Boating in France
There are over 6000 km of waterways in France, most inter-linked, but the Brittany and Loire Waterways require either a sea passage or overland transfer. To the north are the canals of Belgium, Holland and Germany. It is possible to cruise via the Maine-Danube link to the Black Sea.
Most of the French canals are operated by the VNF (Voies Navigable de France). Nowadays the large barge traffic transporting freight is mainly on the large rivers, though on all canals you can expect some peniches on the canals. These commercial boats have priority over pleasure boats at locks. If you pass a peniche, you may well be held back at the next lock to allow the peniche priority! On rivers, commercial boats will usually enter first and smaller boats follow and fill the spaces. This can be testing if you wish to travel faster than the commercial boat, but you pass at your own risk. Several cases of ramming have occurred when the barge takes its priority from a small boat already in a lock! But don’t get concerned. This behaviour is a rarity, and we have found that the barges will assist passing when it is not to their disadvantage. Just exercise patience.
Permits de Conduire, Driving Licences.
Generally to drive a boat in France your require an appropriate European waterways permit. The French Permit de Conduire has three categories. Category C (Coches de Plaisance) is for pleasure boats travelling less than 20 kph and less than 15 metres long. If you have a Boatmaster, Yachtmaster or similar you will be excused the practical test, but will need to sit a 30 question multichoice test in French.. You are allowed 5 wrong. I am told to office in La Havre offers English as an option. I was allowed to take an English /French dictionary into the test. The cost was about FF650 (£65) so only one of us sat! Also we had to book 8 days in advance, which is why we missed our first opportunity.
Need you sit it? Well we are the only boaties we know who has been stopped an asked for it, but we were stopped! Only 30 minutes into our first years journey! The gendarme, VNF representative, the maritime representative and the boat pilot all escorted us back to our port and we were advised we would be arrested if the boat left port before we deposited a photocopy of a Permit de Conduire at the local Gendarmerie. It took five weeks, two rental vehicle hires and a lot of frustration before we started! (See our 1999 Journal.)
I do believe that a non French boat in transit from the Med to the Channel may be able to rely on their international licence, but I am not an expert!
If you have an RYA Inland Waterways Certificate is also satisfactory as is any other European equivalent. English speakers with a UK address may consider this the easies and cheapest solution to the problem.
Since writing this, a friend has advised that "a nice chap called Mike from France Afloat" at [email protected] will come to his boat to test first his practical skills and then the theory. He also said "I found a site on the web that has three samples of the CEVNI test. One can test and the answers are given." The site is sailtrain.co.uk. He also says that a practical test is required, but my own experience was that the French Authorities accepted our NZ Boatmaster as an exemption for the practical and only required the written multichoice test.
On the European waterways you should understand Blue-flagging. A boat going upstream will find it easier to keep on the inside of the bends. If this necessitates starboard to starboard meeting and passing, this is allowed if a blue flag (or board) is waved on the starboard side of the cabin. Watch out for it! But I did wish the Brits had it when we were going up the Thames!
If you have to sit the exam use The RYA Book of Euroregs for Inland Waters to study and Vagnon, the publishers of Guide Vagnons publish a book in French with 300 multichoice questions. Know these and you can’t go wrong!
The Vignette
What great value. For only €310 you get the use for a year of all the canals and locks in France with only a couple of small exceptions. This includes lock-keepers at manual locks and an ever increasing number of automatic/electric, self operated locks. The canals are dredged and paved towpaths maintained.
Check the VNF web site www.vnf.fr/accueil/ for current rates. The price is based on area, length by breadth and for our boat (11.6x3.6 m) it the cost is €334 less 10% for payment before 31 March. We email VNF at [email protected] who speaks English and returns an email with details. We pay by bank draft but Europeans can use Eurocheque. They won’t take VISA. The vignette arrives by registered post a week later.
Alternatively you can pay by day (€24), 16 day Holiday (€49) or 30 day (not necessarily consecutive) for €134. For the last one, you don’t count the days you stay moored, or the ones you forget to mark on your card!
You don’t need to buy your vignette before arrival. The first lockkeeper will advise you where to buy them and you proceed through the canals until you arrive. A list of the offices for paying will be sent to you by Veronique, or look on the web-site.
Insurance is compulsory. We use the same company as the company we bought the boat from, and it costs about €360 per annum.
Mooring
Most towns have either a port with facilities including showers, water and electricity and which will charge between €4 and €16, or a halte nautique which will be free and probably will offer water and rubbish disposal and may offer free electricity. If you wish to economise and have battery facilities, you can almost always find a free mooring. Paris is usually considered the exception with a mooring in Paris Arsenal costing about €35, which is still a bargain compared with a Parisian hotel.
Over winter mooring ranges from about €500 to €2500 for our boat. It tends to be cheaper in the south. However you should book ahead. We didn’t in 2001 and had to call a number of ports to find a space. Now, we usually book and pay a deposit for next winter during the previous winter! To date, our boat has not been damaged or broken into. We use a small solar charger to maintain our batteries over the 8 months we are absent from Erewhon.
More information on mooring can be found at PORT INFORMATION 2002.
Buying a boat
Most seeking boats for the European choose one of the following types of boat:
GRP ex Hire Boats are sold directly by the hire boat company after 15 – 20 years as newer styles replace them, or by dealers around France. Private sales are also common via such Magazines as Fluvial. We purchased ours from Crown Blue Line from a southern France base, and information of their available boats can be found on their web-site. Some English speaking dealers in France include:
Joe Parfitt at Chantier Fluvial de Migennes Ph 03 36 92 93 13
Roger Walster at Bourgogne Marine Ph 03 80 39 25 63
http://www.bourgogne-marine.com especially for peniches.
H2O in St Jean de Losne. Probably the largest boat reseller in France.
Ph 03 80 39 23 00 Web-page: www.h2ofrance.com; email [email protected]
Buying fuel
Diesel in France is taxed at the same rate as motorists fuel. Untaxed red diesel is for heating or commercial boats only. Red diesel can be purchased and used in Belgium (about €0.40 compared with €0.65 at French supermarkets and €0.90 at French ports) and it is legal to use up a tankful of this fuel in France and Holland! The authorities can distinguish Belgian red fuel from French heating oil!
Most canal users buy fuel at fuelling depots, many of which are associated with private ports and hire boat companies. There are bunkering boats moored at Lyon, St Jean de Losne and St Mammes. Some make arrangements for delivery by road tanker which can be worthwhile for larger deliveries.
A few like us use supermarkets where the price is much cheaper. We carry three or four 20 litre oil drums and after filling at the pump, use either a supermarket trolley or our special bicycle trailer to transport it to the boat, 80 litres a trip. We get to know where the convenient supermarkets are and most of them are noted on our web site Port Information.
Shopping for food is fun though it take a while to learn the new names. We cycle to a supermarket about twice a week. Prices are little higher than NZ and about half UK. We eat very little beef and lamb in France, replacing them with chicken, turkey roasts and slices, pork and Saussice de Toulouse. Since wine is looked on as a food it is duty free and very cheap. We get much pleasure from shopping for wine at Bulk suppliers called caveaux. We fill a 5-litre cubie, often blending two varieties.