At last- Peter Burleigh locked up in the next romantic chapter about sailing hand in hand into the sunset with a butterfly in the City of Love . Warning : Queenslanders will be offended .
OK, there are a few things that don’t really work on a boat and if they’re essential to your lifestyle you’ll have problems. A billiard table, for example, is a challenge. The balls roll around at random whenever you hit a bow-wave or a swell. Carpet Bowls and Pinball are no longer under your control but gravity’s, which spitefully adds pitch and yaw. Doing Brain Surgery or using anything more precise than a bottle-opener can be risky.
You must come to terms with the instability of water or you’ll soon believe there’s a conspiracy against you. If you agree with Billy Connolly that a boat is a prison which adds the danger of drowning, stay well away. The boat won’t let you steer it like a car. A boat slides. It changes direction slowly. You have to steer in the present but with your mind in the future. Turn the wheel now and you’ll get a response in a few moments, not immediately. It takes so long to respond that at first I went below and wrote two chapters of my novel and still had time to avoid the channel markers. Oh yes – there are no brakes but there are ways of stopping suddenly against stone walls or lock gates.
Rumour
Other people in other boats are a fund of gratuitous advice, usually negative. You’re warned against everything: the damage the Arzviller chain-tug will cause to your boat, the gendarmes checking that you’re not using heating oil instead of diesel (it’s exactly the same, but heating oil is subsidized and 50% cheaper), the VNF are checking the permits to use the canals, the flies, the serpents (yes, there are snakes in France). After you talk to a few fellow boat owners, you realise how lucky you are to have survived so far, because they know people who’ve drowned, burned alive, crushed inside locks, chewed up by propellers and arrested by Gendarmes at gunpoint for drunken boat-driving. Initially this is very alarming because you don’t want to damage yourself or your boat, and it’s wiser to believe it than ignore it. You soon find out it’s all fabrication. Canal cruising is fuelled by rumours but the reality is charming, peaceful and a hell of a good time.
Each new season has its rumours. This year they said global warming had turned the Carmargue into a sub-tropical swamp and insecticide-immune mosquitoes laden with malaria were swarming northward into the very region we are in .People who own boats tread a fine line between irresponsibility and insanity. Steer clear of them.
Authorities
People on boats can get a bit crazy when they feel their rights are being threatened. The gendarmes and VNF officials steer clear of any real contact with us because they know that with the possible exclusion of murder, the mayhem caused by dealing with boat owners simply isn’t worth a charge of breaking the speed limit (6kph on the Burgundy Canal, slower than a snail on Vallium), permit expiration and sounding the boat horn after 10pm.You’re wrong if you think the French canals are crowded with boats and petty bureaucracy, they’re not. It’s very, very rare that anyone checks your papers or annual permit . It really is possible to enter a kind of Serene Zone and have the holiday of a lifetime – or a lifetime of holiday if you buy your own boat. An Australian boating license (i.e. that one you have for the old tinny) works fine. They don’t dream that the Australian license doesn't qualify you for absolutely nothing. When I first turned up in France I had perhaps two and a half hours of boating experience, and half of that distorted by how much “beverage” I’d consumed. I flashed my Australian Boat License and they treated me like a gentleman.
Fuel
Diesel fuel is a major cost of cruising. Because The Butterfly has an engine twice the power of our previous boat we can expect higher fuel consumption. In our absence diesel has risen to at least a Euro-fiftynine (about $A1.93) a litre, the price we paid near Detroit Marine. As it was we took on 300 litres, but when we fill the entire 500-litre tank in one go the cost will be breath-taking. The Butterfly is packed with machinery and other stuff and I can’t find a place for a couple of jerrycans. We kept our previous boat full of fuel by buying diesel at canal-side supermarkets and rolling jerrycans back-and-forth in trolleys. Looked silly but saved money. This time we must buy larger amounts at higher prices from the rare fuel bunkers along the rivers. By the time we get to our destination I reckon the tank will be two-thirds empty. It needs to be filled to the top for winter to prevent internal condensation. There’ll be plenty of condensation in my wallet instead.
The Language
The French continue to struggle with the domination of the English language. Understandably their own language is of great pride to them because it’s theirs and no one else’s. Until recently there was even a Government Department of French Language Purity (the Academie Francaise). [Ed: In Quebec,Canada,where Burleigh once lived , there is the Quebec Office of the French Language.] It combed communication for non-French words. Many deemed a threat to the glory of France were English words. They were guillotined by law.
You couldn’t call it a computer any more, it became an ordinateur. Some English and American tourists believe that shouting at French people who don’t understand them is the best way to an accord. This doesn’t work. Generally, if you make an effort to speak a few words of their language the French are charming and helpful. The trouble is, speaking correct French means accepting very strange concepts. You learn that things such as bicycles, bricks, toilet paper, wind and rain are either masculine or feminine despite their unquestioned lack of genitals.
In the vegetable kingdom for example, it is accepted that potatoes are female. The carrot (carrote) is feminine yet the leek (poireau) is masculine. Their refusal to pronounce the letter H is puzzling as they use it in several words. As noted earlier, perfect correctness is not worth worrying about. Shrug, smile, be friendly and the issue will go away.
Rushing
Americans, Canadians, Kiwis and especially Australians have a habit of rushing from one place to another, as if their destinations are moving away from them. We seem to believe that the time actually spent going from one place to another will be subtracted from the most virile part of our lives, so we go flat out all the time, our bow-waves eroding the banks and our wash offending French fishermen. Hey, shrug a little. Slow down. Smile lazily as they say. There’s too much good stuff to risk missing it. Take three days to travel a distance you’d ordinarily cover in a short day.After a while you’ll start talking slower and feeling better and you’ll refuse to hurry anywhere. You’ll get to like it. If an Australian asks why you’re such a sluggard, simply say you’re from Queensland.
Cooking
Cruising is actually exercise, or it’s more exercise than you’re used to having, so your appetite for everything is stimulated. France is a wonderful country to care less about diet in. The kitchen in your boat will be cramped and unsophisticated, but even Neanderthals had Gourmet Nights. French supermarkets are terrific. They don’t have much in the way of Asian spices and exotic faraway cuisine, but you don’t miss it. The fish and meat are fresh, the meat aged suitably; you can buy game, ducks, quail, goat and Guinea Fowl in any medium-size supermarket. The pies, terrines, sausages and pates are amazing; the vegetables fresh; the coffee selection excellent; the desserts are...well, hard to describe. They beckon, seduce, demand to be eaten. Don’t bother to prepare desserts – you can’t match their skill – but do cook the fresh stuff. You’ll love it.
Television
Watching French TV is like staring at a dog turd. It stinks, it’s ugly and it doesn’t say anything intelligent. If you speak the language it’s even worse because you can understand what they’re saying. Australian TV is mind-numbingly superficial, but the French have perfected giving audiences a lobotomy via their eyes. Be sure to take something to read, or have a hard-disk full of movies in your computer.
Blog Temptation or Diary Disease.
I am writing these pieces because...because...give me a minute to think of a reason which doesn’t include ego or boasting. No matter how skilled my descriptions are there’s still that element of “we’ve got a boat in France and you haven’t.” People in boats believe they’re having unique experiences. There are dozens of blogs on the internet written by yachties, cruisers and even passengers on liners, and just when you were telling your friends what a relief it is that colour slides are out of fashion. There are probably thousands of lapsed blogs, unpublished memoirs and interminable "how to go canal boating"diaries written over the years. Look in your local bookshop and you’ll find several books written by the same people. The back catalogues show many more. Predictably it’s all as boring as bat shit.
One of the most effective ways to avoid the temptation to write about what a good time you’re having is to be constantly refreshed by wine and/or spirits and simply enjoy yourself. Forget the diary. For example, a good time in the form of a bottle of Vodka from the supermarket costs as little as 10 Euros ($A12.20) – who gives a damn that it’s made in France and has a name that rhymes with “cirrhosis” – and genuinely good wine is cheap. At minimum we buy Cru Bourgeois-classified wine, roughly Silver Medal quality from $A8.50, and move up to Premier Cru from $A20. The challenge is to drink enough of it before you have to leave.
Dodgem Boats
Renting a bumper-boat is the answer if you want to try out canal life. It’s far superior way to learn about canal hazards by using a boat that you don’t own. Take a look at the ex-hire boats that come up for sale (in person, not on the internet). Look into the hatches and the bilges and you’ll find they’ve been raped, sacked and pillaged, rammed by stone walls, broken by collisions with immovable objects...and people like you have done it. They’re cracked, bruised, rusted, snapped and held together by gaffer tape. You recognise hire boats by the rows of inflated fenders hanging off the gunnels and the rubber bumper strips running around the entire hull. Theoretically you can be as incompetent as you like and insurance will cover you, not that you’d want to put a French insurance company to the test.
You pay boat rent and insurance, buy your own fuel at the end of the hire, and you have plenty of living space both inside and out, a fridge, kitchen with everything, at least one bathroom, can rent all your linen and can choose from a range of boats that accommodate two to twelve people. Some are air-conditioned; all have heating. They give you a barbeque. You hire bicycles and take them on board. They offer a breakdown service should you need it. You can do base-to-base trips rather than going out and coming back the same way. At the end of your hire you can just walk away – no repair bills or winterising costs unless you get the bug and decide to buy your own boat. Never, ever buy an ex-rental boat.
Your Crew
Solo boating is so introspective it’s only suited to advanced Buddhists or cranky hermits. You need at least one crew member to prevent you from going crazy, to help dismantle the electric toilet when it gets blocked, and to hand you tools when you’re arse-up in the engine space. The crew depends on the Captain for the safety of the boat and themselves, so should always be ready to issue orders in an emergency, like “you take over the steering now.”In fact cruising on the canals tends to bring out the best in married couples. You can be shocked to discover you’re walking around holding hands, having a real conversation or laughing because you’re simply feeling good being in each others’ company.
We’ve been hitched for 25 years and know all there is to know about each other, but this cruise reminded me what a terrific person (I mean crew-member) Judi is and what a knockout she was when I met her and still is, and still shining through is her generosity and intelligence. Those things can’t be faked. How could I be out of the habit of holding hands with a woman like her?The wrong crew-member will be a disaster. Friendships can be tested and sometimes destroyed by spending more than three days together. What’s that saying – “Guests and fish go off after three days”? NEXT : The Horror, the Horror.
