Narrowboats and Widebeam Craft in France
Narrowboats and Widebeam Craft in France
Wednesday, 2 November 2016
A question that crops up regularly in various guises on the CanalWorld Forum, a forum basically for boaters on UK canals and rivers, is “can I take my narrowboat/widebeam to France?” and my answer is always variants on “People do it, but it is not something I would recommend”. The link takes you to one such thread http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=53058
The trouble with a narrowboat in this context is that you are boating in a long thin tube - if you’ve got a cruiser stern there is a bit of space there, but there is seldom practical space to work from at the fore end and the only way to get from one end to the other is over the cabin top or through the living space. If you’ve just read my articles here on French locks you can possibly already imagine why I have reservations.
Any other boat coming into that lock will have to do so against the turbulence created by this first vessel, and then carries out exactly the same procedure himself. This is easy enough with a suitable vessel, but not so easy when your boat has very little working space and no side decks for easy access.
Nor does a standard narrowboat have suitable working gear in the right position. There is a tee stud behind the stem post, and if you use a fore end line here and drive against it the stern will tend to slew out into the lock. If you choose to use two lines instead, fore and aft, you can struggle to find any lockside furniture suitable - it is often all arranged at 40m spacing for the smallest working péniches.
Although on rivers you might meet enormous vessels the water is wide enough for any small craft to get right over out of the way, but on those Freycinet canals (locks 40m x 5.10m) which still have commercial traffic there is the additional problem that there is seldom room for two such craft to pass each other without virtually touching each other. So the narrow boater must also pass close enough to more or less shake hands with the skipper or he risks being put on the bottom (or worse) as the commercial passes,
Probably not a thing the narrow boater himself gives much thought to is that they can sometimes be rather anti-social as well. Mooring space is getting difficult to find, and marinas now frequently have a 15m limit on craft length. A barge ties on a town quay, and any other sort of craft can tie alongside as access across the deck is simple. A narrowboat ties there and the only type of craft that could easily tie alongside is another narrowboat, particularly once the bow and stern have canvas covers. Crossing the roof becomes the only access for people alongside - not so easy if you have bikes, prams, shopping or other encumbrances. It doesn’t help either that narrow boat owners commonly use their roof as storage for sundry items.
A craft built for UK canals is also likely to be under-engineered and underpowered for the forces involved in larger waterways. As a couple of instances from personal knowledge:
• A 30’ narrow boat was craned into the dock at Calais after its arrival on a lorry. A sea tug went past shortly after, and the resultant swell broke the rudder bearing leaving the boat in urgent need of repair.
• The owner was very unfazed by this when he talked about it a couple of days after the event, and when we met him again a couple of months later he told us he had recently been in a lock tied against a cruiser with flared bows. The turbulence as the lock filled pushed him under the bow where he listed over sufficiently to lose some crockery and for his bow to rapidly fill with water coming in through drainage holes in the front well deck.
• A narrowboat stopped for fuel on the pontoon at Antoing bunker station. An 80m ship was bunkering at the commercial pump immediately behind him, facing the opposite direction. The commercial ship finished its business and motored gently away, and the force of its several hundred HP engine threw the narrowboat rudder round violently. If the owner had been on the stern the tiller bar would have thrown him over the side, possibly with broken bones.
• A wide beam craft got into serious contretemps with a large passenger boat following him downstream when he did not have sufficient power to turn and come in to the pontoon where he wished to moor.
To move on to positive things though, there is one fairly simple modification that can be made to improve safety in locks.
The conventional tee stud on the fore end of a narrowboat/widebeam craft makes it very difficult to use a fore end line as a spring as it will foul on the front of the accommodation. It is also very easy for the line to get jammed and the craft to get hung up as a lock empties. Both dangers can be minimised by the addition of something to act as a fairlead. Think of a NB/WB with a front well deck, with you looking forward. The tee stud will generally be at the front of a triangular plate at gunwale level. I am suggesting some sort of guide at the other two points of that triangle - maybe even a proper conventional fairlead - one on each side of the boat, so as the boat goes up or down in the lock and the rope changes its angle it is out there, not at the tee stud itself.
The fairlead on the green narrow boat above has been positioned for the line to be taken forward as the owner does always use two lines in locks. The stern line would then be taken to a lock bollard aft of the boat of course. (Photo courtesy of Laurent and Magali’s “Dream On” blogsite: http://dreamonnarrowboat.blogspot.fr/2013/12/13eme-jour-paris.html)
The wide beam craft “Xenia” on the left has them positioned where I was suggesting, either side at the front of the well deck. He has fitted doubled bollards which means he can use them in the same manner I describe with a barge on the “bollards” page. With a single one or a fairlead you would still use the tee stud to take the turns of line on, but his is a much better refinement and also it allows him to use it for a line feeding forward or backward.
All I am hoping to do here is to prepare people who wish to bring their narrow boat across to France for what they might expect, and prompt them to do further research on what is needed e.g. by way of lines and other equipment to keep them safe.
As a complete aside, the professional mariniers call them “bateaux saucissons” - sausage boats.
(Photo pinched from Di’s Foodie collection ;-)
see: www.foodieafloat.com)
link to Tam’s RYA Book of CEVNI Regulations and DVD Barge Handling in France
(All text and photographs copyright Tam & Di Murrell © unless otherwise credited)