20 years in the French canals and the Med
Richard Hare recalls two decades of adventure in France, Italy and Greece and explains why he’ll always want to keep his boat overseas
Fond memories of cruising in Europe
Maybe there’s something wrong with me – I’ve never felt a desire to cross the Atlantic, or anywhere beyond Europe for that matter. I have a boat that can do this – Keppel is a Maurice Griffiths-designed Golden Hind 31 – but my problem is, I can’t bring myself to do something that doesn’t tempt me. Life’s too short.
So, I evolved to be a contented coast-hopper. I’ve sailed and raced dinghies since I was seven and owned sailing cruisers for 30 years; but it’s all been about travelling, exploration.
It started in the 1960s with crossing the Thames estuary in Mirrors and Graduates with pals from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex to Yantlet Creek on the Kentish shore. There, we’d fry sausages and drink beer on its remote shingle beach. Somehow, under sail and paddle, we always managed to find our way home, negotiating the busy tidal Thames shipping lanes. I suspect our parents didn’t want to dwell on it too much.
My wife, Janie, now talks increasingly about us buying a caravan. I can’t see the point, yet. Isn’t it more fulfilling to be anchored in a peaceful cove in the Med, or up an East Anglian creek, listening to curlews? Or moored against a canal bank in deepest rural France, a barbecue sizzling alongside? Isn’t this better than being shoehorned into a campsite alongside a row of wheeled boxes with Sky TV dishes and other paraphernalia?
Since I was a teenager I’ve nursed a particular sun-drenched, sea-washed aspiration, its roots sunk in a love of boats and, later, through travels across Europe.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind – I wanted to take a yacht to Greece for a few years, maybe forever. I became a seasoned Grecophile, Janie too.
An outline plan was agreed. We’d fit out a boat for the job. We didn’t want anything longer than 33ft (LOD) but I was going to need headroom if I was to live aboard. The answer was a new part-built Golden Hind 31, one in which I could ask the builder to make the ply/epoxy cabin
suitably higher. The Golden Hind has a GRP hull and a wooden ‘top’. We’d then complete the build ourselves at Robertsons Boatyard, Woodbridge.
Getting started
One of Janie’s stipulations was that our new boat must not be fitted out as a crammed 6-berther but in a spacious 4-berth configuration with a ‘U’ shaped galley more commonly associated with a 34-35-footer. She was also adamant that we’d have opening windows throughout, a calorifier and a fridge. She was absolutely right on all counts.
It took 18-months working every morning and evening, and weekends; this made possible by us living just five minutes’ walk from the yard. I was fortunate insofar as I had a home office, a rare thing back in the 1990s.
Accompanied by my trusty floor convector (still on board, and working fine!), a couple of hanging light bulbs and a radio tuned to Radios 2 and 4, I loved every minute of the experience as we created a boat exactly as we wanted it.
In May 2000 Keppel was fitted out sufficiently and launched for a trial cruise across the North Sea to Holland. I then completed the job during the following winter, concentrating on the twiddly bits, a number of which benefited from the experience of that summer’s use.
But the journey – and the thrill of it – had commenced not on launch day, or even when we set off on our Grand Tour – but the moment we began working together on Keppel’s spec’ and configuration. The build rationale was sensible and low tech: ‘Keep everything robust and simple’.
Today, 20 years later, I’m so glad we did not divert from this fundamental rule. Keppel has been immensely reliable and trouble-free. Every hour of the 24-month build was a sheer delight. My long-held aspiration drew closer as Keppel blossomed from an empty hull and cabin, albeit with the all-important structural bulkheads fitted, to our floating second home. She was poised for adventure.
Fun in France
After two years in home waters plus short cruises to Holland and Normandy we set off, taking three three-month summers to reach Greece, and pretty much the same over the four-year return journey. Why rush, when there’s so much to see and enjoy en-route?
From her Suffolk base Keppel cruised down the French side of the channel, around Brittany to overwinter at Rochefort during her first winter away. Rochefort is an historic maritime town up the river Charente. The following year, after three weeks exploring the islands off La Rochelle, and in the wine basket of the Gironde estuary, Keppel made a four-week passage of the Canal de Deux Mers (Garonne and Midi canals) and she exited into the southern French Mediterranean at Agde.
And what a chastening day it turned
‘Never again would we think we knew better than a Meteo-France shipping forecast’
out to be. Keppel motored out between the moles of Grau d’Agde under engine in flat calm, cloud, no wind, just drizzle. She was bound for Sète, some 12 miles eastward.
In little over an hour Janie and I were wrestling with a Force 9, Keppel powering along in bullet-hard horizontal rain under bare poles. Never again would we think we knew better than a Meteo-France shipping forecast. After all, how could the weather go from a flat calm to a Force 9 in little more than an hour? It was an error we never repeated.
We never endured any more Med Force 9s during the following four years. What we had encountered on that late August day was the storm that broke the record-breaking heatwave of 2003. With temperatures routinely in the low 40s, the canals had been stifling.
Fortunately, none of this put us off. During winter 2003/4 Keppel overwintered on the hardstanding at Port Napoleon in the Camargue. The following summer she cruised to Greece over about eight weeks via Corsica, Elba and the Italian coast. Her landfall in Greece was an event that I shall never forget. It was the deeply satisfying realisation of the dream I had been nurturing during those long, dark winter hours during her fit out.
Greece at last
We departed Crotone in southern Italy for Nisis Othoni, an island north-west of Corfu.
Eighteen hours later, on the flat Ionian, a pyramidal shape took form in the haze, our Greek landfall. Like an image from a child’s book on Greek mythology the soft veil lifted as we approached. We slipped Keppel’s anchor into Greek seabed outside Omos Ammou for the first time in what evolved to be a three-year sojourn. Satisfied with ourselves we settled down to relax in the cockpit, it now being late afternoon.
It was exactly as we had imagined it. To the south-east we could make out the blue-haze hulk of north Corfu. Lapping crisply against Keppel’s hull were tiny Med wavelets. There was no swell. It was perfect. We had arrived!
It was, of course, all too good to be true.
A routine snorkel to check Keppel’s ground tackle revealed the anchor chain to be snagged between two rocks. We had half suspected this, her motion was abnormally jerky.
The answer was to dive down to beyond the snag and attach a length of line just beyond it. With the other end secured to a cleat on the fore deck we put the engine gently into reverse. It worked. Anchor rode sorted, and subsequently relocated into better ground, we returned to our wine and nibbles and toasted our arrival. From embryonic idea to this stage of our journey had taken 10 years, and it was worth every second, and every penny.
The following morning we awoke to the sound of cicadas. It was a classic, still, warm, Ionian morning. After a light breakfast we weighed anchor and chugged across towards Corfu. Our landfall – our true landfall, feet on soil – was at Kassiopi, a pleasant harbour town made famous by Gerald Durrell in My Family and other Animals. It’s still a pretty fine place to jump ashore for the first time. I can still remember the taverna that evening and my incredulity of my good fortune.
‘Her landfall in Greece was an event that I shall never forget. It was the deeply satisfying realisation of the dream’
Keppel had arrived in Greece in late summer 2005 and she departed during summer 2007. During that time she was based for two winters at Cleopatra Marina in Preveza. She spent two summers cruising the Ionian and the southern Peloponnese. During 2006 she made a circumnavigation of the Peloponnese, cruising up the Aegean coast and returning to the Ionian via the Corinth canal. It was a wonderful journey, packed with many vivid, experiences, now warm memories.
But as she rounded the Maleas peninsular, the south-easternmost point of mainland Europe, it dawned on me that it was only a few years previously that she had navigated around Brittany, mainland Europe’s most north-western point.
Exploration beckons
Much as I love Greece I began to yearn to explore in more detail France’s Atlantic coast, and particularly the islands off La Rochelle. I missed tides, and the navigational challenge they present. Also, as many will know, Greek sailing, with its flat calms and strong winds, isn’t always the best sailing ground, beautiful though the landscape and culture is. I also harboured warm memories of my own East Anglian sailing ground. Mmmmm. More on this later.
And so, with heavy heart and gnawing misgivings I hauled Keppel’s anchor out of Greek seabed for the last time at none other than Nisis Othoni, the very same island of our arrival three years previously. We set course for Otranto on Italy’s Puglian shore across the Adriatic. The passage up Italy retraced roughly the route we had taken previously but since it was a great deal slower we took in many more destinations. This time it included a cruise up Sicily’s eastern coastline. A particularly memorable and – to my mind – a ‘must see’ destination was Tropea in Calabria.
That autumn Keppel overwintered once again At Port Napoleon in the Camargue.
Overland to the Atlantic
With Keppel’s mast lowered at the Navy Service boatyard on the Port Saint Louis ship canal we opted to navigate up the Rhone to Arles and then enter the Canal de Rhône á Sète. This links the Rhône to the Canal du Midi via a series of etangs, seawater lakes. She then climbed the Midi up to Toulouse; thereon down the Canal Lateral a la Garonne, past Bordeaux to overwinter in a charming old Gironde harbour, Mortagne-sur-Gironde. Mortagne is a little bit like Suffolk – the water is green and the shore is protected by saltmarsh. Hollyhocks abound in the dry, sun-baked stony soil.
There’s a hardstanding at Mortange, and behind the ancient lock gates a yacht could remain afloat in the harbour at all states of the tide. Locals grazed sheep on the saltings, there were pleasant restaurants beside the harbour and all essential shops at our disposal so we based Keppel here for two winters.
During the intervening year we took Keppel back up the Garonne canal to explore the freshly restored and now reopened Canal de Montech which leads in two days down to the ancient city of Montauban. Also during this year we explored all the harbours and creeks of the Gironde estuary, fringed by lovely wine towns such as Bourg, Blaye and Pauillac. Vitrazay, meanwhile, reminded us of our own nearby Minsmere wildlife sanctuary.
During that particular summer we had our cat with us, Polly. That was an experience! Much as we loved her – and she was very well behaved – it was a worry. She had a couple of ‘overboard mishaps’. An inquisitive healthy cat, she did like to go walkabout… It didn’t
help. For those with back issues of PBO the experience with dear old Polly is reported in the September 2010 issue.
During 2010 we could allow no more than a month aboard – a health problem at the time. These things have to be expected so we spent the late summer doing relaxed cruising out of the Gironde estuary, around the Atlantic islands and mainland destinations. It included a ‘mast-up’ canal near La Rochelle. Once again Keppel overwintered at Rochefort, on the Charente.
The following year she returned home, taking in many destinations around Brittany, Normandy and henceforth home to Suffolk. With mixed feelings we approached Robertsons Boatyard, Keppel’s ‘birth’ place but, worry ye not – all reservations were dispelled when we found a small party of Keppel crew members awaiting our arrival alongside the quay. With Champagne and tasty nibbles to welcome us home it was wonderful to rejoin our little vessel with a group of friends with whom we’d shared so much over the nine years since we’d left that exact same quay.
Hitting buffers
Having enjoyed a nomadic European existence every summer, returning home was a mistake. My memories of home had been packed with sun-drenched days, Keppel barrelling along on a broad reach with a Force 4 breeze. Yeah, right. It was a mistake. I wasn’t ready to stop!
Selective memory is definitely something to guard against. I’d had too much of a good time on the mainland and, in those days, movement was free and unencumbered by bureaucracy and deadlines. Not any more.
No sooner had Keppel’s keels hit the winter hardstanding in Suffolk I was planning my return to France. Our health-scare had made it sensible not to roam further than the French Med coast, Corsica, and Sardinia perhaps. My problem was to persuade Janie. This wasn’t made any easier by the fact that she has so many ‘other things’ she likes to do.
But she did agree to Keppel going back to the Med, so long as this time it was via an inland waterway route. I had no problem with this, it’s what I fancied too. She also made it implicit that she would not be spending more than about a month a year aboard. Fair enough – she’d contributed so much already.
So Keppel went into Robertsons’ shed where she had her side decks reTreadmastered, and a few other jobs attended to. Meanwhile, engineer Peter Norris removed the Nanni 29 and took it back to his workshop where it was given a tip-to-toe service. During this I was able to clean out and repaint the engine compartment. Larkmans Boatyard took care of re-rigging and I did a lot of woodfinishing, both inside and out. All told, she was out of the water for 18 months while Janie and I did ‘other things’. It wasn’t all bad.
Off to the Med again
Looking and feeling like a new boat, Keppel departed Woodbridge on another slow journey to the Med. Again, why rush? So, I spent three weeks revisiting my East Coast home waters with friends and topped it off with a week in St Katherine’s in London where Janie came aboard. Keppel set off again for France in earnest in the middle of July 2013, via Ramsgate and Boulogne, where we celebrated with our crew, Janet, with an excellent meal at a favourite restaurant in the old town. Shortly afterwards Keppel entered the Somme canal to begin a cruise to her planned overwintering destination in Burgundy, St Jean-de-Losne on the Saône. Not far from the Jura, it was an enjoyable and pleasant place to overwinter her, this time in the water.
As with illness, there are other things that complicate matters. My mother was suffering from advanced dementia. Meanwhile, our son had produced a beautiful granddaughter. Collectively, these factors drew us back home the following year. With mixed feelings, we abandoned our Med plans.
That following summer was far from wasted though. Whereas our route south east to Burgundy had been via the Seine, the Yonne and the Canal de Bourgogne (Burgundy canal), our return was different as we proceeded north via the Latéral à la Loire, the Centre, and the Briar. Whereas we had entered the inland waterway system in 2013 at St Valery-sur-Somme, we exited it in 2014 down the Seine to Le Havre, visiting Monet’s garden en-route. By the end of August Keppel was back in Woodbridge. The question was – would I now be able to settle?
Home waters once more
The problem with being back in home waters is that – even with my boat moored nearby – she was used a lot less than if I’d kept her abroad and spent three continuous months on board. On the Deben, Keppel shifted from one mooring to another, mainly gathering fouling. She finally settled in the Tidemill Yacht Harbour,
‘I missed tides, and the navigational challenge they present’
a base with significantly less fouling and one that’s very close to our home.
I had some interesting cruises with friends but the defining moment hit during one very wet, cold and windy night in Butley Creek. Courtesy of a strong northerly crosswind, and the creek being narrow, I had to crawl out of my bunk on the hour, every hour, to shorten the anchor chain if I was to avoid being beached the following morning, and hence miss the tide out of the Ore. Cold and wet, and thoroughly fed up and muddy I asked myself: ‘Why? Why am I putting myself through it?
As I climbed back into my sleeping bag the Cote d’Azur and Provence beckoned. Mum had passed away. Little Sophie was up and running. She had even been aboard Keppel a few times. I now felt freer even though Janie felt less so. Perhaps Nannas tend to be more affected by new arrivals than Granddads.
Côte d’Azur
With friends I took Keppel back into the Somme but this time she hung a left at Compiegne and shot off down the Marne route into the Saône. Various friends had helped me along the way. Here, at Auxonne, Janie rejoined us and we had a wonderful four-week cruise down the Saône and the Rhone where we parked Keppel up for the winter, yet again in the Camargue, but this time at the Navy Service yard. The cherry on the cake was our 40th wedding anniversary based in Marseille old port. Our family joined us for an unforgettable three-day celebration. The hotel had a pool, too, which made me popular with my granddaughter who was in and out of it at every opportunity, enjoying the late summer Med sunshine.
Summer of 2019 was amazing. Given the time to explore it properly for the first time, I found the landscape, coves and harbour towns of Provence and the Côte ‘d Azur to be a lot better than I had imagined. I thought they’d be like much of the Riviera, a crowded and overdeveloped and expensive stretch of coast.
Most of this summer I was enjoying Keppel with friends but Janie was aboard for a fortnight. We did return together for three glorious weeks in September when we sailed her westward to Grau de Roi where we placed Keppel in the custodianship of the small family-run boatyard owned by Philippe Sirvent.
Aside from three enjoyable weeks’ sailing – nearly all of it reaching in offshore breezes across flat sea – the overwinter protection at Chantier Sirvent afforded by the ancient Crusader ramparts was fortuitous. Located 4km inland, and up a canal, Aigues Mortes is considerably better sheltered than an exposed Camargue boatpark.
Then COVID struck. Keppel remains on the hardstanding, unvisited by us for two winters now. In that part of France the Mistral strikes with a vengeance. It isn’t called the Golfe de Lion for nothing.
Who knows what will happen next? COVID permitting, Keppel is scheduled to make another passage through to the Atlantic this summer. The temptation to keep her in France is compelling; but none of us are getting any younger. And I have to anticipate all sorts of bureaucratic baggage and heavy costs if I bring her back to the UK.
So, mindful of that, if there’s one bit of advice I will offer, it’s this – GO WHEN YOU CAN! Life’s too short to procrastinate. And there will be obstacles enough, beyond procrastination.