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OF INTEREST # 2 A September
Cruise to Remember (Part 2)
By Captain Paul Squire, 12/09/2004
The Tigre Rose
It was decided to spend a month working
out of Luxembourg, There is a good airport at the capital which allowed the
owner to fly in from St. Petersburg, Russia, in his private aircraft. 30 minutes after clearing Customs &
Immigration, he could be aboard his barge.
The fine and dry summer days of
September slowly turned into cool crisper mornings, the river glasslike under
heavy morning fog. With children back in
school, the river scene had become a lot quieter. The stillness of those fog
shrouded early mornings are still in my mind; quite magical and remarkable for
the way the slightest sound was carried for great distances. People bicycling to work along the river road,
distant some 200 meters, could be clearly heard chatting away to each other (if
you understood the dialects of Luxembourg), the constant hiss of a barge’s bow
wave on the river, the regular sound of oars from the rowing eights on the
river, bird song, and high overhead the
unmistakable, almost organ like note, from the pinion feathers of flights of
swans doing their warm up exercises in preparation for the long flight south,
all fading in and out It gave the scene
a dream like quality.
Curiously enough, it is said that due
to the slight, but permanent, rise in water temperature caused by the cooling
water output of the vast power generating stations scattered along the Moselle,
among other notable things, is that the preference of the swans is now not to
fly south for the winter; it no longer seems to be on their agenda. One supposes they have the instinct so bred
into them to get ready for the migration, that they cannot resist the urge to
prepare for the journey by strengthening their wings. Whatever the cause, it adds an unusual and
attractive sound to the quality of early mornings.
The marina is no distance from the
borders with France and Germany, so we soon got into the local custom of
shopping with some distinction for the best of buys to be had internationally. Gasoline & diesel prices are best in Luxembourg, so the gas
stations are filled with French and German customers, processed and fresh food
were much better in quality and price in France, so a day spent in the huge
Carre Four hypermarche in Thionville or ferreting around the streets of down
town Nancy were to be welcomed, as they inevitably meant long lunches under the
slowly yellowing leaves of the plane trees of the town squares. Later we had
the opportunity to tie up in these towns.
It is so convenient to be so close to the old heart of the towns. The fact that the rivers and canals so often
have been the reason these communities were first established, gives the lie to
the older, and more charming parts, to be close by. A walk of but a few minutes
and you can be having coffee in the shadow of the cathedral, or in a square
dating back to Roman times.
With the owner of the vessel coming
down for week end cruises only, we took a day off mid week to investigate the
area. Across the river, on the German
bank, lies the ancient town of Treve (Trier to the French). The visual and mental impact of the Roman
ruins is very impressive. They are,
first of all, very well excavated, and in a wonderful state of
preservation... One has the distinct
impression, in some parts of town, that the Romans have just gone away for a
few days and will be back tomorrow. It
is a town everyone should visit at least once in their lives.
However, this is about life on the
river, so one must move on! But first, let
me try and give you a better picture of the interior of TIGRE ROSE. As I said, the fo’c’sle is small and
cramped. Lack of insulation became more
evident at the air and water temperatures dropped. Mornings saw one huddled under a pile of
bedding, with all metal fitting dripping condensate, which took hours to dry
out. None the less, it was nicely
finished in white Formica; light varnished pear wood trim and dark blue soft
furnishings (corner sofa & curtains etc, with red throw cushions. A captain’s cabin to starboard, deck access
ladder and mess to port, with a single berths and a shared head/shower finished
off the accommodations. A third Pullman
berth was for the summer help.
Just one of the trade secrets of TIGRE
ROSE, was that if the bow thruster became air locked, which it did at almost
every lock, it had to be bled.. This was as a direct result of either being at
the front end of the lock where the aerated water came in an unnerving torrent,
or sitting astern of a large commercial barge with its propeller ticking over
and again aerating the water. Of course, until we got used to it, this happened
every time it was our turn to move out of the lock. Started by a shrill girlish cry from me, the
Chef would drop what he was doing and run, panic stricken, from down aft below
somewhere, up through the saloon, the wheel house, bound down the side
alleyways and then, disappear like a rat, down into the forepeak., to bleed the
bow thruster air vent, all this accompanied by irritable whistles, laughter and
calls from the crew of large commercial craft anxious to be on their way. One way or another, it was quite a work out.
Abaft the fo’c’sle is the Master Suite,
which, if you have seen John Bannenberg’s work, you will realize is quite
breath taking. Light blues and whites, pear wood trim, silver and gold plated
accent rails and handles…you get the picture? The sleeping quarters are set to
port, with a large ‘his and hers’
bathroom, through decorated sand blasted plate glass, to starboard, with a
marble lined shower forward, a large vanity area with hand basin and then a
deep bath aft. Large opening chrome
plated port holes and deadlights provided lots of natural light, besides the
very elegant light fittings and close fitted carpet throughout. Next aft two mirror cabins, to port &
starboard, with ‘en suite’ showers and heads, with Pullman bunks inboard, for a
third party or child.
Next aft is the saloon with a huge (15’
x 6’) plate glass sky light, fitted with a white cotton muslin electrically
operated pull curtain. The sofa is set
to starboard, looking across the3 saloon to a large flat screen TV set below
the side windows. Outside, to port and
starboard, the side deck bulwark was cut away to give those in the saloon a
wide screen view of the passing scene. Abaft the saloon, to starboard and
walled off, is the galley. Small but fitted with every modern appliance one can
imagine, it was also fitted with a dish washer, oven & glass topped
stove.
Next aft, top starboard down below
decks to a small workshop/laundry room, with washer and dryer, and access to
the engine room and lazarette. Then, up
the steps to the wheelhouse/dinning saloon, a large open and airy space, with
sliding plate glass doors and fly screens all round, giving, in effect a 360
degree view of life on the river.
Chef turned out some quite amazingly
delicious and beautifully presented meals, with yours truly switching roles
from captain the steward, while Chef, dressed in the evenings, in his
finest, followed up to enthrall his trapped
audience with exactly what his work of art entailed – and often to identify it!
– and what wines they would be drinking.
Although I say it myself, we ran a real class operation between the two
of us. Up with the birds and into town
for fresh bread and market produce, croissant, pain au chocolate etc, news
papers, a quick café stop for an espresso accompanied by an eye watering ‘eau
de vie’ to kick start the day, and then back aboard. He to make a truly elegant breakfast, while I
did the engine room, pumped ship, watered ship and then on deck to wipe away
the dew and set things to rights. By
08.30 she was ship shape and Bristol fashion, and in the early morning
sunlight, with flags flying and stainless steel and paint work gleaming and
looking quite jaunty, if I say so myself, she was a joy to behold.
Abaft the dinning saloon is the teaked
aft deck, with alleyways on either side forward to the break in the deck, up
steps to a raised main deck with neatly built in stowage lockers and a
Jacuzzi. Forward of the Jacuzzi is a
sunken open deck lounging area fitted with deck mattresses, covers and an
awning. All in all, a very tiddly ship,
as the pictures show.
It was decided that the barge would
return to Holland by way of the French and Belgium canals. Once on our way and into the French canals, we
stopped at Apach. The first lock in France, where we completed paperwork and
got our vignette (decal in the bridge window) which cost us 80 Euros, it being
pro-rated for the last quarter of the year. This covered the cost of using the
canals of France for the balance of the year.
The decal also kept the authorities off our backs, as in the Gallic
tradition, having paid the fee cleared the way.
Now it was just a matter of keeping our noses clean and we could go
where and when we pleased.
All the way along the Moselle, there
are locks enormous locks handling tens of thousands of tons of water at every
cycle. They are all immaculately
maintained and run. However, you really must be on your toes to avoid disaster. Once the Lock Master throws the switches, the
water level changes very quickly and you need to move your dock lines, up or
down, without screwing up, otherwise you will find your vessel either hanging
off the lock wall, or being dragged under.
The Lockmaster has a lot to keep an eye on and may not always realize
your predicament until it is too late.
If he thinks your vessel is not properly manned, he will not allow you
into the lock. Idle chatting or cell
phone conversations etc., which take your attention off the task in hand, will
bring down his wrath in the form of verbal abuse through the lock loud speaker
system, leaving no one else present in any doubt as to exactly which boat crew
he is addressing! As it also takes some
time to shut the sluice gates, there is considerable risk of damage and injury,
not only to you, but to others in the lock.
The Canal de l’Est joins the Canal de
l’Est at Troussey. But to get there we
left the Moselle at Tioul, on the Canal du Marne et Rhin, for Troussey. Having got so used to the broad bosomed river
it is a shock to the system to get into to canalized waters. Shortly before leaving the river, one steams
under a road bridge with a long pole hanging down. If you wish to use the automatic lock at
Tioul, you steer under the pole and give it a tug. Around the bend, this starts the automatic
sequencing of signal lights and lock operations.
Here one is introduced to the older, or
Freycinet, canals, which are narrow and occasionally in need of attention where
a canal bank may have collapsed, or where the water has become shoal at a
bend. Theses have served the French
economy well for almost two hundred years.
The locks are uniformly 5m50 wide and about 35m long. Sometimes new lock gates have been installed
inside the old ones, effectively shortening the lock. TIGRE ROSE, with a beam of 5m20, left us
with a mere 5cm. a side to play with. Ones predicament is more than adequately
illustrated by the fact that EVERY other barge has topsides finished with tar,
long scratches/gouges, dented bows etc., speaking volumes about tight lock
entrances. Without doubt she is a barge
for the rivers.
It also means that fenders are useless,
so most beamy barges use wood blocks or bits of old mooring rope. However, the end result is that, going up,
you scrape off the mud that clings to the lock walls onto your lovely clean
decks. The gleaming dark blue AWLgripped
topsides become buried under a layer of mud.
This dries quickly, but gets everywhere before forming a hard clay layer
which can only be washed off with hose and deck brush – only to have it all
happen at the next lock. When you figure
that you may transit 30 – 40 locks a day, the prospect dims the eye with
tears. The water is very hard with what
the French call ‘calcaire’, which leaves a residue when it dries, making it
necessary to do a final sponge/chamois down with water from the ship’s tanks. Well, you know what dark blue is like.
You will readily imagine the sense of
horror that this produced in the owner, seeing his lovely multi-million dollar
yacht barge reduced to a ball of mud before his very eyes. He leapt to the side with a fender in hand, only
to have it burst. Trying to shove off,
he got covered in mud. One couldn’t but
help feel terribly sorry for him.
However, there was a vestige of
satisfaction to be had, although I had to clean up the boat. (a) He had become rather
tardy with paying for our services, and (b) I had told him, in my best stunted
English, that effectively the barge is too big for the Freycinet canals – all
to no avail. It is akin to telling a
yacht owner that the weather is too bad to proceed, but you go in any case to
prove the point. It is only when he, his wife and family turn green that he
realizes the error of his ways. However,
by then, it has become a matter of face, so you proceed into the teeth of the
gale…
In just such a manner we continued down
the canal to Tioul. Where he decided he had enough. Along the way were a couple of opening
bridges – again with 5m50 width – which we had to squeeze through. Eventually, just before dark, we found a
berth at the town marina basin. The
owner, too depressed by the thought of witnessing his barge yacht being
trashed, decided to return home. Because of our draft, (1m50) we were quite a
way out and were forced to scamper up bushy banks and over hedges to reach the
street level, where it was possible to arrange for a taxi. Such are the virtues of having a private
‘plane, that one is not obliged to trawl the internet looking for flights. One tells the ‘plane captain to show up
wherever, whenever, jump in a cab – end of problem.
It also now came down to the wire as regards
money, he being most reluctant to leave enough cash aboard, or a credit card,
to enable us to proceed. One way or
another, he managed to produce 500 Euros from an ATM. This did not bode well.
Yet another attempt to indicate that
the route he had chosen was bad news for the vessel, failed to move his heart,
and he departed with instructions to remain on course to meet him at Verdun,
where he would again join us at week’s end.
It was well after 10pm, and pitch dark, that I finally managed to get
the last of the mud, slime and weed off the boat. Day light showed I had done a very
indifferent job, but by breakfast time the old girl started to look something
like her old self. Closer inspection
showed more than a few scratches. The
stainless steel sacrificial rub rails were simply too light to prevent some
serious looking dings and scratches.
In Tioul is an office for the Canal de
l’Est administration, so it was there that I wound my way to get the latest
info on exactly what we could expect negotiating the next 60 or so locks
between Tioul and Verdun. It was now
getting towards the end of October. Days
were getting shorter and greyer, and the winds more chilly. Autumn was in the air – and time for the
annual canal maintenance to begin.
However, an extremely nice gentleman, high up in the organization,
assured me that if we could complete the passage to Pont a Bar, NW of Sedan,
within 10 days, we would be in good shape.
Work, he stated clearly, was not due to start until early November. He kindly drove me to a book shop on the
other side of town so I could get an invaluable copy of Chagnon’s Carto-Guide
Fluvial. The names of towns in the
country ahead of us rang with the military hubris of the First World War – the
Marne, the Sambre et Meuse, Verdun, Namur etc.
I could hardly wait!
He delivered me back to the TIGRE ROSE
after insisting I have a café cognac and bade us farewell. The Chef and I fired things up and negotiated
our way under the first bridge, staring rather bold pigeons in the eye as they
roosted on the bridge girders. One was
irresistibly reminded of the phrase’ flying rats’ used to describe them. Soon we were out of town and deep in the
utterly delightful French countryside.
Peace and quiet, green fields, horses and cattle and the occasional
distant tractor rolling hay into those enormous bales that sit in the fields
all winter, covered in black plastic.
Great clouds like Spanish galleons, bulging with autumnal showers,
sailed before the brisk wind across the land.
Due to head room restrictions at the
first bridge, I had removed the radar scanner from its mount atop the
wheelhouse and, once clear of the bridge, had replaced it. Later, much later, as I was peering at the
screen, I found it difficult to grasp that, apparently, ahead of us lay a radar
picture showing a landscape looking nothing like the one my eyeballs were
looking at. The scanner, I thought, must
be just high enough to see ahead around the bends. One could even, I discovered with some satisfaction
and excitement, see a slight trace ahead of the barge in the canal where we
were going, as though the waters expected us.
God! I thought, what a wonderful invention that, given the right set of
circumstances (i.e., that you really do not need its magic eye at the time)
could actually see, even if not to any great depth, into the immediate future.
I sat, glassy eyed, at the helm
contemplating this wonder, until Chef emerged from his galley bearing fresh
coffee and home made cookies. I took the
time to explain the wonders of modern science to him, and point out just how
remarkable, not to mention unusual, this anomaly was. He grasped the radar set in his flour covered
hands, and peered unknowingly into it.
In view of the coffee & cookies, what could one do but be as nice as
possible. He looked up, giving me rather
a strange look. Silly bugger, I thought,
he really has no idea what he is looking at.
He lowered his head to the screen
again, and after a moment, said ‘You evidently put the scanner backwards on its
mount’.
‘Look’, I said, as amiably as possible
– a bad person to fall out with, the Chef – ‘if you don’t appreciate what you
are looking at, forget I said anything’.
‘You look, you silly bugger’ he
said. ‘Take a look behind us & then
at the radar, and you’ll see. That trace
on the water is our wake!’
It was with a faint sense of
embarrassment that I had to ask him to take the helm, while I went up with
wrench & screw driver to once more dismount the scanner and install it the
right way round. I hoped that he would
soon forget the gaffe, but days later he was still dinning out on it, regaling
complete strangers about my inability to see into the future.
Around midday, we came up on Troussey
and entered the Canal de l’Est proper.
This meant dropping down two adjoining locks and providing a wonderful
view across the plain below. Several
more locks were negotiated, resulting in some more scratches and bruised
feelings, until we arrived at the Comercy locks. Here a jolly lock worker leaned on the canal
railing and chattily asked me where we were going. A bit stupid, I thought, as there is only one
way to go – where the bow was pointed. “To Verdun, and then into Belgium’ I
told him.
‘Oh no you’re not’ he said with some
relish, ‘we’re going to drain the canal’.
It turned out that due to circumstances to the west, they decided to
bring forward the winter work schedule, and were due to shut the canal down the
very next day.
I said something about, “well we’ll
just leave the barge alongside the town dock while they fixed the
problem”.
‘No’, he said. ‘We’re not just going to
drain the canal, we’re going to empty it for the winter’. This gave us a time frame of about 5 hours to
turn around and negotiate out way back to Troussey locks and into the Canal du
Marne et Rhin.
Our first problem lay with deciding
exactly where the canal would be wide – and deep – enough to turn a 30 meter
barge. In addition to the 30m LOA, we
carried a launch in davits over the stern, effectively giving us a length of
about 32m. – wider than the canal.
Backing up some several hundred meters,
we eventually we found a spot with a solid canal wall on one side, and a small
reedy spot opposite. We hung two of our
biggest & best fenders over the bow and slowly approached the wall. Once we made contact, I put the engine into
slow ahead and was able to motor the vessel around, eventually getting her at
right angles to the wall. At this point
the launch was hanging well over the tow path and we were kicking up a lot of
mud. This is where keel cooling comes
into its own. Eventually she came
around, on the other tack, so to speak, and we were able to re-trace our
original track.
Keel coolers are not quite as straight
forward as one might hope. Yes, they preclude
the necessity of having to carry a lot of raw water pump spares. However, as the season progresses and the
canal water cools, the engine simply can never warm up to a reasonable working
temperature, meaning that the fuel doesn’t get properly burned, and the lube
oil stays a bit thick and sluggish. This
means that engine heaters are the order of the day, and that the keel cooler
valves need to be tuned to allow less coolant into them. If ship’s hot water comes from being run
through the engine heat exchangers, you don’t get much in the way of hot water
either.
Eventually we arrived back at Troussey,
but after dusk, and moored along side the town dock. The poor barge looked unspeakably sad and
beaten up. We decided to drown our
sorrows ashore in a small but excellent restaurant with a décor and atmosphere
straight out of the 1950s. A lovely
young waitress came over, and having seated us, brought over drinks and the
menu. She then gave a ravishing
description of what was on offer, and we both promptly fell in love with
her. Much of what passed that evening,
what we ate, drank or talked about, I never remembered, so caught up was I with
her; so pretty, sexy, succulent, mouth watering, amusing, witty, great ass…
What needs to be said, and I might as
well say it here is, wherever we went in France, Germany and Holland, despite
the fact that we are American, we were treated with the utmost courtesy and
friendliness throughout our stay, people of casual acquaintance – or no
acquaintance at all – going out of their way to help, explain or give their
time. The only thing people refused to
do was discuss the Bush administration and the war. I think they realized how
uncomfortable it would make us feel, and they don’t have it in them to do
that.
Traveling Europe by barge is a
wonderful experience that I would recommend to all. The pace is slow. At day’s end it comes as a surprise to
realize that you are only about 30 miles or so from where you started that
morning. If you like the feel of a
place, well, you just decide to stay for a while. Planning ahead, as one would in a yacht, is a
pointless affair. It seems to take no
time at all to settle into a pleasant pace of life that allows you to smell the
flowers and see Europe from a rarely seen point of view.
Next day we decided to head back to
Luxembourg and re-group. It was a long
day’s haul, and we tied up just as darkness fell. How we got to Holland is another story.
To be continued