A Flood on the Saône

Yesterday the Saône River at Auxonne rose quickly. It has been raining heavily for several days and the runoff from upstream is having trouble keeping within the river banks. Last evening there was a break in the weather and my view out across the cockpit showed the river to have nearly overtopped the marina breakwater.

This morning the water is over the top of the breakwater and the access road along its top was under several centimetres of water with only the grasses separating the river from the Port Royal basin. Half the marina is now an island, requiring wading for access to and from barges and the mainland. Fortunately, the float Zonder Zorg is on is attached to the other side of the basin, where the land is a bit higher.

We've had some patches of nice weather this spring, but there has been a lot of rain. In mid-March I hunkered down inside and began building a wooden model of a skûtsje.

While waiting for glue to dry, on 19 March I began writing a novel. I had no idea where the story was going, I just started writing. I’ve read quite a few novels, but I have no real concept of what a novel’s structure is. Four weeks later, after about 80,000 words I arrived at its finish.

Since then I’ve done a lot of content and text exiting, I've created front pages and put together some ideas for a cover. My writing background is non-fiction and editing, so I have no idea whether this piece of fiction has any merit, or is simply a bunch of babbling. One way or the other, I need to get the characters out of my head and get on with living. It's off to the printers this week.

The flood of words is over, but the flood of water isn't. The glue on the model is probably dry by now, I haven’t checked for almost six weeks.

I'm waiting for a hard copy of the proof to arrive, and if things go well, the book will be up on Amazon and other places around 20 May. In the meantime, if the river calms and recedes, Zonder Zorg is heading north, toward the Netherlands.

Another New Book Going to Print

When I finished my last book at the end of December, I thought I was done writing for a while, but then at the Vancouver Boat Show in late January, I was prompted to write another. While talking with the marketing manager of the largest of the canal boat rental companies, she told me that many of their renters ask for recommendations on a book or books to read to prepare for their boating adventure. She had none to recommend, and so it began.

I decided to focus on France, where last year there were more than 150,000 canal boat renters, fifteen percent of whom came from the English-speaking world. I figured that this should provide me with a sufficiently large focused market to provide a few sales. The book quickly came together as an overview of the geography, history and culture of the main inland boating areas of France, followed by a chapter that gives a cross-section of the boats that are offered by the four major companies.

I added some background on the canal system and an examination of the types of locks and how they function.

Then there are chapters on Basic Boat Handling, on Line Handling and Safety in the Locks and on Rules of the Road and CEVNI. The book contains the essential information to enable a neophyte to decide on a region to explore, to choose a rental company and to safely and confidently head out on the French canals. Hopefully it will make things a little safer for the rest of us on the canals.

I sent the copy and the cover layout to the printers on Friday, I received an electronic proof of the book on Tuesday evening and this afternoon the printed proof arrived by DHL. It looks good, so I have just approved it and sent it to print. It should be available from Amazon next week and from other online retailers in the following weeks. I love the speed and efficiency of the modern world of publishing.

Back in the Burgundy

On 25 February we began the final complex series of events that would lead us back to Zonder Zorg in Auxonne in the Burgundy region of France. For days we had been sorting and packing, a task much more complex this time than in our previous five trips back to the boat. Returning to Peru, Chile, Friesland and France had been a matter of closing-up in Vancouver and heading off. This time we were moving our furniture and belongings into storage, since we had decided to rent-out the loft. For more than five years we had left the place vacant while we cruised, but the temptation of an additional $30,000 annual input to our cruising kitty was now too strong to resist.

The moving van arrived on time at 0900 just as the woman with the elevator keys appeared. By noon the last of our items for storage were in the van and we were left with only our luggage on the balcony, safely sequestered from the movers. In the car we had rented the previous day using loyalty points, I drove to the storage facility to supervise the move from van to locker. By 1430 the move was complete, the locker contracted and paid and the account with the movers settled.

Meanwhile, Edi did the final cleaning in the loft, and I made it back just in time for the 1500 appointment with the rental agent for a walk-through and key hand-over. He helped us juggle our nine pieces of luggage down to the car and we were off. So far the complex clockwork was ticking perfectly. We drove to the airport hotel that we had booked on loyalty points and checked-in. On Thursday morning the car got our luggage to the airport and we were confirmed on our leg to Toronto for a connection to Paris. So far, so good.

In Toronto, the continuation to Paris was over-booked and we didn't make it on. We saw a flight to London Heathrow an hour-and-a-bit later with many open seats, so we had our bags and ourselves transferred to it. Otherwise, we would have had to reclaim all our checked luggage, find a hotel and a way to get our selves and our bags to it and back for the flight the following day. We preferred continuing to Europe, so online I booked two seats on the Eurostar through the Chunnel to Paris. I also booked a van to transfer us from Heathrow to St Pancras to catch the train.

Our luggage was first off on the belt in Heathrow, since it was the last onto the flight. Our driver was in the designated place and got us through the London snarl to the rail station. Our Eurostar bookings yielded two boarding passes, though there were many questions and discussions about our nine pieces of luggage. Train passengers are limited to two pieces each, so we sweet-talked our way through ticketing, the gate, security and onboard. There are no luggage carts in Paris Gare du Nord, nor are there any luggage handlers, so we organised a security relay along the platform and into the terminal, where Edi stood guard on our bags while I went to pick-up the rental car.

I had changed the booking online from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Paris Gare du Nord, and our car was waiting for us on the minus seven level of parking, near the elevator. Fortunately, our luggage stash was a short distance from the elevator, and with its speaker blaring a shrill bilingual "door blocked" announcement, we crammed all nine pieces and ourselves into the elevator and back out seven levels down. I flashed-up TomTom on my iPad and we were lead efficiently out of Paris and onto the Autoroute du Soleil.

After a pause for coffees and sandwiches, we continued along to Auxonne, arriving shortly past midnight. There was a gypsy encampment in the parking lot from the small midway set-up for Carnival d'Auxonne and there were some wandering groups of men. We decided to move all the luggage aboard, rather than risk losing it from the car overnight. The marina carts were locked-up and Zonder Zorg is in the last slip at the end of the furthest finger, so we again did a security relay. It was 0100 by the time we had opened-up the boat, had everything aboard, had flashed-up her systems and fired-up the central heating. I had asked the boat be de-winterised for our arrival, and everything was in order. After some Armagnac to ease the road-weariness, we made it to bed a little beyond 0200 on Saturday morning, thirty-four hours after springing-out of the hotel bed in Vancouver. We look forward to a slightly more relaxed schedule from here on.

On Saturday morning, while Edi slept-in, I headed into town to the supermarket for fresh supplies. By evening we were back into the swing of things with a nice dinner of dos de cabillaud with spätzle and diced mushrooms and fresh broccoli. We celebrated our being back aboard with a bottle of Bailly Lapierre 2007 Vive-la-Joie Crémant de Bourgogne.

Vancouver Boat Show

We set-up at the Marine Authors booth during the Vancouver International Boat Show 21-25 January. Our four books were very well received and by noon of the final day we had sold-out of "Carefree on the European Canals" and were down to short stacks of the other titles.

I did three presentations in the educational seminar series, one on our adventures to Cape Horn and two on the European canals. We are chomping at the bit to get back to Zonder Zorg in Auxonne.

We've Published Two New Books

We have been rather busy during our slack time since we left Zonder Zorg for the winter; Edi and I have each published new books. Mine is a 520-page tome of some 135,000 words and 1500 illustrations that offers insights, experiences and details on cruising many thousands of kilometres through the French canals over the past thirty years. It is now available on Amazon.com and will shortly be available on other online booksellers. The Look Inside feature should be up soon.

Edi's is offering is a beautifully illustrated children's book that she wrote to introduce her granddaughter, Annelies to her Dutch heritage. Edi created thirty-six paintings and illustrations for this book that features our skûtsje, Zonder Zorg spreading its leeboards like wings and taking Annelies on moonlit flights to discover some of her family background. It is also now available on Amazon.com and will shortly be available on other online booksellers. The Look Inside feature should be up soon.

The illustrations are delightful and the story is full of light-hearted fun.

We will again be set-up at the Marine Authors' booth at the Vancouver International Boat Show, 21-25 January, offering autographed copies at well below retail prices.

To Auxonne and Winter

After four days relaxing in Saint-Jean-de-Losne, on Sunday 21 September we slipped from our moorings on Quai National and headed up la Saône.  It was pleasant to be on the river again; it is broad enough for relaxed steering and we faced negligible current.

Our destination was Auxonne, eighteen kilometres upstream. This city is at the eastern edge of the Burgundy region, just three kilometres from the boundary with the Franche-Comté, a position which made it very strategic in battles for many centuries.

A pleasant two hours later we arrived at Écluse Auxonne, the only lock on the route. Two down-bound boats were just beginning to enter the chamber, so we had to wait.

After manoeuvring Zonder Zorg’s bow for Edi to twist the dangling rod to signal the automatic lock system, I backed down toward a duc d’Albe, tossed a loop around its bollard and secured the bow with the spud pole. The waiting station is set-up for 38-metre barges and there is no provision for anything shorter.

Out of the lock we motored along the bypass canal back to the river and then past the centre of Auxonne to Port Royal. Four years previously the marina had been dug out of an unused copse on the northwestern corner of the city close under its centuries-old fortification walls.

It was midday when we entered the port and nobody was around, so we took a mooring on the T-head at the end of the second wing of floats and settled-in to wait for an assigned mooring. 

Beside us, across the city walls were the military barracks that occupy much of the northwest quadrant of the city. 

In the late afternoon there was a knock on the hull. Roy, the Capitain was looking for mooring fees and asked how long we would be staying. When I said we were here for the winter, he told us that he had no notice of our coming. I told him Charles had said there was plenty of room for us, but it became apparently that he had done nothing beyond that. Roy told us there was no more room for anything above fifteen metres. I then told Roy of my email exchange with Charles many months before and of the confirmation of winter space in Saint-Jean-de-Losne and of how that ball had also been dropped. Roy took sympathy and said he would juggle a space for us.

Relieved, we began to acquaint ourselves with Zonder Zorg’s new winter quarters and we reflected on where we had been. In the twenty-five months since we took possession of our skûtsje, she had taken us a total of 4968 kilometres through 1120 locks on 121 waterways in three countries. During all this travelling, we had experienced only three problems with the barge: the house battery had suddenly died and refused to take a charge, a connection in the central heating had failed and the automatic igniter for the water heater/furnace required frequent resetting.

We were waiting for the arrival of the engineers from SRF in Friesland with our 22.6 kWh battery. In July they had removed it and installed a temporary 14.6 kWh bank. Even though they suspected the problem was from a faulty connection, they wanted to ensure the battery was not damaged, so they had taken it back to Harlingen. Now their drive was considerably shorter than it had been to Capestang in July. To make their job easier, the evening before their scheduled arrival we moved Zonder Zorg to the float alongside the haul-out ramp. This would give them easier unloading and reloading.

From a 0400 start in Harlingen, Wychard and Laurens arrived mid-morning after an 875 kilometre drive, and after cups of espresso, they set to work. While Wychard began disconnecting the temporary battery, Laurens loaded the more than half a tonne of battery cells from the van to the float and moved them along to the barge.

They manhandled the cells of the temporary battery out of the engine compartment, and then after a large platter of ham and cheese croissants, they began lowering the cells of our original battery back into place and connecting them. The manufacturer had bench tested each cell and all were deemed to be in top condition. By mid-afternoon the electrical system was reconnected and we load-tested it with the oven switched to microwave-convection and Edi’s hairdryer on high, for a total load of 2950 Watts. The system passed. The men then set to work on the faulty igniter system on the water heater/furnace. By 1830, after many blind leads, they had it repaired and we shared some welcomed Heinekens after their very long day.

Later in the evening, after Wychard and Laurens had gone off to their hotel for a well-earned rest, Edi and I celebrated the completion of repairs with some Arthur Metz Cuvée Speciale 1904 Crémant d’Alsace. To go with it, I prepared cumin-crusted dos de cabaillaud topped with butter sautéed pleurottes and accompanied by pommes rissolées and steamed broccoli. 

After dinner we heard the water heater start to cycle and we listened closely for it to ignite. It aborted the cycle. I emailed Wychard, hoping he would see the message before starting to drive north. There was a knock on the hull as I was pulling our first espresso the following morning. Wychard and Laurens spent over an hour in the engine compartment before Laurens finally noticed that a sensor had been installed in an inverted position, which caused it to often give wrong information on the flame, which led it to abort the start-up. He turned it over and successfully ran the system through several start-up cycles. They left mid-morning, hopeful that the last of our short list of problems from the refit had been resolved. All this service was without charge; rather it was a follow-through on SRF’s commitment to ensuring their work is satisfactory. Wychard and Laurens, both professional engineers are two of the four partners in the company. Wonderful!

Over the next several days we explored Auxonne. The first settlements in the area date to the ninth century as fishing camps along the river. The 843 Treaty of Verdun to divide Charlemagne's empire had used the Saône in this area as the boundary between East Francia and Middle Francia. This placed the site of Auxonne on the Germanic side of the line. In 1197 Stephen II, Count of Auxonne moved his allegiance across the river to the Duke of Burgundy, and forty years layer all the possessions of the Count of Auxonne in the basin of the Saône were transferred to the Duke of Burgundy. With this, Auxonne became a bridgehead of the Duchy on the eastern bank of the Saône, ostensibly on Holy Roman Empire soil. This position was progressively fortified, culminating by the middle of the fourteenth century in a wall with twenty-three towers and four gates girding the small city.

The walls were strengthened and the gates were rebuilt. One of these, Porte de Comté was built in the fifteenth century on the eastern side of the city, leading out into la Franche-Comté. It is preserved today as a national monument.

Another surviving gate is la Porte Royale built in 1775 to replace an older one on the northern side of the city, near the new marina, Port Royal. This makes a splendid play on words and on history.

In the centre of the city stands Notre Dame, which was begun in 1200. Among other notable features of the church is the helicoidal spire. This rises thirty-three metres above top of stone tower. In the square beside the church stands a statue of the young Lieutenant Bonaparte. Napoleon trained as an artillery officer for a total of twenty months during his two postings here between 1788 and 1791.

Among the treasures inside the church is a statue named la Vierge au Raisin, the Virgin of the Grapes. It is attributed to Claus de Werve, who had completed the magnificent sculptures for the tomb of Duke Philip the Bold in 1410, which we had seen in Dijon. 

Besides exploring Auxonne, we began preparing Zonder Zorg for winter. Among the tasks was tending to the paint scrapes from more than eleven hundred locks and two hundred moorings. There were surprisingly few, mostly on the black rubbing strake, which had been designed to take the punishment. After some wire-brushing, cleaning and a few dabs of paint, she looked like she had never left port. I moved the bicycles down into the fo'c'sle along with other attractive portable items. The bicycle cover was repositioned to wrap the stricken mast, mast step, spud pole winch and gaz lockers protecting them from both eyes and winter.

We had been steadily reducing the contents of our pantry, fridge and freezer, aimed at having nothing perishable remaining by the time we closed-up Zonder Zorg for the winter. On the morning of 7 October we took the train to Dijon and drove back in a rental car from Hertz. In the evening we had our season’s last dinner aboard. I seared some jumbo coquilles St-Jacques, smothered them with crisply sautéed pleurottes and served this with saffroned basmati rice and sliced tomatoes with fresh basil. It was deliciously accompanied by an Alsatian Gewürztraminer.

The next morning the mechanics from H2O came to do the winterising of our systems. When they had completed their work, we closed-up Zonder Zorg, placed the protective covers over the tiller and klik, the skylight and the friese and rear of the roef. We then loaded our luggage and drove to a hotel near CDG airport to be ready for our flights to Canada the following morning. Zonder Zorg was ready for winter, but we weren’t.

Saint-Jean-de-Losne

We had arrived in Saint-Jean-de-Losne on Wednesday, 17 September and had moored along Quai National. This town is quite legitimately referred to as the centre of the French canal system, since from this hub it is possible to head in six different directions. 

From here boaters can choose to head southward along the Saône and Rhône to the Provence and the Midi, they can head southwestward across canal du Centre to the Loire, northwestward along canal de Bourgogne to the Yonne and Seine, northward on canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne to the Champagne, northeastward along canal des Vosges into Loraine or slightly more eastward across the Vosges on canal du Rhône au Rhin into the Alsace.

With its location at this important barging hub, a marine infrastructure grew in the years following the 1832 opening of canal de Bourgogne. Much of this was immediately upstream of the first lock on canal de Bourgogne in the wide basin that was designed to serve both as a port and as a repair and maintenance facility.

Just below the lock, at the level of the river is a large excavated basin, la Gare d’Eau on the north side of the town. This was dug as a place of refuge for barges when the Saône was in flood. This Water Station was also used to store rafts of logs that had been floated down from the forests of the Vosges and Jura. 

With the dwindling barge trade, by the mid-1970s the repair and maintenance services had little business, so many of the skilled marine tradesmen had moved to other jobs or to other regions. As commercial use of the canals declined, pleasure use was slowly increasing. In 1972 Blue Line began offering self-drive rental boats in France and they had expanded to more than 300 boats by the mid-1980s. They had set-up in Saint-Jean-de-Losne in 1980 and I rented a canal boat from them in 1984 from their base in la Gare d’Eau. Blue Line is the small cluster of boats on the right side of the 1987 photo and the lines of floats in the bottom right of that photo are those of a newly established business named H2O. The 2012 photo shows the expansion of the marine facilities since then.

We had based our Dutch kruiser, Lady Jane in Saint-Jean-de-Losne in 2000, 01, 02 and 03 and again in 2005 and 06. Not only is it a great hub from which to explore the waterways, but it also has a dry dock, crane haul-out facilities and a marine railway. There are marine chandleries, a thriving community of marine trades and a strong boating atmosphere.

Two large marinas in le Gare d’eau, Blanquart and H2O offer moorage, both long-term and itinerant and there are three supermarkets within a kilometre of the basin. In addition, long-term moorage is available from H2O in l’Ancienne Écluse three kilometres downstream from town and from Bourgogne Marine between the final locks of canal du Rhône au Rhin four kilometres upstream at Saint-Symphorien.

Saint-Jean-de-Losne dates back to at least 675 and it grew to prominence with its bridge across la Saône. Taxes and tolls from the crossing allowed it to fortify itself and it is famous for its defences. In 1636 the townspeople held-off the sieges of a much superior Austrian army that had already wiped-out most of the surrounding towns and villages. King Louis XIII rewarded the town’s courage by exempting taxes. During the Battle of France in 1814, the town again foiled the attacking Austrians, this time as they chased-down Napoleon. The townspeople crossed the bridge, and after attacking the Austrian camp, they retreated, destroying the bridge behind them. The following year, after Napoleon had returned from exile in Elba, he conferred la Légion d'honneur on the town. 

On Thursday morning we awoke to heavy fog, which hid the left bank of the Saône and nearly obscured the bridge. 

By the time we had finished breakfast the fog had begun lifting, the bridge gradually appeared and navigation was slowly resuming on the river. The bridge had been replaced after the Napoleonic wars, but was destroyed again by the Germans in September 1944 to cover their retreat eastward. 

At the entrance to the bridge is a square, place de la Libération and in the centre of the square is a monument commemorating la Belle Defense de 1636. Bordering the square is Église Saint Jean Baptiste, begun in the fourteenth century, now nicely restored and maintained and resplendent under its classic Burgundian glazed tile roof.

We walked through town to the offices of H2O to find out what moorage had been assigned to Zonder Zorg. Months before, while we were in the Midi I had emailed Charles, H2O’s founder and director to ask about winter moorage and had received a reply confirming a place for us in le Gare d’Eau. We arrived in the Capitainerie to find that we were not listed for moorage; Charles had apparently omitted to inform le Capitain. I tracked-down Charles, whom I first met in 1984 and had done brokerage, repair, maintenance and moorage business with him many times since. I found him overseeing excavation work for the footings of a new building. He seemed a bit flustered when I mentioned that le Capitain said there was no more space available to fit Zonder Zorg and that he knew nothing about my request for winter moorage. Charles countered with: “We have plenty of room for you at Port Royal”.

Port Royal is a new marina with 150 moorings that was created in 2011 by H2O in cooperation with the city of Auxonne, eighteen kilometres up la Saône from Saint-Jean-de-Losne. We had moored along the wall on the river at Auxonne many times over the past thirty years and had enjoyed the town. Last year on our way down la Saône we had moored in the port and were impressed with the location and the layout. Although I had my mind set on wintering in Saint-Jean-de-Losne, I told Charles that we would take the moorage in Port Royal and that we would head up to Auxonne after a few more days enjoying our spot on Quai National.