Zhik Spirit of Adventure: ‘We sailed our yacht through France to volunteer at the Olympics’

An offer of work at the 2024 Olympics was the trigger for Kate and Bill Morris to take their 10-metre Moody on a dream adventure

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Autumn 2021 and we’d only just recently bought Heureuse – a sound and comfortable Moody 346, in need of a little love and a few mod cons. She was safely tucked up in our new home port of Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight. It was then a friend from the Dutch Barge community nudged us with advice that central Paris has only one major marina – the Arsenal.

With the Paris Games set for summer 2024, he urged us to stake a claim on a berth right away. He was correct, and so began almost three years of planning, negotiations, renovations and holding our breath. Could we really cruise up the Seine, past the Eiffel Towel and the Louvre at Games time before heading south through French canals and rivers to the sunny climes of the Med?

At times the barriers seemed unsurmountable. Would our fixed keel, drawing 1.5m, navigate the silting canals? Would escalating security and water hygiene rules block our path into Paris – let alone remain there for the Games? Could our old boat stay the course and how would we find time and crew to make the journey?

The route

Planning begins

A 30-month email relationship with Sacha, the ever-patient Capitaine at the Arsenal Basin, helped us navigate the miasma of French regulations. We were already set to upgrade to a holding tank, but a complete ban on all grey as well as black water leaving the hull was a googly thrown in late and potentially an expensive one (albeit to help river cleaning for the Games).

Good friends at the Yar Boat Yard in Yarmouth suggested we seal all the taps and seacocks whilst in Paris – and many emails later, it worked. Then it turned out that as the Olympic Opening Ceremony would happen a firework’s throw from the marina, Sacha couldn’t even be sure if it would open at all! Thankfully a security compromise was found and, as long as we could arrive 10 days ahead of the Games, the Paris berth was ours.

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Access secured, there was also the task of turning Heureuse into a river-boat, capable (after a Channel crossing) of 1,400 kilometres on engine alone, and then transforming her again into a Med-sailor. A new fuel tank made sense whilst adding the holding tank.

Fresh electrics, solar panels and an inverter gave us more energy and resilience with long stretches of river and canal without mains power (and crucially, enabled a mains coffee machine to keep crew happy with their morning croissants). Leaky windows were diagnosed as terminal and replacements ordered. Fans, bimini and davits were added ready for future summer cruising.

Olympic flag etiquette at the Arsenal, Paris during the 2024 Olympics

But the biggest call – with the deepest intake of financial breath – was the engine. The creaky original Thorneycroft would have to work long and hard every single day: the prospect of major repairs (or, worse, replacement) well away from home, was scary. So it was that a shiny, fire-engine red Beta 35 was ordered. Lead and fitting times ran tight, and the team at Yar Boat Yard and Wight Marine burned the midnight oil to get Heureuse ready in the nick of time.

Many iterations of passage plans were drafted over the preceding winter, before settling on a total of eight weeks on the water – a couple to Paris against the flow of the Seine, and six south on canals and rivers to the Med (with a five-week break for Olympic work in Paris). The idea was to keep moving, but allow time for exploring and holidaying, resulting in a target of four to six hours cruising, five or six days per week. The most patient and indulgent friends and family joined and left, week by week – fresh energy, extra skills and good company to help us through.

Pilot books suggested a couple of routes allowing boats up to 1.8m draft, to creep down to Marseille, and we settled on the most direct, largely south from Paris. However, the most valuable of chats with Andy Soper of the Dutch Barge Association, revealed some intended canals were now silted and not up to the job. He advised a decent tack east, up the River Marne before turning south in the Champagne region. A little longer, it was an inspired pivot. The Marne is green, tranquil and picturesque. Who can complain of a few days in the Champagne region at harvest time?

Kate and Bill made a habit of tasting the local delicacies

So it was, on a shimmering dawn at the end of June, with draft plan number 13 in hand, we said a wistful ‘au revoir’ to the Needles for the most peaceful of Channel crossings and a 1,000-mile adventure ahead of us. There was also the small matter of an Olympic Games to fit in en route.

A couple of evenings later, dusk found us in the tidal Seine at the small port of Tancarville. The boatyard – our intended base to de-mast and re-clothe Heureuse for river work – looked rustic and utterly deserted. We slept fitfully, wondering if we had chosen disastrously.

Next morning, however, at a respectable hour, Pierre, Pascal and Emilye arrived on scene, expert, enthusiastic and flexible, to take on the task. Every yachtie on such a trip faces a big decision at this point. The mast had to come down before Rouen.

Over 200 locks to navigate, scary at first but a rhythm was soon found

Locked and loaded

There was the cheaper option of keeping it on deck, but we opted to pay for lorry transit to Port Napoleon, west of Marseille, not just for convenience, but to avoid damage in tight canal manoeuvres and to give us the full deck area to manage mooring lines. Some boatyards on the Seine provide a crane and the rest is down to you. Knowing our limits, we let the willing team at Tancarville take the strain.

From there south, it’s a story of locks – well over 200 of them. Other correspondents have penned volumes on white-knuckle experiences for yachties encountering these strange devices, especially when snuggled up to an 110m industrial barge: some, so traumatised by their first experience, scuttle back north, never to experience authentic crepes and pastis.

For sure, we ‘enjoyed’ our share of lock adventures – but the saving grace was fenders, fenders and more fenders (and then some burly planks of wood). A triple cocoon was built around Heureuse – first, American curtain fenders along both sides, followed by regular fenders on top, with barge boards to take the biggest knocks, and pairs of huge balloon fenders at bow and stern.

The route took in rural French towns

One step ahead

Bill Dixon might sniff at their impact on the sleek lines he drew for 1980s Moodys, but our equivalent of air-bags gave us the confidence to face any lock the VNF (Voies Navigables de France, the French Inland Waterways Agency) could throw at us. Fold-away bikes were another godsend. On days with multiple locks (16 was our daily record), Kate would pedal ahead ready to trigger the lock with a giant TV zapper and take our lines. There are locks and then there are the vast, awe-inspiring industrial locks of the Rhone…our tiny vessel, all alone, plunged 25 metres down into a dark concrete cavern, with ingenious floating bollards to anchor alongside.

The nearest we came to a grinding halt was on the long, shallow canal between Champagne and Burgoyne – little used and (at least in late summer) infested with weed. Every evening our filters were packed with greenery: a minor miracle that the new engine and prop kept turning.

Overnight stops were unpredictable – mostly picturesque and quiet, but not always. Who could forget swimming off the transom in the gentle River Marne, north of Epernay, in sight of Dom Perignon’s tomb? But we would rather forget the ‘highly recommended’ Halt Nautique near Paris that turned out to be a grassy bank under a motorway bridge also hosting goats and under-age drinkers…

Viviers on the Rhône – a tranquil spot to wait for the next crew change

Even on the solitary stretches, one of the joys of such an adventure is the company you keep. We first met Claude, Rosemary and their irreverent terrier, Nemo, just south of Paris and tracked them pretty much all the way down to Avignon. Claude, a retired merchant mariner from near the Côte d’Azur, had hundreds of thousands of miles under his keel, including many a trip up and down France’s inland waterways in his lifting centreboard, Beneteau 31.

Claude’s ability with English was only marginally better than our stuttering French, but with plenty of gallic gesticulation and reference to the pilot books, we swapped tips on lock handling, the best places to moor and, of course, advice on French cuisine.

Eight weeks of slow motion cruising down France provides the most remarkable insight into the nation. From towns that post-industrialisation has forgotten to sparkling medieval hill-top villages. Flourishing cities, well off the hen and stag weekend circuit, punctuate long throws of elegant, vineyard valleys.

Some of our crews claimed we’d designed nothing but an eight-week wine tasting – but that’s just France…and all the better for it. Albeit without vineyards, the Seine leg from Le Havre to Paris was a revelation. Rouen is, by turns, industrial and grey, but also elegant and historic.

Limestone cliffs flank the river valley throughout much of Normandy with picturesque villages and grand chateaux, whilst the obligatory stop for Monet’s Garden at Giverny may be a tourist magnet, but doesn’t disappoint – an appropriate hors d’oeuvre, before the main course in the French capital.

Vineyards along the way

And the star of the show – an Olympic Festival show – Paris, was magnificent. There could be no better city on earth during the Games – and on a boat in the heart of the action, it was exhilarating. The Opening Ceremony night was simply unforgettable, if rather damp.

The action started so close to the Arsenal that our decks saw colourful pyrotechnic fallout. However, despite ungenerous rain-gods, it was an extraordinary show and a space was found to watch right on the banks of the Seine. Bill’s mind gyrated with thoughts of 2012 (where he was director of ceremonies for the London Organising Committee).

James Bond and HMQ under parachutes felt ambitious enough at the time, but the Paris team elected to share their Ceremony across the whole of the city centre, with the river as the central spine – and what could be better for the boating community? With hotels at a premium and the Games venues distributed around the city, a water-borne base was both cost effective and convenient.

Strolling west from the Arsenal one evening along the Seine’s right bank felt like urban heaven: sports venues buzzing in iconic locations like the Grand Palais and the Eiffel Tower, the Olympic flame flickering high above the Tuileries Garden in its remarkable Montgolfier-style balloon, riverside bars and cafes flourishing with gallic fare and spontaneous swing dance on the Paris Plage.

Opening Ceremony at Paris 2024

And, yes, cruising up the Seine on our own boat, past its iconic landmarks just days before the Games, was little short of the dream coming true…‘très heureuse’.

PS. For anyone with the bug for Olympic blue water passage planning, the next Games are in Los Angeles (2028).

Essential advice

The Eiffel Tower during the Olympics

French Inland Waterways top tips

  • You can’t have too many fenders
  • Take extra fuel cans and a trolley to be ready for walks to roadside fuel stations (not many quayside fuel pumps)
  • The Edition Breil pilot books are a must
  • Don’t rely on all the published facilities – some of the ‘halte nautiques’ turned out to be defunct or abandoned
  • Fold-away bikes, a set of long, lightweight throwable warps and a boathook facilitate lock work
  • Take spare lines for attaching barge boards – they take the greatest hammering in locks
  • Make friends with the lock-keepers via phone and radio (they will be your saviours)
  • A feathering prop and rope cutter seemed to help in the worst of the weed
  • Long-term planning helps, allied to just going with the (occasionally daunting) flow
  • Don’t see it as a delivery trip – build in time to soak up the country
  • Quoted depths are rough estimates and impacted by climate change
  • The obligatory CEVNI test to access French inland waterways can be taken cheaply online, whilst the RYA Inland Waterways Helm course is great for helping yachties transition to fresh water work
  • Did we mention a few more fenders…?

This article is a part of our Zhik Spirit of Adventure Awards. 

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