Vaughan

The first company to start boat hiring in France was Blue Line, with all their boats built for them by Wilds, although I didn't know they had any of this design. The Beaver Fleet started in the early 80s with a mixture of boats from Norfolk, mostly having been on hire on the Broads first. The first French builder and hirer was Locaboat, which was just starting when I was first there in 1983. Connoisseur came a bit later, in the mid to late 80s (I think). Blue Line used to have a base in the Loire region, to the south of Auxerre, so the photo could be of that cathedral.

You've got me going on Camargue photos now! Here are some more : Les Cabanes du Roc, near La Grande Motte. Montpellier airport, in the distance! The port of Marseillan, Etang de Thau Les Onglous, Etang de Thau. The bottom end of the Canal du Midi. The round lock at Agde in the distance. We won't see this again in our lifetimes, as they have cut all the plane trees down. The lifting bridge at Frontignan, Canal du Rhone à Séte. The only interruption to the navigation, all the way to St Gilles. Etang de Thau. Taken at Marseillan, on New Year's Day. The Mediterranean, just 200 yds from the canal, at Les Aresquiers.

Luckily for them, the Rhone burst its banks just below there, between Nouriguier and the ecluse de St Gilles. You are quite right about sea level and the lock at St Gilles, which joins the canal and the Rhone, works both ways, according to the levels in the river and the canal. The Petit Camargue, if you are looking at a map, is the bottom left hand part of the Rhone delta, where the Camargue national park is the right hand side. It is a very large area, very much like parts of the Broads, with water meadows full of bulls and horses and miles of managed reed beds, which are considered second only for thatching, to the Norfolk reed. There are also large expanses of rice paddy and big salt fields at Aigues Mortes. It is indeed a very large area and it took 10 days for it all to drain out via the canal at the Grau du Roi, which is the only way out to sea. They first had to mend the breach in the bank of the Rhone, with Chinook helicopters dropping rocks. The last one is a Squacco Heron. Beautiful birds when they fly.

I have just turned up these photos and thought you might be interested. This was when the Rhone burst its banks during a storm and flooded the whole of the delta basin known as the Petit Camargue, including our base at St Gilles. As the coastline of the area is all high sand dunes, the only way out to sea for the floodwater was down the canal via Aigues Mortes and the Grau du Roi. This meant that for 10 days, the moored boats were in a current of at least 7MPH coming down the canal. The first photo was taken from a Gendarmerie helicopter when the floods were just starting. At the peak, it got another 6ft higher than seen in the photo. The boat sheds and offices of our base are at far right. The problem was not so much the current, as to stop the boats from going over the top of the quay and ending up on the road when the water went down again! In the photo you can see that there are two Bounty 44 bathtubs moored on the bows of the other cruisers : I moored these two to the other boats with a rope to each of the 4 bow cleats and then let them out at an angle to the current coming down the canal. The effect of the water going past the long, deep keels had the effect of a big rudder, and pulled all the other 32 boats away from the quay, against their stern lines. They stayed like this for 10 days and 9 nights until the water went back below the quay, while we came down in a dinghy every 3 hours, day and night, to check on the moorings and let out the stern lines as the water rose. The photo was taken when the level was normal again but to give an idea of how high it got, in the distance you can see two boats out on the hardstanding in front of the base buildings. At one time we were afraid they were going to float off their chocks, as well as he 5 boats in the sheds! The base itself was devastated and for the next 4 months we ran the office and reception from my house, a bit higher up in the town. The insurance claim on the base was a big one but for the boats, we never even called the insurance company. We didn't even pull a cleat out of the deck or break a single mooring line. The only one of the management to thank me for this was Mick Masson, from Connoisseur. He was the only one who recognised a bit of seamanship when he saw it! For comparison, this is what the private moorings looked like, just on the other side of the town bridge!

There is no doubt that the French government will declare the floods as a "catastrophe naturelle" so that those with flooded houses and farms can get fully paid by insurance. I think the problem in this case might be, that the boats were damaged owing to a pontoon mooring which gave way. I happen to know that the main pontoon, which did not give way, was installed by the town hall (Mairie) who own the base and lease it to Le Boat. I am pretty sure the new section, which came adrift, was moored there by Le Boat and was not owned by the Mairie. In which case, I can envisage a claim being made by the boats' insurers, against the insurers of the base and its pontoon. What you might call a "lose lose" situation! There is also the question : was it safe to moor a fleet of boats, 3 abreast, on a floating pontoon on the river Lot in winter? Quite clearly, it wasn't.

This is the sort of damage ( and much more) that they are going to have to deal with, after these boats have hit stone bridges. This boat was off hire for the rest of the season but was repaired by a specialist firm during the winter. Even then, the gel coat could not be repaired smoothly and the sides and deck had to be painted. I daren't tell you what one of those windows cost complete, shipped out from Norfolk. Luckily, Trend had not lost the patterns! The hirer thought he could get through a narrow bridge on the canal, before a 38 metre hotel barge coming the other way. Turns out he couldn't! The damage was done by the anchor on the bows of the barge and there was a lot of impact damage on the starboard side where the boat was forced into the side of the bridge.

Something else to consider is the inside of the boat and all the woodwork. I have seen several boats which have taken a side impact from commercial barges, and everything gets compressed inside. longitudinal partitions are shifted across, drawers won't open, doors won't close and the floor often ends up as a corrugated mess of splintered plywood. I have sometimes had to go into a boat with chocks of wood and a 3 ton bottlejack, to force bunks, or the galley, back under the deck. And then to cap it all, you get it repaired and next time it rains, the water pours in all of the windows!

Prices were always rounded up - never down!

I am afraid this is something that is largely mis-understood about Fibreglass. It is not strong at all! It depends for its rigidity and structure on the furniture inside the boat. If you have ever stepped into a freshly moulded GRP hull when just delivered, and floating in the water with nothing in it, it is more akin to a bouncy castle! I am afraid that the sort of damage done to those boats, by slamming sideways into a bridge pier at 7 MPH or more, can never be repaired perfectly. Especially where the curved shapes of the cabin tops are concerned. The only real way would be to remove the deck and cabin moulding altogether and put it back in a mould tool. In which case, you may as well make a new moulding! It is also unlikely that a decent gelcoat repair over the serious damage can be achieved, so the cabin top and deck would have to be sanded and painted. Which immediately de-values the boat. Good Fibreglass repairs can normally only be done by gaining access to the inside of the hull or deck and working from the inside. And we haven't even mentioned damage to the bulkheads or wooden interior, nor water damage to machinery, electrics and upholstery. I don't know how many sank but I should think all of them took on a lot of water. We can see that from the videos.

I wouldn't mind having the engine, hydraulic drive and stern gear out of one of those write-offs. That would certainly make a difference to my own boat!

You have to watch out for buoyage in France as well - it's the other way round! Unlike international rules, where a red buoy is left hand - in France it is right hand, as their buoyage goes downstream, not upstream. This is why the south bank of the Seine in Paris is known as the "Rive Gauche". The U.S. is the same : international law reverses as soon as you go inland up river.

Thank you folks, I hadn't heard about that. I don't suppose it should surprise me in the least and it doesn't change any comments I have made previously!

The water has not gone down yet, and towns in the Charente, Lot and Garonne are still badly flooded.

I don't think they will be much concerned about competition, in these present times! If you look on the brokerage page of their website you can take your pick of the fleet, both old and new. They have gone through a totally disastrous season in 2019 and I would think the last thing they would be considering is building new boats. Considering they are now owned by TUI I would think the odds are even, whether they will start next season or not. Companies that big, tend to make drastic decisions to cut their losses. I remember when Rank pulled out of boating in the early 80s. They were making big profits in Port Cassafieres but not on the Broads or Thames, so they sold off. In Le Boat's case though, I am not at all sure who would buy it. These are not good times, for overseas holidays! They were certainly fully insured in the days of Crown Blue Line but what Le Boat's fantastic management have decided, I don't know. If the newer boats were built using venture capital then the financiers would insist on insurance. It has also occurred to me that the bases were insured by a different company from the boats. So the boats' insurers would presumably be claiming against Le Boat, as it was their pontoon which broke adrift?

I rather doubt that. They closed down Crown Cruisers and Porter and Haylett, and Brooms don't build any more. They felt it was much cheaper to have them "put together" in Eastern Europe.

Or some hinges, to make the fridge door fit.

A piano reminds me of another sadly lost pub. The Jolly Butchers in Ber St., Norwich, with the landlady, "Black Anna" singing very risqué songs on an upright piano. It was one of "the" places to be, in the 60s.

Just thought you might like to see what the Lot looks like in better weather! These shots were taken in the upstream direction, on the other side of Cahors. The last two shots are approaching and passing the famous Pont Valentré, in Cahors.

Thanks for that - we have just been talking about it on the lost pubs thread. I have a lot of fond memories of the Buck. I literally grew up in it, from the age of 6 months onwards!

One point eight million Euros, if you look at the sort of prices they are asking secondhand on their brokerage site. Plus the cost of recovery of the wreckage, plus any damage that may have been done to sluices or bridges, when they hit them.

The planning statement in the article says : The proposed works within the pub seek to establish a viable, working community asset to help foster a local hub for informal social meetings between friends and family, as well as encourage new people to the area and site. Excuse me - what I have missed, here? Surely the above educated verbiage is just describing exactly what a PUB is supposed to be for?? If the present and previous owners had charged their tenants reasonable and viable rents, the pub would probably never have closed in the first place.

I remember in 2003 (I think it was) when the Rhone burst its banks and flooded the whole of the Petit Camargue, including our base at St Gilles. When the water went down again, just inside the breach in the flood wall, they found a single decker school bus, lying on its side in the middle of a field. It turned out that it had been swept out of the bus company's car park in central Lyon, about 400 km up river!

Something I forgot - I don't know what they do now, but the boats used to go out towing a dinghy with an outboard, so that they could get a message to the nearest town if they went off the channel somewhere and ran aground, as they often did. The Lot runs through mountainous gorges. Spectacular scenery, but no mobile phone signal!

It also demonstrates a lamentable lack of basic seamanship. The manager of that base in "my day" was the best seaman in the company, who came from a family of barge owners in north east France. I can truly say that Crown Blue Line only kept that base open because he was running it, and he gave every trial run personally. The Lot is a river which is right on the borderline of safety for hiring boats. I don't even know how they manage to hire so many boats there now, as there are only 23 km of navigable cruising and most of it is marked channel, where you can't even approach the bank because of the shallow, rocky bottom. Moorings are very few and mainly in towns. But they got rid of him, and myself and the rest of the "old school" because we knew much more than they did and we cost too much in salary. Much cheaper to promote some ex Sunsail yacht skipper or another, who looks good in uniform, chats up the customers but otherwise shuts up and does what he is told. Well, the wonderful new owners may think they know all about crunching numbers on a spread sheet : now they know about crunching boats as well. I bet that mess has certainly had an "impact on the bottom line"! The next thing now will be what to do when the water starts going down again. It rose to at least 6 M higher than usual, so any boats that eventually ran around somewhere (if there are any left) will be high and dry, a long way from the river and with no road access whatever. There are no tow paths on the Lot.

Yes that's the one. I have seen another clip of it on Youtube, taken from the top inside the sluice as it goes through. It hit the forward cabin top first, and took the whole of the rest of the cabin off from the windscreen back, as it went through.