TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Our time in Rouen was spent sightseeing in this historic city with its quaint higgledy piggledy wooden framed buildings, their 2^nd floors leaning inwards as if to meet each other. The Rue of clocks is a mixture of old buildings as described, and new ones, in the midst of these is the Mac Donald’s which we ashamedly claim as our internet saviour, and continuum for communication with the outside world.

The Cathedral is something else with its vast gothic spires and sandstone facia, it stands for all to see. Our new friends Ian and Pipper, who have done the whole Med thing over the last 10 years; are on their way home and fortunately chose Rouen to re-step their mast; They have been a “golden chest” of information, which we have readily absorbed, they sold us their ball fenders and spare barge board, which we so carelessly forgot to acquire before leaving home.

The fenders and board have proven priceless in our first encounter with French canal locks.(more about them later)

Ian and Pipper insisted that Richard the Lionheart’s” heart” was incaserated within the Cathedral, but on our two visits, we were unable to uncover any evidence of this.

We were proved wrong, as Ian and Pipper discovered during their visit, the relic is kept in a crypt and only paraded for those who subscribe to a tour of the Cathedral. It seems that a ruler’s heart was often separated from his body on death to be shared by many.

Having absorbed much of what Rouen had to offer, we resolved to leave on Thursday at the 1400 hrs low water and brave the challenges of the tidal reaches of the Seine.

 Having stocked up on cheap but excellent quality wine and exciting Normandy Camembert as general provisions, we topped up the water tank and bid farewell to a very accommodating Capatainiere and we made our way upstream toward the much anticipated  Amperville lock, which marks the start of the quiet tranquillity of the so called non-tidal canals.

It is hard to understand the relationship between knots and kilometres, as we in the UK measure our progress in Knotts/Nautical Miles, whereas in France it is knots/kilometres,  i have to claim a level of convertion to the French system.

As our progress albeit at an accelerated speed of the Killometer per hour, our progress along the Seine tidal stream was far more impressive, than our accustomed rate of progress.

As always there is a sting in the tail, suddenly without notice the engine exhaust started showing smoke/steam, a quick and concerning check on the engine room revealed collapsed engine water intake pipes and a bothered engine.

Checking the raw water strainer; did not identify the problem and although water flow was evident it soon became clear, that an obstruction in the water feed in the drive leg seemed to be the culprit.

Evidence of mussel growth was most likely with fledglings appearing within the strainer.

Water restored; I resolved to ensure that even though the water supply had been checked on a daily rate prior to departure; that the feeds were well and truely “rodded”

 We continued our progress and suprisingly soon, we arrived at the approaches to Amperville lock, less than 3 hours to cover the 40 killometer,s,

Full of apprehension Chris called, “ Eclouse ici pleasance Fandango montant sil vous plait”, a phrase which we are sure will become everyday language through the 176 locks on our journey. In true fashion the reply came in broken English, Please spell your name” Chris duly and competently replied, phonetically spelling Fandango’s name. Then the instructions came; “Follow the previous boat into the lock!!!”

 In accordance with the sailing instructions, we had called in 10 minutes prior to arrival at the lock and could see no-one in the lock in front of us, eventually we managed to see the stern of a power cruiser we had followed along the canal as it entered the lock and the gate closed locking us outside to wait for the next lock.

Eventually, after stemming the tide for 1/2hrs or so; we received the green light signal to enter the lock, we made our way cautiously and secured on the “stag heads” buried into the lock sides.

Our first encounter with the big French locks successfully overcome we exited  the lock our next task to identify the Halte Nautique which had been recommended by others and located near to the exit from the lock.

After three or four killometers had passed we resigned to the realisation that we had missed it so began to look for other options. Not too far ahead, in the middle of nowhere we came across a wooden landing stage with stainless rings and cautiously edged towards it, having 2 meters of water below us we secured against the landing stage and went ashore to seek the owner’s permission to stay the night. It turned out that the land was unoccupied although there was evidence of previous occupation with a number of dilapidated caravans reposing in their previous glory.

With no owner found we settled down for the evening, the copper birch , weeping willows and ash trees flowed down to the river and ducks and swans gently forraged in the water, as the sun set and left a crimson glow which calmed our souls and set us at peace for the coming nights sleep.

The night was occasionally interrupted by barges which passed gently in the night, until one passed us at 6am which nearly swept us off our mooring, waves bounced towards us and caused our slumber to be interrupted.

The morning arrived with gentle sunshine welcoming us to the new day.

We set off at 9am at a gentle 4.5 knot speed to do the 60 nm to Vernon.