Honfleur to Rouen 6th April 2023
Sailing up the Seine from Honfleur to Rouen presents some logistical challenges. The most important is the tide: it is essential to catch the start of the flood tide which then carries you upriver. The tides in the Seine are strong, 3-4 kts, so attempting to fight them is not something a small boat should attempt.
Next, daylight. Pleasure craft cannot navigate along the Seine after dark. This is not so much of an issue in summer but in spring (or autumn) is a constraint.
Consider too your boat speed. Your boat needs to be able to maintain a decent speed in order to reach Rouen before the tide starts to work against you, or it gets dark. There is nowhere to tie up or moor on the river so this is an important consideration if your boat is slow.
Then of course there's the wind. If it's behind you it's your friend. In a sailboat you can gain a few extra knots if it's on your beam. If it's on the nose it will slow you down.
The tides are the easiest to plan for, and we timed our crossing from Brighton so that the low tide in Honfleur would be in the morning to coincide with the sunrise. We thought that Wednesday 5th would be the day but there wasn't much wind. Also the tide was low at around 6.30 am while it was still dark so it was better to wait until Thursday 6th when of course it was about half an hour later. This allowed us to lock out of Honfleur Marina at 7.30 in daylight. As a bonus there was a bit more wind in the right direction today!
After the early start leaving Brighton it felt like luxury to sleep in until nearly 7. Igor checked the conditions at the lock entrance to confirm there was enough water. At 7.30 the lock was still showing red lights so he radioed the lock keeper who agreed to open it for us. We slipped the lines within a couple of minutes and were in the lock by 7.37. I put a midline on the rising bollard and then we added bow and stern lines. The lock gates closed, we descended and descended and descended. Finally the seaward gates opened. Not much water. We gingerly moved forward, checking the depth. 1.6m, 1.5, 1.4, 1.3,1.3, 1.2, 1.1 - breathe in deeply and grit your teeth - 1.3, 1.3, 1.2 1.4, 1.6, 5.3 and we were through. The draft of the boat is 1.2m with the keel up but I think the bottom was soft enough mud that we could just glide through it. We turned upstream at 8.02 and let the jib out a few minutes later.
The weather was overcast and cloudy but dry. The wind was on our beam and we made steady progress. The river is beautiful, especially the lower reaches with forest and hills, then more and more pretty towns. Maybe they were built especially for the river cruises that are so popular here?
We passed under the Normandy Bridge, one of my favourite bridges, very graceful and looking remarkably slim from underneath. Is it just me that can never quite believe that my mast will fit under a bridge like this? I know our air draft is 17 m and the clearance is way more than that but perspective plays tricks on your eyes, doesn't it?
Next was the Tancarville Bridge, at 9.30. We took the jib in just before this. The turns in the river mean that the angle of the wind on the sails keeps changing. Motorsailing under jib alone means you can easily let it out or furl it, less fuss than the mainsail.
We noticed that there are kilometre markers along the bank so this made it very easy to track our progress against the Fluviacarte. As an example I noted we had the jib out from km 320-315, near Feu de Norville. The kms count down towards Paris.
Just past the Pont de Brotonne, at 11.45, we put the jib out again, which increased our speed by a couple of knots. We could see the strength of the tide flowing against the buoys.
Six hours into our journey we had covered half, 44.8 nautical miles. The turns in the river became more frequent. We used the jib from Duclair to between markers 267 and 266, about an hour of motorsailing, then took it in. We only managed another 20 minutes with the jib out, just past La Bouille.
The landscape becomes more industrial as you approach Rouen. A police boat followed us for a while and made some hand signals to Igor. He couldn't work out what they meant but we later decided he was probably just giving us directions.
We reached Rouen at around 17.00. I'd phoned the marina and they said to moor on the fuel pontoon, or near it, and that it was near the entrance. We entered the marina, no fuel pontoon in sight.
A man in sailing gear was standing on the visitors mooring and waved us in but we shouted to ask where was the fuel pontoon. Mutual incomprehension. We carried on, the fuel pontoon is near the stairway to the marina office. Right, that entrance. Igor didn't think that the office would tell me to moor on the fuel pontoon so he went into an empty slip nearby. The man from the visitors pontoon was there and took our bow line, which was just as well as the slip was really short, less than half of our boat length. With my tiny legs I couldn't reach it safely from the deck until he pulled us right in, and even then I was holding my breath expecting to end up in the water, but I didn't. He and I went to the marina office to double check where we should moor. They confirmed that we should be on the fuel pontoon, so we attached long ropes and manoeuvred the boat into place. We finally turned the engine off at 17.44. What a day!
Through a combination of very good passage planning by Igor and the cooperation of the weather it was a fantastic sail, one of those ones where everything comes together. The river was almost empty apart from us and a few big ships which could be counted on one hand. The sun even shone for quite a bit of the time. It doesn't get much better than this.