Trip on a yacht starting 2008-06-02 in BSAJune08
Gordon’s delivery trip – Solent to Alicante.
Gordon Ogden briefly described some aspects of this trip, delivering a boat with the owner and a friend as crew, which took five weeks. After a good Channel crossing to Le Havre, the mast was taken down for the canal voyage, resulting in some damage to the spreaders. All went well to Paris where the river traffic was very busy. The problems started on the big canals down to the Rhone. The Navicarte guide was useless – alleged moorings and fuelling points didn’t exist, and they sometimes had to anchor for the night close to a lock after traffic stopped for the night. There were 176 locks, some 200 metres long by 12 metres wide, the biggest with a 26 metre drop. The current in the Rhone was 8-9 K towards the Mediterranean. At Port St Louis it took ten days to repair the spreader, with delay after delay at the boatyard, culminating with the workers going home for the day after telling Gordon he was next and to move into position to have the mast stepped. The weather then prevented them from entering the Med, with cold, misty, windy spells, thunderstorms, and reports of 4m waves out to sea. After finally setting out they sailed non-stop to their destination near Alicante.
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