We’ve been in the mediterranean for 3 weeks now and finally found the time (and stable WiFi) to piece a little movie together of the inland waterways. We have to admit that we do miss the French rivers and little canals a little bit every now and then. It was a special experience!
the journey
Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône – A cracked rudder!
The day before we planned to leave Port-Saint-Louis we noticed a crack on the rudder from the pontoon. Thijs dived a first time under the boat to look at the damage. After diving a second time we came to the conclusion that the crack was serious enough to take the boat out of the water for […]
Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône – Of masts and rudders
Arriving from the Rhône we stayed in Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône for a couple of days to get the mast up again, install all the rigging and make the other necessary preparations before going to sea. We also had to digest the inland waterways and get used to the idea of sailing again. When staying in Port-Saint-Louis, it’s possible […]
France – Rhône
The mighty Rhône was the last stretch of inland water of our journey down to the Mediterranean. The amount of water that flows through this river is truly impressive. At some point while doing 5.5 kts through the water our speed over ground was 9 kts (16.2 km/h). The locks on the Rhône operate from […]
France – Saône
We stayed on the Saône from Corre to Lyon. Between Corre and Saint-Jean-de-Losne most of the locks are automatic and are activated with a pole. They operate from 9:00 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 19:00 (we’re in France after all) so we were often obliged to have a “long” lunch break. The first section of the Saône […]
French locks: a love story
After going through more than 200 locks in three different countries so far, and the large majority of them being in France (we still have to see what the locks on the Rhône look like), we felt the automatized locks on the canal de la Meuse and canal des Vosges deserved their own post. Let’s start […]
France – Marne-Rhine canal, Moselle, canal des Vosges
The canal de la Meuse joins with the Marne-Rhine canal in Troussey. We stayed on the Marne-Rhine canal until Toul. It’s a very short part but with many locks over a short distance (chaîne d’écluses) it takes time. We covered Sampigny – Toul in a day (that’s 18 locks) and stayed in Toul for the night. We […]
France – Canal de la Meuse
The Meuse canal in France stretches from Givet close to the border with Belgium to Troussey where it joins with the Marne-Rhine canal. The locks on this canal are mostly automatic but operate between 9 am and 6 pm only, so we have to plan our daily route accordingly. We spent the first night in […]
Belgium
Departing from Maastricht we passed Liège (Luik) and spent our first night in Belgium in a marina not very far from Huy. The next day we passed Namur and after an unsuccessful attempt to fuel up and almost running aground in the marina (nice when submerged rocks right in front of a fuel station are […]
The Netherlands
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Ours happened a bit later than we initially wanted to, in the afternoon of the 1st of May, 2017 in Leiden. For our first night we moored at the outskirts of Gouda. Going south we stopped at the Biesbosch Marina, the tiny but cute marina […]