The NEXT Adventure
May, 2021
One of the best parts about living on a boat is the interesting people that you meet along the way. The camaraderie that develops among maritime travelers is quite amazing. We have made some good friends on our European adventure but in a place with few English speakers, the casual daily encounters are just not the same. Learning French also turned out to be more difficult than we expected. Maybe at our age, our brains are just too full to have to remember all the words for a whole new language.
Then, as everyone has discovered, living with a pandemic raging makes life pretty difficult anyway. Add in the visa problems, medical issues, health insurance problems, travel restrictions, businesses, restaurants, museums, and visitor sites closed for months, curfew rules, canals closed to all but commercial traffic, and general isolation, we finally gave up.
After much discussion and soul searching, we decided our best course of action was to move back to the United States and take Amanda with us. Our plan was to put Amanda aboard a ship and send her to somewhere on the east coast of the United States. We found that the closest port we could ship her from was Zeebrugge, Belgium, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from our current home port in Cergy, France. The Transport Company indicated that ships carrying pleasure boats sail from Zeebrugge to Philadelpha, PA about once a month so we signed up for a trip sometime in late May or early June.
As the departure date approached, we lowered our mast for traveling, filled up the lockers with food, beer, and wine, topped off the fuel and water supplies and made ready to set out on our next adventure. We thought we might need some special paperwork to prove that we were making an "essential" journey to move our home, but the restrictions for limited travel within France were lifted the day we departed.
Our first hurdle was to navigate the narrow passage under the passerelle (pedestrian bridge) and attempt a graceful exit through the boats in our crowded marina.
Luckily, our chosen day turned out to be bright and sunny with a very light breeze.
We managed to exit without mishap and make our way to the Oise River.
It felt good to be moving again.
We immediately encountered our first commercial barge, one of the many we would see on our journey.
At our first lock, only about three miles (4.5k) away, we encountered another commercial ship exiting the lock. This lock at just over eleven meters wide (thirty-seven feet) and one hundred eighty meters long (five hundred ninety feet) is one of the larger on this section of the canal. It didn't look like this ship had much room to spare.
Our route would be very similar to the trip we made nearly two years ago from Netherlands to Cergy. It is a busy commercial route with forty-two locks and two tunnels. Most of this trip would be in France. We were required to purchase Waterway Permits for both France and Belgium which is done through an online registration. It seems that the French VNF website was hacked the day before we planned to purchase our permit and was not back online until about a week after we left Cergy. We gathered whatever paperwork we could muster and hoped we would not be challenged because of our lack of proper permits. Because of the virus rules, the permits could only be purchased online.
This time we also had help. Warren, our Canadian friend from the marina had agreed to join us for at least part of the trip. He was great company, able help with lines and boat handling, and best of all, he speaks French, an invaluable asset for communication with the ecluisiers (lockmasters). While we were bundled up in our heavy winter coats, Warren was happy in shorts and bare feet. Well, he is Canadian.
The first thirteen locks on this trip would all be "uphill" for us. We were literally working our way up the mountain to our first tunnel.
The locks were getting progressively taller as we traveled on, the tallest being about a nineteen foot (5.8m) rise. The method of locking through for these locks was to lasso the lowest bollard that you could find and delicately move the line up the lock side to the next set of bollards as the water rose. Even though we encountered many commerical ships on this route, we rarely had to share a lock with another boat.
On our fourth travel day, we made it to the first tunnel (Panneterie). This tunnel is only wide enough for one-way traffic and the traffic control lights were red when we arrived. We waited for a large commercial ship to enter the tunnel and made our way through behind her. This tunnel was slightly over a half mile long and was poorly lit and in even worse shape than it was on our trip south nearly two years ago. The sides of the tunnel-way showed many broken concrete edges and exposed steel re-bar where there should have been smooth wooden sides. We carefully picked our way through hoping our many fenders would protect us from the hazards.
Now we were on our way "downhill". Three more locks and we were back in the valley and spent the night in Peronne, France. We had stayed at this same Port du Plaisance on our way south. It was both a marina and a campground but both were closed due to the travel restrictions. Too bad, we missed the fresh bread and pain chocolat that you could order from the campground office.
On Travel Day Five we were at the second tunnel (Ruyalcourt) by by early afternoon.This tunnel is just over four kilometers (almost three miles) long. It is only wide enough for one way traffic for about one-half mile at each end and then becomes wide enough for two vessels to pass in the mid-section of the tunnel with traffic control lights at the ends and also at the beginning of the passing lanes.
We were greeted with a red traffic control light so we tied off on the side to wait our turn to enter. While we waited two more commercial ships showed up. Another commercial ship exited the tunnel and our light turned green. We followed the commercials through and actually met a pleasure yacht and another commercial ship in the passing lane of the tunnel. Seemed like a lot of traffic but the light control system seemed to work fine. After this tunnel all of the remaining locks were "downhill". We were headed for sea level at last.
This had been our most challenging day so far. We had cleared twelve locks and the long tunnel. We had also deemed that this was Amanda's birthday. The previous owner had given us all of the photos of her building and launch. They were time stamped and June 6, 2009 was the date on the launch photos. Good enough excuse to break out the champagne and have a toast. Happy twelfth Birthday Amanda!
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On Travel Day Six we left the relatively narrow locks of the Canal du Nord and encountered several "double" locks. These are actually two locks, usually side by side, one deemed "petite" and the other the larger and newer locks for the larger commercial ships. This time we were directed to the "petite" side which had "floating" bollards. For these you only need to capture the bollard when you enter and then the entire mechanism "floats" up or down with the water level. So much easier than the delicate maneuver of moving the lines up or down as the water flows in or recedes.
While waiting for our last lock of the day, we backed over something in the water that was then impeding the propeller and making a most unfriendly sound. We slowly made our way out of the lock and luckily found a place to moor along-side just past the lock exit. With the sunlight right behind us It was impossible to see what might be caught in the propeller. We had no diving gear and the water temperature was in the low 40's F. We began pondering what we might do or who we might call.
On Day Seven we arrived at Wambrechies, a Northern suburb of Lille, France. We were now within five miles of the Belgium border with only two more French locks to go, a trip of about eleven miles (17k) on the canals.
Our friend Warren left us here to head back to Paris and work. Celebrating our last night in France was surely worth popping the cork on another bottle of the bubbly stuff.
A couple of days of hard rain convinced us we might stay right where we were. We still had a couple of weeks to reach our goal in Belgium. I was not as keen as our friend to stand out in the cold rain for lock duty.
Soon we were on our way again. At the next lock, the second to last one in France, an official from the VNF, the agency in charge of the Waterways, came by as we were locking through and asked for our French vignette. I was able to explain in very poor French that I had not been able to purchase the permit because the website had been down. Ah, but it is repaired. You must buy your permit NOW. The only day I hadn't checked the website. Seventy-Six euros for about four hours on the French canals. Well, he could have fined us as well but he didn't. Next stop Belgium.
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