A voice from above – welcome to Marseille
43° 17′ 47″ N 5° 22′ 12″ E
July 2, 2016
“Ronja!”
The name of our boat thunders down upon us.
A voice from heaven?
Or the voice of the harbour-master shouting through a loudspeaker?
We have just sailed in between the two impressive fortresses that mark the entrance to Marseille’s magnificent harbour, Vieux Port. We look anxiously skyward. The voice continues: “Ronja. Keep in the center of the basin. You will be picked up by an inflatable boat! “.
It has been a terrific sailing day. The first real sailing after Ronja for several summers have worked its way through the French rivers and canals using only engines and having no mast (the mast had gone ahead on a flatbed truck with a German haulier). Now Ronja is reunited with her mast, and with a dizzying amount of water under the keel. The Mistral gave us this morning a loving nudge in the back at Beaufort strength 6. Full sail from Port Saint Louis du Rhone. And now we are in Marseilles
… with the voice from on high. An inflatable boat comes rushing with a port captain and two mates aboard. “How long do you plan to be with us”, the port captain asks. When we say two or three days, he looks skeptical. His facial expression makes us understand, that it will be very difficult. An almost impossible mission.
“Follow us,” he says. And here comes the trouble.
Not one of the nearly 1000 boats in the Vieux Port is located with the bow toward the bridge, as we are used to in Denmark. All boats – and I really mean all – are facing aft end toward the dock. They back in! They are crazy, the French. This kind of stuff we do not do.
Intuitively, we are against. Our boat is relatively long keeled and maneuvering clearly worse backwards than forwards. And why should all absolutely be moored cockpit to cockpit in towards the docks, so everyone can follow each other’s dinner menu?
Some beautiful maneuver it is not either. Ronjas bathing platform wedges under the pontoon bridge, and one of the fixed lines, which we according to the same outlandish French tradition must pick up from the harbour bottom and attach the bow with, gets tangled. The port captain shouts, that we must back up, so his line can come free. His aides giggles. Ronjas skipper refuses to back further into the pontoon bridge in the interest of the pinched bathing platform.
It all resolves itself. It usually does.
But there really is something with the french and arrogance. They invent a foolish mooring technique and require all to use it – as if it were a government decree – and so they allow themselves to frown openly about the unfortunate foreigners who can not figure out how to dock at its port.
View from the boat. Notre Dame Cathedral in Marseilles
But what a place. What a view. What a city.
Everyone should try to be in the middle of Marseilles central harbour and enjoy the special light, the beautiful buildings, the amusement wheel, the beautiful church on the mountain, the relaxed atmosphere of cafes and restaurants that surround the entire harbour while enjoying the intense energy, that is being created through daily fish markets, other markets as well as an endless entry and exit from fishermen, excursion boats and yachts.
Marseilles is “guarded” by two old fortresses
Marseille is an underrated city. It still has a reputation of mafia, drugs and other crimes over it. But the city has improved itself. There are renovated houses and new ones. It has created architectural masterpieces in the form of new museums and refurbished shopping centers in old warehouses. Norman Forster has created the covering to the metro station at the harbour. Fascinating.
The crime rate here may still be high, but then it is done in suits, and live a more discreet life than the one we know from Gene “Popeye” Hackmann’s troubles in the films “French Connection I and II”.
Marseilles Vieux Port – one of the most beautiful city-moorings we have had
Marseille is a very exciting city. Large, magnificent, vibrant, charming and French – with a significant contribution of immigrants from North African countries. You meet very few tourists from Germany, the UK and Scandinavia. Marseille is a French city. So far prefered by the french themselves.
There is nothing but good to say about Marseille. … well, that would be the harbour master’s morbid insistence, that all boats must turn the same way at all the pontoons in the port. Either it’s insane aesthetics, or it is a fascist desire that we all must march equally and concurrently.
Fact: It cost € 37 per night to stay in the Vieux Port. Electricity and water just off the boat. Unique location but some noise at night. Toilets and bath almost inaccessible – they were on the other side of the harbour, a stroll of one and a half kilometer. Port captain said that we could just call, he would pick us up in his dinghy, when we had to use the bath. But to be honest: We came from the beginning a little crooked in to that harbour master.
Marseilles is a fantastic city. Much better than its reputation
Sailing in the midst of the most beautiful nature
48° 6′ 49.4928” N 5° 8′ 21.3216” E
July 11, 2015
Two pieces of cake wrapped in tin foil is the farewell gift from the nice Brits, who will stay for another 10 days, because they are watching a dog for a friend. “We usually give the cakes to lock keepers,” they say. We ask if they are sailing all year. No, no. “The winter we spend in Spain. Only in the summer we sail in France “.
Today’s retirees have many ways of organizing their lives. Previously, we have spoken a few times with a Dutch couple, who no longer had a permanent in the Netherlands, but in the summer months sailed on the canals of Europe and in the winter lived in their apartment in Cape Town, South Africa.
Marvellous mooring side by side with british vessels rebuild from business to leisure, spacey and modern
The ride is beautiful. The canal is curving through the landscape. Completely different from the straight channel-stretch, we have been accustomed to. Beautiful hills, rolling cornfields and lots of flowers close to the canal. The intense nature close to us is the big attraction of sailing on a canal. The banks made up of a tangle of flowers – climbing plants, thistles and many others – with purple, yellow and white as the predominant colours. A paradise for insects and birds. Dragonflies play tag. Venom spider webs are evident in the early morning hours and above us eagles are flying.
The only snake in paradise is the green sea cucumbers, which at long distances reduce our speed to less than two knots, because the keel plods through the wild growing of underwater plants. Periodically we put the engine in reverse to free the propeller of plant residues.
Lasse is driving in advance with the “follow car”, which is parked at a small jetty in Froncles. Five boats and five campers around a small piece of grass with electricity and toilets. It is fairly standard for a port in these parts. After having parked the car, he runs 14 to 15 kilometres back and meets us in a lock. Tianling jumps also gets of the boat on the way to take a walk.
It’s great to have Nellie on board. She is three and a half years old, and she is quickly settled on the boat. The large living cabin in the middle is hers. Here she is playing with clay, Legos and drawing. Here she sleeps at night. Quickly she finds out how to move around in the cockpit. Only once it goes wrong. She fell and hit her head against the rudder stock, but a heron flies over at the same time. “Look, Nellie, your happiness heron. It will see if you are seriously injured, and now flies further. ”
Grandchild Nellie wears lifejacket whenever close to the water
The hardest part for Nellie is the limits that naturally must be on a ship. In the cabin and cockpit, she must be without a lifejacket. But up on the deck and along the quay in the port she must always have a life jacket. After some border dispute on this, it is accepted as one of the terms of sailing life.
Log book: Today’s distance: 24 km. Sailed time 9:30 to 15:30 = 6 hours. Locks: 9 pcs. Weather: Warm, sultry, sun.
Tianling improves every day in her relatively new role as mate onboard Ronja
All signposts are in french. All sailors are non-french
48° 43′ 33.9132” N 4° 35′ 8.682” E
Wednesday – July 8, 2016
Playing in Vitry-le-Francois
Up early to go in and experience Vitry-le-Francois. We start with the playground at the town hall. Swings, slides and hopscotch. Simple but just what Nellie wants. As we pass the open windows of the town hall – a magnificent piece of classical mansion – we see that in several offices are typewriters. These analog, old-fashioned, mechanical appliances from the previous century. We also see computer screens. Anyway, typewriters in 2015? Sigh.
We eat croissant and drink coffee at a cafe. We buy Lego Friends, and we buy a long-sleeved shirt to protect Nellie against mosquito bites, and as a precaution also buy additional children’s patches, as they has been shown to have a strong psychological effect on itchy mosquito-bites. Especially those patches that have airplanes on them.
We break up at 2 p.m. There is pretty much wind. But we are a sailing boat, created for the roaring oceans. We say goodbye to our American neighbours and wish them good luck with their transmission shaft. In some way we sense that our own story with a broken shaft and many months of traumatic trouble with the French mechanics did not reassure them. Sometimes you have to just leave them to their own experience, even if you have experienced similar.
Now for the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne. 224 km with 114 locks and a nearly five-kilometre long tunnel along the way. It was formerly called the channel “Canal entre Marne et Saone” but one bright person at a tourist office probably got the idea to rename the channel to something with champagne and burgundy, so now it is called so – although Vitry has no more champagne-growing, and at the other end there are no single burgundy-fields. It is stagnant peasant country. Cereals and cows.
The French are not consistent. The old name, “Canal entre Marne a Saone” still occur on most signs along the canal – signs that are one hundred percent written in French. All information. All instructions. All brochures on the channel. Everything is in French. Only French. Stupid.
The French would not dream of sailing on the canals themselves. Well, except for one or two. It is Americans, Australians, British, Germans, Belgians and especially Dutch sailors that man the French rivers and channels in a fleet of converted barges, custom-built riverboats, lavish motored and castrated sailboats – including one from Denmark. We meet – virtually – no sailors from France.
Would it then make sense to make signs communicating in English or German? Yes, by God. But the French would not dream of it.
We sail to Orconte and stop at a stump berth surrounded by cornfields, trees, anglers and bird song. The only other boat at the dock are our friends from the UK, a young couple – on leave with their two children. Nice, Nellie is among friends and spends the evening with Bertie and Elisa.
Log-book: Today’s distance: 14 km. Sailed time 14.00 to 17.30 = 3 ½ hours. Locks: 6 pcs. Weather: autom-like. We woke up to the leaves falling from the trees. The wind is cold. The sky is grey. The heat wave is blown away. Back to normal?
Would it help, if signposts were in english? Yes, because all sailors in the french rivers and canals are non-french
Mechanical lock. Pull up the blue tube, and the lock starts operating
We prepare Ronja on a new summer on the French canals and rivers
49° 2′ 39.6348” N 3° 55′ 1.56” E
July 4, 2015
The day is spent cleaning Ronja, soapy water and algae remover, water tanks and a gigantic shopping in Carrefour and – for Lasse, Tian Ling and Nellie – an excursion to the deep cellars under the champagne producer Mercier, who has so many kilometers of underground passages with fermenting bottles, that they have invested in an underground train to get around.
In the evening we barbecue dinner on the quayside. The sun grilling us from above. The heat wave.
Let’s find granddads boat in France
49° 2′ 49.6348” N 3° 57′ 1.56” E
July 2, 2015
It is early afternoon, when Per meet Lasse, Tianling and Nellie at Fredericia train station in Denmark. Per had been to a few meetings in the media-company in Vejle, and the others came by train from Copenhagen.
They all enter Per’s car, which will with the air conditioning on full speed allow us to survive the current heatwave and bring us to the good ship Ronja, which are waiting in the Marne river in the champagne capital, Epernay, France.
Fine trip. Good mood. Nellie, who is 3 ½ years old, falls into the rhythm. She sleeps a lot, plays with Tianling. We rest along the way at Moevenpick Hotel in Munster. Excellent dinner, excellent rooms, excellent breakfast. And then off again.
Status: Year two of Ronjas circumnavigation – 2013 – was a fine vintage.
48° 54′ 33.66” N 2° 11′ 30.9984” E
July 29. – 2013
We secure and clean Ronja and pack the car. Three hours later, we are in the heart of the Burgundy district, in the city of Beaune. A new kind of holiday begins. We rented two rooms at an IBIS hotel at almost six hundred crowns per room per night. And one additional room in the Alsatian town of Eguisheim for the nights of Wednesday and Thursday.
In Burgundy, we are together with Vivi and Peter, whom we know through Hanne and Jorgen. We visit wineries, participate in tastings, buying Burgundy wines, celebrating Hannes’s birthday and follow the habbit of the last several days to only seek out restaurants, that are mentioned in the Michelin Guide for France either as Bib gourmands or as having one or two forks. It pays off almost every time. Cheap but very good three-course menus. Typically, at a price between 30 and 37 euros for three courses. We live as earls and barons.
French food gets vindicated during this trip. After the downturn in the so-called modern French cuisine in the 1970s when French food was synonymous with super-small portions, a thin, raw carrot on a plate with a small piece of meat, we actually thought that French cuisine had died. But it most certainly lives, is doing well and is a pleasure not only for the French, who have never recognised that good food can be made elsewhere than just in France.
The good life we continue later in a cute little town of Eguisheim, where the wine is merely replaced with Alsatian wines.
Thursday evening just before nine we are at home in Odense with six boxes of wine and a lot of experiences. Emilie and Molly waiting with food for the weary travellers.
It has been a very varied holiday. Sailing at sea for many days. Waterway navigation for many days. City breaks in Rotterdam and Paris. Epicures in Burgundy and Alsace. The best weather in mans memory. Sunshine almost every day. Family-companionship being with Lasse, Tianling and Nellie and Jørgen and Hanne.
Year two of Ronjas circumnavigation of the globe – 2013 – was a fine vintage.
Enkhuizen – is a sailors mecca. Boats, boats and boats
52° 42′ 15.0948” N 5° 18′ 1.0188” E
22 and July 23, 2012
They are crazy, the Dutchmen! The bakers are closed on Sundays and on weekdays they open frequently as other stores.
While Kirsten turns dough up to own morning buns, we head towards Enkhuizen. It will be a perfect day for sailing. The wind is in front of the cross. Ijselmeer is smooth, almost uniformly deep (read: low). All the time a meter or two below the keel.
The sun shines. Soon we thing, that we can see Enkhuizen. “Look, they have cliffs,” says Kirsten. It turns out to be a huge forest of masts. Enkhuizen has six to seven ports, the port we call, has room for 700 boats. Never have we seen so many sails on the water as in front of Enkhuizen. The city has a reputation as being a sailors mecca. After weeks of rain all sailors are going to the see to have som air in their sails – like cows when they are let out of the barn on the first day of spring.
We take an extra day in Enkhuizen, which starts with a jogging tour around the city walls. It is a charming city. Perhaps the most beautiful of the canal towns we have seen so far.
We also visit an open air museum “Zuiderzee Museum”, which is a really good museum, very active, interesting.
Log book: Departure 8.30. Destination: Enkhuizen, Arrival 11:00.
“Is it Ronja? Ronja from Thurø?”
52° 50′ 33.3672” N 5° 42′ 16.956” E
July 20, 2012
Fantastic day. Everything works. The bridges are opening. The rain obviously hold a bit back. And the waters are nothing short of exciting. Packed traffic. Cities that are architect-designed to let each home have its boat in the front yard. Channels crisscross. Lakes. Large and small. A tangle of intersecting ships. If we thought Denmark was a sailing nation, think again. Holland controls for game. Everything here is about sailing.
We find a port. Calm. Just outside Lemmer. We are checking out the town, and eat in the port restaurant. And we enjoy the most luxurious bathing facilities. Hot shower in six hours if desired.
Just before Lemmer we pass a Danish sailing yacht, sailing the opposite direction to us. Virtually everyone we meet are Dutch or Germans. But this guy yells: “Is it Ronja? Ronja from Thurø?” It turns out that they are themselves from the small harbour, Thurø Bund back home. “Hello there!” And then they are gone.
Everybody talks about the weather. In our port are many Germans. They are talking clearly about maybe going to Mallorca in stead of Lemmer.
Log book: Departure 9.00. Destination: Lemmer. Arrival: 13.00.