INLAND CRUISING

Jim and Marjorie Robfogel

(Ping is an aft-cockpit Freedom 44. The Robfogels crossed the Atlantic eastwards with her in 1985 and since then have spent much time exploring European waters. Their homebase is in Rochester, NY.)

1994 was the year that Ping finally cruised through the European canal system from the south of France to the Netherlands. Last year we prepared for the canals by unstepping our masts, offloading sailing gear, putting on a sturdy three-bladed prop and tuning up the engine. We spent the whole summer making a leisurely and circuitous trip from Valence on the River Rhone north and west through the Burgundy countryside to Paris and then on north and east through Champagne and the Ardennes forest to Belgium and Holland. It was a beautiful trip and not in the least boring, with more than 300 locks to climb up and down and large barges to squeeze past. Armed with tarps and tyres surrounding the hull, Ping's first garden on deck, and two new folding bicycles, we surely looked like a floating island.

Our trip was about evenly divided between rivers which seemed wide, deep and easy, and the canals which were narrow, shallow and more challenging to get through. We started up the big Rhone in April against strong current and a cold north wind. But at Lyon we branches off into the more peaceful Saone, leaving the Cotes du Rhone, Condrieu, Cote Rotie and Hermitage for Beaujolais, Macon and Pouilly Fuiss' country.

Just north of Chalon we left the Saone and entered the Canal du Centre system which would take us across Burgundy to the upper Seine, which we could descend to Paris. We knew that depth in the canals would be the biggest challenge to our trip. Ping draws exactly the maximum depth that the locks are built for and to which the centre of the canals are supposedly dredged. When we passed that first, small canal lock we began to believe that maybe, after three years of planning this trip, we might just make it to Paris. Soon afterwards, though, we learned that the real challenge was not the locks but passing the loaded canal barges who also need the draft of the centre of the canals. And finding a place to tie up for the night often involved having to raft off another yacht or barge because we were too deep to approach the bank. New equipment for canal travel included an aluminium ladder for climbing up and over barges and a 12 foot plank for crawling ashore after running the boat into the mud as close to the bank as possible.

The glories ashore were legion. Walking from the boat to three star restaurants, to famous vineyards for tastings, to the markets and museums of Paris, to the battlefields of the World Wars, cycling through the countryside of Monet, Pissaro, Mondriaan, Van Gogh, ballooning over Burgundy, kayaking down the Lesse River in Belgium -- it was truly a magical summer. And all the better because we could share it with many friends who came visiting to take advantage of Ping's flat decks this year.

After a month in Paris, moored at the Bastille, we mouched our bateau down the Seine, now familiar with every bridge and quai, and up the Oise and Aisne Rivers before climbing into the Ardennes canal system. One day we climbed a veritable mountain in twenty-eight consecutive locks with two Dutch families -- you can see the young Dutch captain who has left Jim his yacht to wash off our stern. The end of our season brought us down the Meuse or Mass River through the Low Lands, descending some truly gigantic locks. Traffic on the Dutch rivers and Rhine delta is busy and active, but it was a relief to feel the luxury of space and depth of manoeuvre in. Locks soon became a thing of the past in the flat expanses of the Netherlands, but bridges with timed openings took their place in regulating our travel. It was a happy day that we passed through Haarlem's seven bridges to Spaarndam, where Ping was left for the winter under the watchful eye of the Hans Brinker statue to wait for spring. This year we hope to re-step the masts and sail into the Baltic.

(724 words)