In the right boat the trip from the Med to the Channel via the French Inland Waterways would be heavenly, meandering through the Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy, Beaujolais and Loire wine regions, the fresh bread, the cheeses.

In the wrong boat the trip is awful. We can find no better way to communicate our experience than by reproducing passages from our diary:

We are now at Port Napoleon at the mouth of the Rhone. We arrived yesterday and spent the afternoon and evening wandering around the British yachts picking peoples' brains and learning what we could. Not all of it was good, to the extent that we both woke up this morning in a maudlin state and began investigating having the entire boat shipped overland to La Rochelle. For Euro 2000 we can have a lorry take the mast and boat there, or for $5300 we could have the yacht travel-lifted onto a cradle on a ship at Toulon and travel-lifted straight into the water at Cherbourg! Very simple, but a little expensive. We decided to ponder the options over lunch and walked into Port St Louis and found a small restaurant where over the Plat du Jour for 11 Euros each we watched a ship lock out into the Rhone and our excitement grew and we talked ourselves back into the canal route. The latter does not really save that much money, as we will probably spend in the region of 450 Euros on Fenders and 1000 Euros on shipping the mast.

So what have we learned? We think we will be fine drawing 1.8m, but the problems will be protecting ourselves from the concrete and steel of the locks. Some of the quaysides are only an inch or two above water level and it is tricky making sure your fenders don't float away from the gap! In some of the locks (5m wide) Barrique (4.14m wide) will have only 18 inches either side for fenders - easy to imagine a crosswind getting us off centre as we enter a lock and watching all the fenders lift over the side of the lock! Some of the locks were described as washing machines!

The main difference after half a days thought is half a litre of red wine invigorating our wilting sense of adventure. Tomorrow we will book the crane for the mast and the transport.

We arrived at Port Napoleon on June 3rd and spent 10 days getting ready to go. There are a number of reasons it took so long; we found the yard a little unfriendly, with the exception of one lady in the office who would have helped more but for the disobliging inertia of her colleagues. We were delayed by strong winds - I did not want the mast lifted out in 30kt of breeze. We had to organise the shipping of our mast, by lorry, ourselves.

13 June: We motored, senza mast, to Port St Louis and berthed up within trolley distance of a supermarket to stock up on stores - glad we did because many of the places we stopped were nowhere near a supermarket. An hour later we went through the first lock and entered the Rhone. 4.5 hrs later we arrived at Arles, an interesting stop, for the night, we had 1.5kts current against us. Only the small lock into the Rhone negotiated so far. Tomorrow we are going to Avignon (to see the bridge...) and have to go through a lock with a rise and fall of 15 and a half metres!

We reached Valence today, passing through three more locks. Yesterday we went up the second largest in the world - 82 feet rise, the lock is 195m long and 12m wide and we were the only boat - all that water wasted just for us - makes you think about how little is wasted by dripping taps?!

20 June 7h20 to Chalons sur Saone, upto 0.5kts current against. This takes you to within 0.5M of entering the canals proper. We spent a day here preparing; we wrapped car tyres with plastic and suspended them so they dragged in the water, we bought an extra wooden fender board, we now have 8' to port and a bit more to stbd and we stocked up again from a Hypermarket adjacent to marina. Up to now the rivers have been anything from 50m to half a mile wide and depths anything from 3-15m.

22 June 7h45 to Chagny. Into the canals 'proper' we enter the Canal du Centre. Completely shattered! Heavenly bliss, pottering through the beautiful French countryside without a care in the world - n o t. I have not felt so exhausted, mentally, since my early work days in Oxford. We have now completed our third day travelling through the canals and are finding reality very different from the dream. To start with the canal is supposed to be 2m deep, with 1.8m being the maximum draft allowed. I think this stipulation could be very out of date. On our first day we ploughed through silt twice, we have a powerful engine so this is not too worrying as long as the silt does not get too deep, but we saw depths of 1.68m and given that we have accurately calibrated our depth gauge using a lead line we know that we were ploughing a 12cm furrow in the bottom. We managed to climb 12 locks on that first day - not bad as we had a disastrous start to the day, the engine note changed as we turned off the Saone into the canal which was the first sign we knew that there was no cooling water being pumped into the engine. We hastily turned around and pottered back to a small marina while Elaine ran hot water downstairs to help cool the engine by emptying the calorifier of hot water. After a couple of hours we had diagnosed and replaced a faulty impeller, or perhaps disintegrated would be a better description. Nevertheless, we finished day one excited and pleased with our achievement, despite the depths, because as long as we stay in the centre we may plough into a bit of silt but at least the bottom isn't rocky!

We began day 2 feeling very tired, our excitement had carried us through the exertions of day 1 and after holding the boat steady against miniature tidal waves as the sluices open we were aching in every bone, sinew and muscle. The scenery was still very pretty and we enjoyed pottering along the small stretches of water and climbing each lock. Unfortunately we hit the bottom three more times this day. Once we ran into a big pile of silt, enough to bring us, gently, to a complete halt, whereupon large amounts of reverse throttle pulled us out and we tried again to one side, successfully this time. The other two times we hit very hard, into things unknown but very solid. This ended our happy belief that we were safe to potter along the centre and has started a new regime where the helmsman spends more time watching the depth gauge than looking forward and leaves no time for looking at scenery. When the depth drops below 2m we drop down to 1200rpm, if the depths go below 1.9m we drop down to idle. This requires phenomenal concentration to maintain a sensible speed all day. Our keel bolts are not leaking but it is terrifying to think of the forces involved in bringing an 8.5 tonne yacht to a halt from 8-9 kph.

On day 2 we managed 26km and 18 locks. Today we managed 19km and 14 locks. We could crawl on all fours towards Paris faster than this. This pittance of a mileage is the result of a full day, we are moving by 9am.

The locks are quite a tight fit, we have 18 inches either side as we enter between our shiny undamaged fibreglass and the very solid masonry of each wall. Entering every lock requires a degree of concentration not unlike landing an aeroplane. So far we have only abandoned our approach once, with large amounts of reverse throttle and then a fresh attempt. After a few locks I start to see double (almost!):-)

So, far from being a gentle potter back to Blighty this is turning out to be a more demanding passage than returning non-stop via the Atlantic. We are trying to view it as an adventure now - important to remain positive somehow - we still have well over 100 locks to go.

We are having a nightmare! We got very stuck in mud today, we were exiting a lock at the start of a 6.5 km section and within 50m we were stuck, in the centre of the canal! We threw a line to two lockkeepers (lucky they were there) and eventually we got free, but it took several attempts nudging gently forward to find the shape of the bank before we got past, to find that the depths never really improved. The bottom is quite soft for the first few inches and although we are 1.8m deep we can plough through the silty layer although I don't like to because that will be wearing all the paint and protective coatings off the keel and the tip of the rudder (which being GRP is soft). Most of this section we crawled along at 1000 rpm with the depths going as low as 1.62m, then at the end of the section just before the next lock we crossed an aqueduct and bounced on the bottom a couple of times!!!!!! They were seriously deficient in H2O.

1 July 6h15 to middle of nowhere! Now entered Canal du Briare and we cannot get into any of the stops due to depths, so we are 'alongside' the bank - our keel is3m out so only the bow is alongside, the stern is way out! We crossed Eiffel's rather long (600m) aqueduct across the Loire. The trouble is that the aqueducts are the same width as the locks, so I have 18" either side for half a mile when I'm 200m up in the wind funneling down the Loire valley. Elaine got to see the most amazing views though, I took her word for it.

2 July 6h20 to Chatillon. We are forced to stop here because a Peniche has got completely stuck in the mud. We had got our hopes up when we first caught up the commercial traffic, as they draw 1.8m, now we discover that these are the first of the year for the grain harvest and there isn't really enough water! The problem is there is nowhere for us to stop and so we end up skewed across the canal as close to the edge as we can.

3 July The Peniche is still stuck, we are forced to wait. Every day we wait means less water :-( They eventually free Peniche with wire ropes to two, four wheel drive, tractors on towpath, which they chew up to resemble the killing fields of the Somme. (If my similes are a little morbid, you can imagine perhaps the torture!!)

We really thought we were stuck. Our strategy now is to press on as far as possible each day in the hope of escaping before the canals dry up enough to capture us. Every day into the summer brings more evaporation and more holiday hire boats letting water out of the locks.

6 July 7h10 to St Mammes. We have escaped, though almost didn't, the penutimate lock broke down and we were stuck for 2 hours, and then when we had exited the final lock, which leads not into the Seine, but into a winding tributary for 1 mile, we run aground - so near yet so far. We escape undefeated and see 8m on the depth gauge, we have not seen over 2m for days! Here we meet yacht 'Reality', an American couple we met in Ceuta, who also draw 1.8m and had recently abandoned an attempt to go towards the Med. Their boat is very battle scarred - the locks won.

7 July 5h45 to Auberge. We berth outside a restaurant, where stopping is free if you partake of their offerings. Their offerings disappoint. Up to 0.5kts favourable current :-) It is unbelievably better to be able to set throttle at 2450rpm and just cruise at 7.5kts after endless days staring at the depth gauge and trimming the throttle between tick over and 1400rpm.

8 July 5h30 to Paris. We stop here for 11 days, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. :-) We have made it through the shallow canals J U S T in time, we must surely be the last boat of 1.8m to make it through this year. The holiday boats are increasing in numbers as the summer holidays approach and their every movement lowers the water levels yet further. While we are in Paris we receive news that the Canal du Centre has been closed. Phew.

This is not a route back to Northern Europe that I can recommend, if I get badly judged by St Peter I will remind him of the three weeks ditch-crawling and ask it to be taken into account. We are also considering sending an invoice to VNF (the French waterways authority) for Dredging a 1.8m channel along the canals Centre, Lateral a Loire, Briare and Loing. Our new wing keel is about 4 foot wide at the bottom so we have done quite a good job really :-)

We are F r e e e e e e ! ! !

We have arrived at Honfleur at the end of the Seine estuary where we will wait for our mast, which should arrive by lorry on Friday. There was quite a strong onshore wind blowing waves in the Seine and the larger ones were crashing over the bow :-) It is SO good to be out of the canals.

We had one moment of excitement we would rather have avoided. We arrived outside the entrance at about 6pm, half an hour before low tide at which time there should still have been three metres of water in the entrance according to our charts. We pottered in very slowly struggling out of the 3 knot current whooshing us past the entrance and in moments the depths disappeared and we were aground on a mud bank. Full Astern would not shift us as the waves had helped push us well on. We were stuck. At low tide, half an hour later, the bow was just lifting clear of the water but by 7.15pm we were able to reverse off quite gently. While we were stuck we had watched some fishing boats leave and they had kept very close to one side of the channel, where according to the chart we would be in about 10-20cm of water. The channel has changed over the years but nobody has bothered to update the books. We had a lucky escape really and re-learned the lesson about navigating an unfamiliar channel on a falling tide the hard way - it is good to be back in tidal waters.

The port of Honfleur looks really quaint, like a Hollywood Pirate set, surrounded on three sides by higgledy-piggledy houses three and four stories high. With 'the canal nightmare' behind us we should be able to enjoy ourselves again . . . . . But we wait and we wait and we wait for our mast. The transport company take a fortnight longer than agreed to deliver the mast. I could scream. But eventually we get our altar to the winds back and I feel whole again :-)

The trip took a total of 29 days movement. All the while Elaine was battling morning sickness by munching dry Ryvitas.