Dry Dock

May, 10th 2009 (Tony).

What a fascinating place to spend a week — in a boat yard. As a boat owner it is obligatory to be a jack of all trades — mechanic, carpenter, plumber, electrician, painter etc. I am fortunate to have spent many years looking over the shoulders of some highly skilled craftsmen and I am thankful that along the way I made mental notes of how to effect many "tricks of the trade". Now I am in an intriguing new domain, foreign to me, observing boilermakers, welders and fitters busily, well casually more like — this is France after all — going about their work. There are four boats in the dry dock. One is having a complete overhaul and on another a new steel skin fitted over its original hundred-year-old iron plates. Originally they would have been 6mm or 8mm. To pass survey, underwater steel must be more than 3mm thick. (Sable's bottom plate is 12mm steel). She had already been in the dock for two weeks and the job is about half-done so when the dock was flooded to allow another boat to exit and Sable and another to come in the holes in the old rusted hull became obvious as she took in more water than her bilge pump could cope with. Her frantic owner was rushing about trying to borrow bilge pumps to keep the floor above water while we could only look on, helpless aboard our own boat, and note the rising level on the new steel sides. The new pieces have been precisely cut and rolled to fit the shape of the old hull and tack-welded in place. But boats in-and-out drives the commercial reality of a dry dock. This was the third changeover for her — but the most enduring. The final welding started a couple of days later. A big job. And very impressive to watch. When completed she will have a new 5mm steel skin containing the old hull.

However, what exacerbated the problem and made everything a compelling drama was the coaxing required to the tugboat that followed behind Sable. Her draft, being deeper than the dock at its sill, meant she would need some extra encouragement to enter the dock beyond the gate. A large crane was on standby but could not alone bear the load. No worries, the owner of the yard fetches up a 38m commercial barge, fastens the stern securely to a couple of bollards, rudder virtually against the dock gate, drops it into gear and revs her up and presto! The huge propeller churned hundreds of cubic metres of water over the top and before long the dock was 300mm above the canal level. It still took more than an hour to nudge the tug the final six metres and for a diver to position the supports under her. Lord knows what a calamity would have ensued if those stern ropes on the barge had broken for her bow reached almost right across the basin and was only a few metres from boats moored on the other side. How they will get the tug out again I have no idea. Watch this space...

Next morning we were roused from our bed at 6:45 am by the humungus roar of a water blaster tearing into the hull of the tug. By 8:30 the tug was done and they started on Sable. This is a serious water blaster! I have no doubt it would cut your boot off if it was carelessly misdirected. By 11:30 Sable's bottom was scrubbed clean, and understandably looking a bit raw. By mid-afternoon she was dry enough for an apprentice to gingerly apply a bit of paint. Presumably he was newly indentured as he was only entrusted with a miniscule roller. We had always imagined that above the water-line would be our responsibilty but when I enquired of the boss if he would sell me the paint he graciously explained that they would do the lot. We were not only relieved but delighted that we could contribute to France's futile effort to contain unemployment. And when I later saw the lad on his back, on a trolley, painting Sable's flat underbelly, with barely half a metre clearance, I was moved to appreciate his enthusiasm to have a job. Nonetheless, by 5pm the next day he had completed the first coat.

We arrived in St Jean de Losne a weAek early and spent several carefree days moored to the town quay, on the River Saône. The shipyard sent around a tradesman to look at our boiler (the mechanic at Montchanin to whom we were recommended showed up the first day we were there, as promised, but then never got back to me) and found a valve had simply seized. A small adjustment with a spanner and a squirt of grease soon fixed the problem. Once that was done we slipped out of this town which has virtually no appeal whatsoever and cruised up the river to spend a couple of days at Auxonne, where Napoleon went to military college which still looks exactly the same as it did then, a town that does have some character and charm. The Saône is a wide, mighty river, and it is not uncommon to come across commercial barges up to 110m long plying cargoes from the Mediterranean as far up as St Jean de Losne. Further upstream the locks revert to the old standard 40m in length. The scenery was gorgeous and the weather perfect. As soon as we get out of dry dock we intend to head up the river to Gray where we will begin our summer 2009 cruising adventure into Alsace-Lorraine. Our only date-link is to be somewhere near Colmar or Besacon when the Tour de France passes through about 17-18 July.

The last two Fridays have been public holidays: May Day; and the 8th marks the anniversary of the signing of the armistice. Work on Sable is completed and she does look better for it and hopefully should not need to dock again for four years. So here we sit, confined, on a boat that doesn't rock. But we do! We have no choice but to remain in dock until at least Monday when hopefully the next boat will be due to come in. Not that we're in any hurry but the environs of a boatyard are more akin to a railway marshalling siding than a beautiful canal. It took us half a day to scrub the grime from the top of the boat — gunk blasted off our own hull plus the dust from grinders, welding slag and miscellaneous detritus that accumulates around such sites. Yesterday we had to empty the grey water tank by bucket brigade. I hope the black water tank can contain itself until we leave! Showers are now rationed until we can replenish the water supply. All going well, we should be out of here tomorrow.