Tancarville-it's a wrap

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We left Honfleur on Monday morning, having considered the tidal effect to travel upstream to Tancarville, well we thought we had, there were conflicting reports as to the best tidal time and a difference in low tide at Honfleur and Tancarville.

Whilst walking Sprocket to the beach in the past few mornings I could see how important it was to get the tides right, as it whizzed past, and it would be a bit frustrating to get it wrong.

First job, to get fuel ‘gazole’ from the fuel station in the basin. We had been warned that the pump was relatively short, it being set up for commercial vessels, so we moored up having taken this into account. Unfortunately we were pair of numpties, even though we had a key code, we had to phone the Capitainaire to ask where the fuel actually was! This was all done in French, and I think she was a bit incredulous as to what I was asking. It was when I recognised the words for ‘metal door’ that we realised that the code opened the metal shutter ‘duhhh’.

I think my O-level French is going to be put to the test on this trip, Mon Dieu!!!!

The lock out was a breeze, a lovely floating bollard, we were quite happy and not concerned about doing locks …. Pride comes before a fall!

So, we were off into the Seine, steaming along towards the Pont du Normandie, a most impressive structure above us, and we seemed to have the tide correct, how did that happen?

We were bombing along at 9-11knots and would soon be at our destination.

It turns out we very quickly reached Tancarville but had a commercial lock to go through and needed to call them on VHF radio. Rather confusingly there are two locks, an old and a new, but no indication as to which we should take. So we called them both.

‘Bonjour ecluse Tancarvile, (repeat three times), c’est le bateau Ramukanji over’, when he answered he asked if we were a ship!

I then changed my introduction to ‘le petit bateau Ramukanji’.

Interestingly, no-one had yet struggled with the boat name, as they had in England.

We were told to wait and to use the old lock, but to wait where we were, and they would call us when ready (I think). There was a lot of bobbing around, I called again, the same response (I think!) I called again, not wanting to be too pushy but hey, we’d been bobbing around for a while and the tide was strong and there were some big ships passing by!

‘There is a technical problem with the lock ‘I was told (I think) and we would need to wait a while.

And then suddenly, vite.vite entrée.

In we went, a massive lock with big tide and lots of wind, and we struggled to moor, finally tied on realising this was a huge lock and a long way to go up!

Finally, we were there, a bit of a learning lesson, and off we went to the working boatyard of Tancarville.

No-one was around to tell us where to moor up, it was bank holiday (remember we’re in France) so we found a spot and tied up. Now we had to get ready for ‘dematage’ tomorrow morning. This meant getting the sails off and packed away and dismantling the boom and everything else relating to the mast.

Wow, those sails are huge, and new so not easy to ‘flail’, but with help from a kindly Belgian chap we were done and packed and about ready to eat.

That’s when the boatyard security arrived…strange noises, and then Sprocket went running past at speed, tail between his legs and glancing backwards, followed by…. A push-me-pull-me and his friend a Billy goat 😊

So funny, but I wouldn’t mess with them.

Back to the boat, cooked a tomato sauce and pasta, then to bed and up early to get ready for packing, no idea what time it was happening or any other information other than to expect ‘Jean’ to be there.

Jean was not there at 0900, but we were told he would arrive at some point this morning, and then we would know the schedule for the mast removal (it’s France!).

We got everything ready as best we could, Jean arrived, grunted and shrugged, and said a lot of ‘ voulez-vous’ ( basically any question was replied with ‘whatevs’) , and we motored around to the crane .

The wind instruments were taken off without us even knowing what was happening, and then a strap around the spreaders, some remote-control whirring, and there was our mast swinging off the boat and being placed in the yard ready for us to prepare for transporting, so casual, so cool.

The rest of the day we spent preparing the mast for transport. It was to be collected by a man (Nigel Boatloads)and taken by lorry to a marina on the Mediterranean France ,ready to be put back onto the boat for us to then sail the remaining journey.

Mike was quire fanatic about the mast preparation, though I did most of it, and was well chuffed when Nigel from Boatloads e-mailed to say it was one of the best packed, he’d ever had!

The technique- 20cm pieces of foam placed around the mast separating the standing rigging from the mast to prevent rubbing off the anodising of the mast, at short intervals all the way along, followed by bubble wrap, followed by the running rigging, in what I would call a 'Chinese finger trap suture' (for the surgeons amongst us) and then the whole lot wrapped in clingfilm, or pallet wrap as it is professionally known!

Another night at Tancarville- though no facilities, it was a nice mooring, good fun with the security guards, and loads and loads of swans which is good to see, especially after the bird flu scare recently.

Away in the morning, catching the tide to Rouen, we think, again seems to be a lot of variation in timings.

Locked out of the new lock at Tancarville, again glad we weren’t sharing with a commercial ship as we made a bit of a pig’s ear of it, need to get a better technique.