal system if you take that route most of it is fairly quiet there are barges but there are smaller they're probably only a hundred foot they carry the same draft as a sailing yacht so they will be running down the center of the canals and the guys driving them won't always understand that we've got one metre 50 of keel underneath us and we can't get to the side of the canal so it's it's sometimes a little bit challenging as you move over and dig into soft mud with your peel there are 1 2 3 main entrances into the canal system from the English Channel one at Calais which as we all know it's a major major 34th with coming times of rows going in not every day there's one at San Valerie SIA song which is challenging because seminary is very title it has huge mud flats outside it so in order to be able to get into Sam Valerie in the first place you need to find the marker boy the channel boy which is outside you need to be the hour and a half after low water and then you need to carry the tide through a constantly changing channel into Sam Valerie the channels marked I mean they move the boys around but your photos absolutely useless because the channel changes after every Gale it doesn't change annually it changes our fairy Gail and the third entrance is from LA or on Fleur which is the mouth of the River Seine and you carry the river up to Rouen where you can take your mouse down again with love a bit like Sam Valerie you need to plan your departure into the River Seine a couple of hours before low water so you're pushing the last bit of the tide at the beginning of the the beginning of your passage up the river and you will then carry the title all the way up there's only a couple of possible stopping places between the mouth of the Seine and wrong so you do need to you need to work out you're tired so you need to tire it right otherwise you're going to have a problem there is a fourth entry into the Canal du Midi which is dam Bordeaux which requires from the UK a reasonably long passage from UK waters down to La Rochelle or royal royal you get into the euro and the Chiron is the river that the cockleshell heroes paddled up in order to get to Bordeaux and in Bordeaux there's a DIY crane where you can pay 50 60 70 euros and borrow the crane for now to get your mouse down or there's a couple of those yards in the river that will do it for you or will you know have a man there to help you with the craning the Canal du Midi has its own very special problems in as much as it's a very shallow canal and I'll talk more about that later the distance from love on the English Channel down to port Napoleon on the Mediterranean is 823 miles I've done the trip in less than two weeks but that's pretty hard work I think normally you would expect to spend three or four weeks doing it or maybe even the entire summer there are physical aspects of the French canals which it's quite important to know about before you think about making the route the maximum length of those that you can have is a 124 foot well that's not really going to affect any of us however the beam is the maximum beam in a lock is five meters and that five meters is absolute it includes your fenders it includes the protection board and if you're in a catamaran and your and I'm done it wants my cattle Bradham it's not easy if you're anywhere approaching 5 meters 16 foot 4 inches beam you've got a problem and you must do your measurement including fenders on both sides because you need fenders on both sides the draught of the canals is not quite so much of a problem the draft is officially one meter 80 at 5 foot 9 inches and the bottom is soft mud and the commercial barges regularly exceed that depth in the center of the canals in the center of the normal canals you'll find a depth of 5 foot 9 6 foot with a soft bottom you will run a grab occasionally if you're anywhere near that craft but basically you're going to be fine the height of the canals is a maximum of 3.5 meters that certain foot 4 inches this this height is controlled by the bridges and it's absolutely an absolute if even particularly for motor boats this is a problem if you are an excess from your waterline to the top structure whatever that is of more than 11 foot 4 inches you're not going to get underneath the bridges in fact if you're a little bit less than that if there's been flooding if there's been a problem you're going to come the bottom of the bridge there are ways around it one of the ways is to speak to the lock keepers and the lock keepers can lower the height of the water to some extent by a few inches because there may be in certain places or you can get stacks and stacks of barrels fill them up with water and reduce the height of your boat but the height is 11 foot 4 inches the Canal du Midi is a different it's a different ballpark altogether the Canal du Midi the length is 98 4 seconds that's fine the beam is 5 foot 5 which is more or less the same as the canals and the more general flaws and that shouldn't be that shouldn't be a problem the draft of the Canal du Midi is theoretically one meter 60 that's 5 foot 2 inches and differently from the canals the Canal du Midi is carved out of rock so if you go around to the Canal du Midi you're gonna get really solidly aground there's no soft mud down there it is hard rock and you're stuck the fact we say it's one meter 60 is an ambition in some places the canal is fed by huge reservoirs which are built up in the hills and those reservoirs depend on rainfall and they depend on the rainfall to fill the canal so as the water in the canal is used the reservoirs pump water down at the canal in a dry summer there is frequently much less than one meter 60 it's not it's not a given so anywhere near that draft I really don't recommend that you use the Canal du Midi there's also a problem with air height theoretically the three meters 30 is the height of the bridges but the bridges are curved they're arched so in the middle at the top of the arch yes there's three meters 30 but where the arch starts where it begins to curve in it's at two meters 40 so if you again mow boats can have a problem here that if you're a very square boat and you've got stuff on top two meters 40 is all you've got 225 is probably the limit that you should be you should be trying it out right having decided that your boat is physically of the right dimensions to get through the canals you're gonna want some paperwork first of all you need to have you need to have passports clearly you've got to have a passport valid passport remember the crew and a dog's passport or a cat's or passport or whatever if you've got an animal on board you need the ship's registration papers that can be small ships register or part one or whatever but you need ships registration papers you theoretically although I've never never been asked for it need proof that v80 has been paid on the boat if the boats older than 1987 then it's a not an issue it's just a given after brexit happens after the negotiations are finished at the end of 2020 this v80 issue may be different but you're only passing through you're not staying in the country you're not going to remain in the country so basically v80 is only something if you spend more than 90 days in France you're almost certainly going to be asked at some point for an insurance certificate if you're going to any marina in France if you go anywhere like that one of the papers they want to see is a certificate of insurance you're also theoretically meant to be carrying a paper showing that you are qualified to drive the boat this is a slight anomaly in British law that in Britain you don't need any paperwork to drive a boat so you don't need any people work to show the Europe there is a paper called the ICC the International certificate of comfort of competence which in Britain is issued by the rya in other countries it's issued by other organizations the I've never ever ever been asked for my ICC not in all the years I've been failure nobody has ever asked me but I guess if you're involved in an accident or had a problem they might want some form the authorities might ask for some form some form of qualification so an icy secret along with the ICC you need the seventy which is the hour a course and it is just a twenty question paper that you or ten question paper or even that you fill out the seventy shows that you know what the rules and regulations are for travelling in the French canals again I have never ever ever been asked for this paper or asked for my ICC which contains my certainiy the one thing they will ask you for however without a doubt and in quite a lot of locks they're going to ask you for it is your vignette now the vignette is the tax you pay to the French government in order to use their waterways you go to a website and fill in an online form giving the details of your boat and you can buy vignette for the amount of time you think they're to spend in the canals you can buy a vignette for a week a month or a couple of months or three months or whatever absolutely essential that you have that vignette from the moment that you enter the French waterways get it online printed out and stick it in the window of the boat so that the lawkeepers can see it you're going to be asked for that it's the one thing they want probably you need to work out how to do your engine checks obviously you're going to check the oil occasionally that that's a given but the water filters are going to get filled up with debris from the canals there's a lot of stuff floating about there this is particularly true if you do use the Calais route or the sound Valarie route those canals have got a lot of stuff like leaves and twigs weeds and stuff floating around in them and your water filters are going to get blocked up and you need to know how to unblock your water filter you need to know that you can take the if necessary you can take the Jubilee clip off the fitting that goes through the hull closely be able to close the valve take the tip about take the rubber tube off open the valve and poke a stick through it so to clear any debris that may have been stuck on the outside lastly you're gonna need guides you're going to need stuff like this this is the through via cart guide for going up the going up the saying going up the Riveter and it takes you virtuous cars Paris there are six of these guides for the main route between love and port Napoleon in the Mediterranean also in the Mediterranean you can you could just do it without those guides if you use this number 21 flew via card but the guides had an awful lot to it the flew via card yes it does show the locks yes it shows some fuel places but really and truly you need to invest in the guides you can you can get them you can get them on the Internet you can get them from my website for goodness sake this is my book French canal routes to the Mediterranean it does contain obviously more information than there is in these videos it's got all the details written down and it looks in more detail at the routes I guess with this book and flew via cart you could just about do it on that but frankly I think you need more than that I think you should buy the well I really do think you should buy the food via cards and do it properly the one thing your boat is really really going to need is fenders you need as many fenders as you can possibly get the canal locks are very unforgiving some of them some of them has only got shuttering in them and some and move all of them are concrete they've all got concrete sides and you really do not want to be rubbing your fiberglass against those concrete sides so you mean you can't have enough fenders down the side a way of augmenting the fenders are making it even better is to have scaffold planks and drill a couple of holes in them and hang scaffold flanks on each side of your boat above the fenders says the scaffold planks that to take the punishment it can knock hell out of offenders motorcar tires are illegal unless you have to use offenders unless you have two lines attached to them they are going to put black marks on your hull and the only way around that is to cover them in lots and lots of in bags and capitate which get the tape with all out they are a they are a solution if push comes to shove the scaffold planks by the way are also useful for getting ashore there's going to be times with the draft that you're not gonna be able to get the boat properly into the canal back to park up for the night so what you're going to do is push the boughs in and put a line of show on the boughs leave the stern sticking out because the keel won't let you get properly alongside and so the scaffold plank is a really useful way of being able to run down from the boughs onto the canal bank the other thing you're going to want is to support the masts that you've taken down the easiest way to do it is with a cruciform of wood probably three by three minimum two by twos of it live three by three four by four and the easiest way to do it is to buy sufficient lengths to keep the mast off you'll get on the boughs and obviously much higher ones in the stern and drill a hole and take an electric drill and when you're doing it drill a hole through the center of each support and put a bolt with washers not even stainless it can just be galvanized you're going to throw it away put a bit of both with washers through them and then you can keep the mast possibly supported by the sail bags on the coat roof on the top of your boat said you can get underneath it the alternative to this is that when you take the mast down you take you take time dresser you take the shrouds off you take the light off the top you take the VHF and the top you take everything off the top and you wrap it up in plastic not putting effort upon the marks on the last itself because that will leave horrible marks and you call a company who will pick the mast up in ruin for example and they will take it all the way to port Napoleon where you can have the last put back up and redressed the cost of craning the mast in and out of your boat will vary from around 60 or 70 euros with a DIY crane like the one in Bordeaux or if you pay a yacht club or a commercial company to do it you're probably looking at a 150 to 200 euros for the use of their crane and for them getting it ashore so that you can secure all the shrouds and fenders and things in my book I give you sort of full instructions on how to get the mouse down and the order to do it in it's it's not difficult but it does need preparation and when you arrive at the crane it's particularly its commercial crane you do need to have the shrouds all loose you need to have everything loose and ready so it's all you've got to do is take a few pins out and release the mouse so they can crane it off you're going to need a supply of split pins to cotter pin split pins and I personally would take all the bottle screws off the end of the shrouds and put them in a separate bag because vibration can make them fall come loose and if they fall in the water it's jolly expensive it's worth taking all the bottle screws on fuel in the French canal system yes there are some marinas selling fuel but they are few and far between and you may well find yourself in a situation where you're where you need to go and go to a petrol station a normal motor car petrol station fuel station to get fuel to get diesel therefore you need to have a couple of jerry jugs that you can reasonably lift when they're full the other thing to talk about is gas Calla gas is an absolute no-no you cannot you can't it is virtually impossible to get your caligastia Landers refilled and they don't supply exchange cylinders or anything like that before you set out you really need to convert to camping gas the if you go to the Cala gas website you'll find there is a system for converting and frankly I wouldn't even bother to bring the Calico cylinders with me I would buy a couple of camping gas cylinders and keep them on board and they will do for the whole of the canal trip and all your time in the Mediterranean which is the same you got that Cala caps in the Mediterranean you need to have camping gas so you need to do the conversion before you leave the UK mooring in the at the end of the day in the canal system not so much the rivers within the canal system you're gonna more up mainly to the bank you will hardly ever go in the marina the breena's aren't even bridge normally for sort of God so you know more up to the bank and that's absolutely fine even more to the bank normally alongside the bank there is a to far and beyond the and the towpath is wide enough for a bicycle or low bed or something like that what you are not allowed to do is run your mooring lines across the towpath to a convenient fence or tree on the other side because people come whizzing up and down two paths on their mopeds particularly the lock keepers and bicyclists and they will not be amused by doing ours over tips as they hit your mooring lines you'll probably have to use them a couple of times but you do need to stakes and a mallet to hammer them in with water is available in the canals at virtually every single lock when you're going to lock if you're running low on water if you go into the lock just asked a lot of people and he'll either serve he'll probably supplied the hose by himself if not you for sure and I'm sure but you can fill up with watering all the locks in the next episode I'm going to show you the various routes through the canals in more detail and how the locking systems work and they're all slightly they're all slightly different in each canal system and river system if you do want to download my book it's available from gentle sailing comm and you can just download it instantly but you also you can just watch the next episode if you've enjoyed this video please press the subscribe button if you want to know when I'm going to release the next episode ring the bell press the Bell button and then you'll get a notification I hope you've enjoyed it a bit fair winds and safe land Falls

Channel: Sailing Gently

Views: 27,111

Keywords: French Canals, French Canal, French canals to Med, Sailing

Id: rbM63xr2gas

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020