Entry to the River Seine (Honfleur)  Covers the period September 30 to Ocober. 2, 2000 (Note: The logs covering Ireland, Isle of Man, Isles of Scilly, and the Channel Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, Sark and Alderney have not been completeed. We will post them as soon as they are received - Ed.) We left Braye Bay in Alderney at 1730 the last day of September for Le Havre, 100 miles away. This departure time was chosen to take advantage of the tidal currents sweeping past Alderney and around the Cherbourg Peninsula. Braye Bay is on the north coast of Alderney, and is exposed to a reasonable east/west tidal stream in the Swinge, in contrast to the 7 mile wide southern stretch between Alderney and France called the Alderney Race, which can have tidal streams of up to 10 knots. Incidentally, there was a major chemical spill in October, a few weeks after we transited the Swinge, when a chemical barge broke up in a storm on the Casquets, a group of shoals northwest of the Swinge, 11 miles from Alderney. However, we had light southerly breezes, and had to motor and motor sail the entire way to the Seine, being helped with currents of up to 5 knots in our favour while crossing the Cherbourg Peninsula, and lesser currents against us as we entered the Seine estuary towards Le Havre. It was a pleasant overnight trip, but we had to keep a close watch on the fishing boats in the bay, for their courses were not constant as they trawled back and forth. Just before sunrise we spotted several lights in the distance on our track line, and couldn’t figure their courses to avoid them. As dawn came up and we were closer to Le Havre, we realized these lights were on a half dozen ships at anchor waiting for the flood tide to take them into the Seine. We passed these ghostly galleons in the stillness of a fairly clear dawn, the shoreline still about 10 miles away.  The estuary of any major river system is a complicated delta of sand bars, islands, and often several narrow channels penetrating the entrance. There are two major channels in this east/west oriented delta. One on the north side goes to the industrial port of Le Havre and a complex of commercial docks and locks leading to the Tancarville Canal which enters the Seine above Honfleur. The other, on the south side, is a winding buoyed channel, meandering through the sand bars, past Honfleur and directly into the Seine. We elected to go the southern channel to Honfleur. Although the dawn was bright, we saw mist over LeHavre; but the approaches to the southern channel were clear as we passed the reporting MoA Buoy. The channel was about 2 cables (400 yards) wide, and small craft, including yachts and fishing boats, were to stay outside the buoyed channel (but not by too much or we would be in the unmarked sand-shifted shallows). To complicate things (Murphy’s or Sod’s Laws) three difficulties developed as we came up to Honfleur. We entered at the end of the ebb tide at slack water, carefully staying outside the buoyed channel, only to encounter a fleet of yachts exiting for a regatta over near Le Havre, the passage further restricted by a dozen or so fishing boats heading out as well, all of course on the same (north) side of the buoyed channel. At the same time, the ships that we passed earlier had weighed anchor and were proceeding in line up river in the buoyed channel. Then, the mist we saw over Le Havre thickened into a serious fog bank that moved south, and blanketed the channel so that we could not see from one buoy to the next. Lots of fun! Keep in mind, we do not have radar. We were past the yachts and fishing boats, but the fog was so thick we couldn’t see from one ship coming up the channel to the next. In order to get into Honfleur, we had to find the entrance to the lock going into the town, which was on the opposite (south) side of the channel. That meant identifying the entrance and crossing the channel astern of one ship, and hoping for sufficient room before the next ship loomed out of the fog. We had to enter the lock access directly, as there was no room on that side of the channel outside the buoys to go up or down to find it. This of course was complicated further by the fact that we now had a flood tide sweeping us upstream so that crossing the channel had to be done obliquely to counter the current. We found the 100 yard wide entrance and crabbed sideways into it, only to have to avoid a yacht that had just exited the lock and was drifting around the entrance as he tried to hoist sail before entering the river’s current. At 1000, we finally got into the lock, and were locked through into a short channel leading to a closed bridge and waiting wall to which we tied up for the rest of the day. By this time, and this little bit inland, the fog had cleared and it was a nice sunny day in this quaint, visitor-filled, old town inner harbour. After a couple of hours sleep, we wandered around the ancient harbourside, enjoying the ambience of French outdoor cafes, the half timbered buildings leaning to and fro overshadowing narrow lanes, the art shops and tourist traps, and the waiters, carrying a variety of savoury dishes and extravagant desserts, scurrying from restaurant doors across cobblestoned streets to crowded small shoreside table areas. We had a delightful lunch on the quayside overlooking a couple of visiting yachts, before doing the museum "thing" in a 15th century house combining maritime and local history.  One of the more relevant (to us) aspects of this area is that it was from this very inner harbour that Champlain set forth in about 1604 for his exploration of Canada, going up the St. Lawrence River past Quebec City and up to a Huron village called Hochelaga, now known as Montreal. Pardon my fractured history, but I believe he made at least two major voyages to "New France", establishing settlements and trading forts, giving rise to the French settlements along the St. Lawrence and parts of the maritime provinces. Most of the French who settled in Canada originated from the Normandy and Brittany coasts of France. Jaques Cartier, who also made exploratory voyages, left from St. Malo on the Brittany coast at the base of the Cherbourg Peninsula south of the Channel Islands. We checked in with the Harbourmaster, who was going to open the bridge at 1700 to allow boats to enter and leave the inner harbour. However, we declined in preference to staying on the waiting wall, as we wanted to leave first thing in the morning to catch the 0730 lock opening. We paid only 70.00 Ff for the night. We were also informed that there were no facilities for dropping our mast, and no customs or immigration offices. However as we were coming from British territory it did not seem essential to check in with customs, as our CA Infopak indicated no need to fly the "Q" flag or check in as long as our entry was a non-immigrant one and all customs regulations were observed. So, we have not officially checked in, although we have reported to a wide variety of officials including harbourmasters, port captaineries, and subsequently to the Voies Navigables de France (VNF) for our Inland Waterways Licence. However, we enjoyed Honfleur and would recommend it to other boaters entering France in this area as a most pleasant entry and worth a visit. The next day in a cool rainy dark (we had to set our clocks back when we entered France, so it was still dark at 0730) morning we motored out to the lock ready to proceed up the Seine towards Paris, 366 kilometers upstream. On exiting the lock, entering the Seine in the grey predawn light, we were hit by full gale force winds and steep two meter waves washing up the river (wind against current).  Lots of fun! More in my next log.
Page Updated: Friday, November 30, 2007