Malua
An Adams cruising yacht
We turned off the Saone into the canal. It is narrow and SHALLOW. This canal is the deepest route to Paris. Because of the very dry spring the Central Canal had been closed to deep draft vessels. We found out two day up this canal the Vogis had been closed because a Dutch barge had got stuck in one of the locks as they filled it. The wall was damaged and the estimate was that it would take four weeks to fix but knowing the French it would take that time to let the contract let alone fix the lock. The consequence of that was that all the Dutch vessels and many German boat on their way north or south turned around and came through our canal. Now as more boats go uphill and the water flows down to fill the locks below more water has to be released into the upper most reaches of the canal system. Our water level were consistently lower than the mean water level. Not a good sign.
I had calibrated my depth sounder to read the exact depth under the keel so when we entred this canal it was obvious that it was shallow. Up the first pnd we only had 200 and sometimes only 100mm under the keel.
I have included the stops we made on the return trip but not repeated a description of the stops we used again except with extra infomation.
This is the first automatic lock in the sytem of this canal. It opens for you and you go in, tie up and lift the blue rod to say you are ready. The lock gates close and the water rises. Now you expect the upper gate to open and you motor out but waut there is more. Along side the blue rod is a call box. Press the button and the system dials the control centre. A polite lady asks you in French the name of your boat and the number of the automatic box she has just released into a shoot below the speaker. Now I can handle that but there were two boats in the lock, us and a German who wanted to get on his way. I had to explain to the lady I was taking number 4 while the other vessel took number 7. After some time we all got the message and the lock gates opened. off steamed the other boat. We only continue through the next lock and then stopped at Maxilly.
It was good to stop at this newly constructed, with EU money at our first stop in the real canal. The following morning Richard and I set off on the bikes to fetch his car. No I dont think Richard had riden a bike since we both rode down to Hermanus when we where at school. It started to tell on both our legs at the 15 km mark when we turned off the Blue cycle route along the river tow path. As we went further and further the condition deteriorated. I was just round the bend ahead when I heard a shout. The front wheel of Richards bike had slipped from under him and he had tumbled a over t towards the river. he stopped inchs from the water but full of mud. A short walk was required to calm down then we were off again towards Auxonne. The car was safe and sound right next to another UK vehicle. The smart phone navigation directed us back to Maxilly.
After a good nights sleep and the required painkiller Richard was ready for the next leg of the journey. I was the only one who rode into the village to get the mornings bagette.
Only two locks before we pulled up at Cheuge next to a grain silo. Be careful of the stone side of the canal. We had just tied up fore and aft when a large barge went by. Malua was sucked out on the bow wave then thrown back as the stern passed. The fenders rode up on the stone wall and the side where scratch very badly. The lesson learnt is always have springs and make shure that your fenders are in place. If the side is low put the fender on its side so it floats on the water.
Richard and I set off to collect the car a few km down the canal. An eaasy ride on the newly constructed tow path.
We used this stop on the return. It is a fixed quay right in the middle of the country side. Lovely and isolated with only the farmers harvesting their wheat to disturb the tranquility. We had two days their but on the third a boat arrived in the afternoon and spoilt our time. We left the following day.
Richard and Marita took the car and drove ahead to scout out the land so the 11 locks Denny and I did alone. The most dangerious situation arose along this section of the canal. As is always the case we came round a bend to be confrunted on a very narow section with a large barge comming down. on the front with his back to me was the barge captain talking on his phone quite oblivious to the oncomming wide yacht. I shouted and luckely he heard me. Running for the wheel house where is wife was spinning the wheel madly - the wrong way. I turned Malua for the bank as I watch the bow come towards our stern. The bow wave picke us up and pushe us towards the canal side and slewed the stern around out of the way of the steel barge side. I was now aground as the barge passed by. I gunned the engine just as the stern came abeam and headed for the open water in his wake. We where sucked out of the mud by his stern wave and tosse aside. The captain came out screaming but I quess from fear rather than at me. I hope he learnt a lesson.
The counrt side is quite beautiful in this part of the canal system. There is grass to the water edge which has been timmed by the VNF. Along most of the canal there is a newly constructed tow path coverd in tar and stones. Easy to ride on. The cultivated land is sometimes fenced but most times comes right down to the waters edge. Occasionly there are cows in the fields but mostly it is wheat or sunflowers. The wheat was in the process of being harvested but due to the rain they had to stop to let it dry out. After harvest the chaff was also wet so they had to wait for a few days dry weather before thay could bail that and take it to the barn for winter feed. Quite a process during this very rainy summer. I dont know what it was doing to the grapes.
Full crew back on board with 12 locks to pass though before we pulled up inside the radar zone of the lock. The lock gates opened but we did not enter. I dont know what that did to the system but the following morning we had to go back downstream to reactivate the lock gates before they opened for us. This stop is a steel whalf set into the bak next to a caraven site. Quite isolated from any town. Infact we could not find a bread shop the following day for our morning breakfast. Not a good start.
We were nearing the summit of the mountain and the challenge of 16 locks confrunted us. The water level was good so we set off for the summit after leaving Richards car at Villegusien. now these set of locks get higher and higher as the lift up the moutain get more serious. The last eight have a lift of more than 5 metre while the previous six have a lift of more than 3.5 metres. It takes some skill to pass the mooring line round a bollard 4 meters above your head. By the end of the day Richard our expert was scoring a perfect 10 out of ten for style and accomplishment. Great work. marita on the other had had to climb a green ladder to lift the blue pole on more than one occasion.
The
following is an extract from my Blog. The canal was conceived in
1845 and opened as the “Canal de la Haute Marne”. It starts, in
our case, on the Saone near Pontailler sur Saone and rises up through
43 locks to the summit with the long tunnel Balesmes, then falls from
Langres via 71 locks to Vitry le Francois which is only a stones throw
from Paris.
Some say it is boring because of the many straight
sections while others enjoy the rural life surrounding the canal.
For us on Malua the depth was always a problem. The official
chart and recent advice advises that the depth is 2.2 meters however
some guide books take the standard depth of 1.8. Being a glass
half full type of person I thought I could even squeeze another few
centimetres from the glass. Not so!
Four large reservoirs near
Langres summit, la Liez, la Mouche, Charmes and la Vingeanne ensure an
excellent supply of water into the system however this year a Dutch
barge got stuck in lock 21 of the Vosges canal and put that out of
action for more than a month. The impact of this is that the many
Dutch vessels using that canal to get home have been diverted into our
canal Champagne. Now that normally doesn’t matter that much but
the extra traffic through the locks means extra water flows down the
canal and the authorities have to add water at the top of the
system. Our problem was we were right in the middle of the Dutch
pack and the water had not been adequately adjusted. It would
rise and fall 200mm within an hour, so our 100mm under the keel became
minus 100. Ok if it is mud but not good if you hit a sandbank.
The
operation of the locks is all mechanised and generally automatically
controlled by control unit you receive at lock 43, the start northwards
at Maxilly. A clever device which you press as you approach the
lock either “Avalant” or “Montant” – down or up stream. There is
an additional button “bassinne” you press when you are secure
within the lock to close the gates and adjust the water level.
Some locks are controlled by a radar unit set about 100m back from the
lock. As you pass the unit the indicator board next to the lock
gate switches on the green light next to the red. The lock then
adjusts the height of the water to let you enter. When the water
level is right the gates swing open and the red light goes out.
The remaining green indicates that you are permitted to enter.
You do this with some care for in our case the lock may be long but it
is not wide, only 600mm on either side of Malua. The water level
is almost at the top of the lock wall so your fenders tend to ride up
over the wall. After a while one gets very good at taking the
centre line and stopping the boat next to a bollard, always on the side
of the activation rod. These blue and red rods control the water
level. One lifts the blue, never the red which shuts down the
system, and the water level either flows in or out. The former
can be quite sudden but nothing like the Rhone river locks while the
outflow is more sedate. In the end we did not tie up on the way
down as the boat did not move at all. One can also use the
handheld control unit to start the process.
We only had one lock
which did not work but I feel that the boat in front of us pushed the
wrong button so after a while I started to push all the buttons and the
system reset itself and we entered without human intervention. We
did have a bit of a scare when a German fellow in a canoe joined us in
the lock. As the gates opened he paddled out first and the gates
started to close on our bow. A quick shift to astern and a press
on the button saw the gates reopen and we exited vowing to run that
silly red piece of plastic down. Unfortunately he followed us for
three days on and off.
Towards the summit the locks come thick and
fast 8 in four kilometres and they have a high rise of more than 5.2
meters each. This means that you have to secure to a bollard set
in the wall then as you rise up the side resecure your lines to the
bollard above. Some locks have three sets while most have just
two.
Generally the locks have a rise of 3.5 meters and no bollards
in the wall so when you enter you have to either climb up the ladder
set in the wall to loop your lines round the bollard or use a long boat
hook to get a line around a bollard set back from the wall. Our
guests were a great help to loop the lines and became quite proficient
at the task. Ten out of ten score on most locks! Line with a
twist minus 2 points.
Meeting traffic coming the opposite way can,
if it occurs on a bend, be a very scary event. On one occasion we
came round a bend to be confronted by a large heavily laden
peniche/barge with the skipper with his back to us talking on his
mobile phone. On hearing my scream he turned and ran back to the
wheel house snatching the wheel from his wife who had lost
control. I turned Malua into the bank, ran aground and just
waited for the crunch. Fortunately the bow wave pushed the stern
around, I gunned the engine and we slid past the 30 meters of steel to
pop out behind the vessel without a scratch. The skipper then
bust from the wheel house screaming in French as I waved him
goodbye. That was an exception because most skippers slow almost
to a stop when they see another seriously wide vessel and you both pull
over to starboard as you gently move past with a wave and a Bonjour.
The
Balesmes Tunnel is an experience to take a yacht through. It is
five kilometres long, 8 meters wide with a vertical wall on one side
and a 1.8 meter wide tow path along the other wall. It is 3.2
deep and almost 6 meters from water to roof. The speed limit is 4
km/h and I must say with Malua being 4 meters wide it only leaves 1
meter on either side. Not a lot if you loose concentration.
As you enter you can see the line of lights along the port wall and far
in the distance a small speck of sunlight – the end of the
tunnel. Being skipper you concentrate on the speck and judge the
distance on either side out of the corner of your eye. A torch on
the wall does help. If you do hit I suspect you would bounce off
the walls until you got control back, loosing your stanchions on the
one side and your topsides on the other. After more than an hour
I was relieved to see the sunlight directly overhead. We were
then out into the tree lines canal and the agricultural farm lands of
rural France. All in all the canal is a great experience in canal
travel, however the small towns along the route don’t offer much.
In most cases not even a bread shop so you don’t do much
shopping. The rural life is what it is good for and we enjoyed
the scenery as the farmers went about their daily life. A word of
advice don’t take a yacht with 2.0 meters of draft into that canal even
if the water is overflowing the banks unless you have nerves of steel.
The following is an extract from my Blog
Many
great expeditions have had to turn back before reaching their stated
goal because of lack of water. For Malua’s 2011 trip up the
French canals to Paris that decision was made when the water ran out at
Langres in the middle of the French country side. We had reached
the Champagne district, the locks where all “avalant” or downhill and
we could almost taste the salt of the sea but the water under the keel
was just not enough.
We left the mooring at Langres soon after the
sun came up and headed down river for the first time. We had not
gone more than 50 meters when Malua came to a sudden and abrupt
halt. No amount of power would move the vessel, not ahead or
astern. We were hard aground. Luckily we were still in
reach of the mooring quay and I was able to throw a line to our
departing guests to secure it to a large boulder. With the help
of the Anderson electric winch and the grunt from the 50 hp Yanmar
engine Malua slowly came off the sandbank in the middle of the canal.
Two
further attempts close to the left and then the right bank gave the
same result – 2.0 m draft will not go over a sandbank estimated to be
1.8 below the surface. There was no immediate alternative, the
result of removing weight from the boat has little effect on her draft
and the thud when we went aground clearly indicated that the bottom was
hard and not about to give. The water level in the canals was almost
full so the dry summer that stymied Sundancer II passage to Paris was
not the immediate cause. The extra weight of the wine, cheese and
champagne acquired on route could have played a part but the fact that
the canal is rated by the VNF as 2.2 deep doesn’t mean that it is
always that depth. Some guide books rate it at 1.8m!
We have
travelled many kilometres in the “ Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne”
with only 100mm under the keel and in places the depth sounder
indicating 0.0 as we steamed along at 7 km/h parting the mud knowing
that if you stop you may not restart and if the mud turns to sandbank
your expedition is over. It takes nerves of steel to keep that up
day after day.
When the thud finally came we realized that we were
not going to reach Paris in Malua this year. We set our compass
for the Mediterranean appreciating that a boat built for the Southern
Oceans is not meant to travel through rural France – c’est la vie.
Follow our trip further in France here....