| 23rd July 2009 - Rouen to Vernonnet | ||
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We had a good nights sleep and
pottered about a bit in the morning before purchasing our River
License and then slipped the pontoons at Rouen at about 1100hrs. First stop was Amfreville fuelling barge to fill up the tanks and also an extra 80 litres in four fuel cans which were secured up on the fly bridge. Fuelling at the barge was an absolute breeze after the palaver at Le Havre! On we cruised up the tidal Seine passing barges and cruisers, the river is quite spectacular, in complete contrast the Humber and Trent ;-). We experienced our first French Lock (Amfreville), which after not knowing exactly where we were on the river (lack of km marker boards) we were stuck waiting for 20 minutes for the lock to be prepared for us. Now came a stroke of genius! - Google Earth saved the day, you can put your Lat and Long in and it will pin point your position, then using the "Path Ruler" we could calculate the exact distance to the next lock and find moorings etc. This became our primary navigation tool on the Seine :-) We were now non-tidal so we eased off and cruised at around 17km/h (9 knots approx) for the remainder of the days journey while enjoying the occasional sunny spells in between the heavy showers! |
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| Fuel cans secure on the fly bridge | Amfreville Lock | |
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| ".....a little to Port Andy!" | Full fry up to keep the crew happy, caught again...on camera... and in the galley!!!! | |
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| Eric enjoying his fry up! | ||
| The locks on the Seine open from 0700hrs till 1900hrs so we had to calculate where the best place to moor up for the night would be. We had two options, a place called Gloton which was closest to the next upstream lock or Vernonnet which was 11km beforehand. We approached Gloton (in the rain!) and although the moorings could be seen there was a very shallow channel to reach the pontoons and as there were no other larger cruisers moored up we decided against this option and cruised back downstream to Vernonnet. Arriving in Vernonnet we had almost the same issue, we could see the pontoons but again, shallow! On the opposite bank there were a couple of British Brooms moored ahead of some Seine cruise boats so we crossed the river and disturbed their evening barbeque to squeeze into a spot which initially wasn't actually big enough, but after some loosening of ropes by the Broom owners we tucked ourselves in hard up against a mooring post and just a few inches to spare at the stern (we did attract an audience from on the cruise boat and from ashore). | ||
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| Our mooring in Vernonnet | A few more fenders required around that post! | |
| The weather had improved by now so after a few maintenance activities, including lowering the RIB to improve view astern and securing the outboard on the fly bridge we relaxed and contemplated our early start on Friday to ensure we would make Paris. | ||
