Do-It-Yourself Skippers in Burgundy

Folks, you have read about barge cruises on the Rhine or the Danube or through Provence, on those hotel boats with luxurious cabins and a chef. Or the deluxe charters serving foie gras accompanied by a noble Chablis.

This wasn’t that.

This was a self-skippered cruise on Burgundy’s Nivernais Canal. We paid our money (about $2,000) and got a motor-driven houseboat, some instructions, a map and a guidebook.

No license required. No experience necessary.

For seven nights we lived and slept on the 32-foot Tamaris. I did most of the driving because I was the Captain. The Wife, bless her, did most of the actual work and mainly complained only when I threw loose piles of wet rope at her instead of a neat coil.

“Toss it, like you’re roping a steer,” she shouted from shore, untangling herself from the mess. “I thought you were a cowboy.”

“I wanted to be a cowboy,” I shouted back. “But I couldn’t figure out the rope.”

We had looked forward to seven days lazily floating along on a canal, passing chateaux and quaint villages. We thought we would visit a local market once or twice and, using regional produce, create our own French banquet.

Canned ravioli. One night’s dinner was canned ravioli.

Here we go.

Day 1

We met our boat in Tannay, a pleasant town about 125 miles southeast of Paris on the Canal du Nivernais. She was a looker, Tamaris. A proud vessel of Crown Blue Line. Sparkling white with blue trim. Her styling was trophy yacht, but her heart was pure houseboat.

If you’ve ever been inside a midsize recreational vehicle, add a second tiny bedroom and a second tiny bathroom and you’ve been inside the Tamaris. Gas oven and stove. Mini-fridge. Sitting/dining area. That’s about it.

George, from Crown, took us through. He showed us the controls. He showed us where to check the oil and where to check for engine-clogging balls of canal grass.

He showed the Wife how to tie a clove hitch, a knot designed to keep the boat from floating overnight to Belgium. He showed us where to fill the freshwater tanks.

He took us for a short spin around the harbor and let me drive (seemed easy enough). And then he steered us back to the dock.

George told us a little bit about the locks. He told us not to worry--lock keepers would be on duty. And then he gave me the keys.

“This is very cool,” said the Wife. “I’m scared to death.”

“Let’s take her for a little test drive,” the Captain said.

The canal at Tannay flows under a charming stone bridge. While trying to guide Tamaris under the bridge, I learned the boat doesn’t like to go straight.

“Stop!” screamed the Wife.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of a 32-foot houseboat slamming against the inside wall of a charming stone bridge.

“Keep it centered! Keep it centered! You’re doing it again!”

Blam. Nailed it good.

We made it back. The Wife tied the boat, which was shaken but uninjured, to the moorings. The clove hitch eluded her. “It looks right, but it’s not securing....”

That evening, during dinner in the modest Hotel du Morvan in Tannay, as I studied a map of the Nivernais Canal, the Wife practiced clove hitches with a napkin.

“I’m scared,” the Wife said.

Sleep aboard the Tamaris did not come easily.

Day 2

We didn’t wake up in Belgium. And it was a beautiful morning. John, a canal veteran from South Africa whose boat was parked nearby, stopped by with advice.

“You can’t put the boat in the center and expect it to stay,” he said. “It tends to slide. It’s nearly a flat bottom, so there’s nothing to hold it centered. You just try to aim the nose toward the center.”

The Wife, meanwhile, was playing with knots, coached by a neighbor who spoke only Spanish.

And we were off.

The canal, just wide enough for two boats to pass comfortably, was lovely. Birds chirped from the trees alongside. White cattle, Charolais, munched in pastures on either side. Century-old farmhouses dotted the hillsides.

The Tamaris handled like a rear-wheel-drive car with bald tires on a sheet of ice. Top speed was 5 mph. That’s Pirates of the Caribbean speed--which was good, because it was only a few minutes before we encountered the first lock.

Locks enable boats to go uphill on water. And downhill. Here’s how: A boat enters an open chute. A lock keeper closes a gate behind the boat, sealing the chute, then sends water surging into the chute by lowering a barrier; this water fills the chute and floats the boat to a new level. The lock keeper opens a front gate, and the boat drives on.

On the Nivernais, some of the mechanisms are as old as the canal, which opened in 1844. All those gates and chutes are operated by a man or a woman--some of whom also are seemingly as old as the canal. These men and women are the lock keepers. Sometimes they need help. Which will bring us back to the Wife.

My job as the Captain was to drive the boat into the chute. The Wife’s job was to climb up a wet, slippery steel ladder to the top of the lock, catch a wet rope tossed by me, wrap the rope around a mooring post, then toss the loose end of the rope back to me in the boat, which I held while taking pictures.

The Wife then helped the lock keepers turn a manual crank, which wasn’t easy. On our 60-mile cruise, we would face 72 locks.

It’s good to be Captain.

Around noon and after three locks, we’d found our first village: Monceaux-le-Comte. A small grocery supplied us with local sausage and cheese. Our first boat picnic. Just like in the brochures.

By midafternoon we arrived in a small harbor that served the town of Corbigny, two miles above the canal. This time the Wife’s clove hitches hitched.

We rode bikes into Corbigny, past sheep and cows and picture-book French countryside made soft by the twilight. Dinner in Corbigny was wonderful. And when we returned to the harbor, a dozen boats had joined ours, their interior lights making them look like floating lanterns.

We slept soundly.

Day 3

We headed off, newly confident. Destination: Baye, which books said had a restaurant.

Then it rained.

We reached a lock that had no keeper. We waited on the water, engine idling, hoping someone would show. Nobody showed.

I grounded the Tamaris against the grassy bank. The Wife, feeling a break in the weather, hopped off to search for anyone who resembled a lock keeper. Then the storm really hit. Thunder, lightning.

Thirty minutes later, soaked and without a lock keeper, the Wife stepped back aboard the Tamaris.

A lock keeper, curiously dry, finally did arrive after we had improvised a lunch of leftovers. The sun poked through. Again we were on our way. Again it began to rain. Hard. One lock after another, the Wife climbed up those slick metal ladders, did the rope thing, helped the lock keeper crank.

We weren’t going to make Baye. Not even close. At a widening in the canal we glided to shore, hammered stakes into the ground and secured the Tamaris for the night. Our last lock keeper, a lovely woman named Marie-Noel, had sensed our situation and drove up to us in her car.

There was a town, she said, a few miles off the canal. Even on a Sunday evening, the tiny grocery in Sardy-les-Epiry might have something on its shelves. I went along.

Dinner in France, the culinary capital of the world: a can of beef ravioli and packaged breadsticks.

Day 4

The air that greeted us as we tentatively emerged was fresh and fragrant, the deep green of the surrounding forest stunning, the water still. I looked over at this woman I like a lot.

“Does it get any better than this?”

“Don’t go there,” the Wife said.

Yet again we eased out onto the Nivernais Canal. Ahead of us loomed a quick succession of 16 locks. Sixteen wet ladders etc.

But two good things happened.

First, the sun came out.

Second, we got the hang of this. On one stretch, we did six locks in 78 minutes. Trust me: We were cookin’.

The Wife had figured it out. Instead of climbing out of the boat at every stop, she grabbed a bike and pedaled ahead to the next lock. I’d drive into the lock, steady the boat and toss the rope up to her. Neatly coiled. She would toss the free end, help the lock keeper, then bike ahead to the next lock.

We were beautiful. Well, the Wife was beautiful. I just drove the boat.

Emerging from a tunnel at La Collancelle, we reached Baye at lunchtime. Other self-skippered boats were parked with us. There is a sense of community among people who do canals. It is like the feeling at RV campgrounds, where strangers aren’t strangers for long.

Soon we were in Chatillon-en-Bazois. Ducks in the canal scurried for tossed bits of bread. A magnificent garden framed a grand chateau mirrored in the Nivernais. Behind us, steps from where the Tamaris rested in the harbor, was the town itself, looking as if centuries had made little change.

“This,” the Wife said, “is what I was expecting.”

Day 5

Absolutely sparkling. Gorgeous. Everything was: the chateau and its garden, the village, the canal, the harbor.

The locks can handle as many as three boats at once, and after Baye we often shared the chute with two others. The skipper of one was a Frenchman named Paul, who spent most of his time in San Francisco. “This is as rural as France gets,” said Paul, enjoying a homecoming. “That’s why I picked it.”

Then came the flies.

Pastures are beautiful things, especially with handsome livestock. Charolais, those white cows, are handsome livestock. The problem is that Charolais, like other large creatures, generate large amounts of byproduct. And byproduct generates flies.

We chose a spot to stop for the night--a bank of the canal near a quiet farm town called Isenay--and rode our bikes to take a look. From the village’s one churchyard, we could see much of the valley, and the low sun had turned the hills to velvet and the canal to a deep green ribbon.

That night offered a chance at last for the Captain to create a great meal: spaghetti topped with canned sauce.

Day 6

The canal steamed in the light of first dawn. We would reach our next destination, the town of Cercy-la-Tour, before lunch. Just in time for the funeral. My primitive French had determined that the entire village had gathered in a church in the center of the town. Flowers were everywhere.

“He was a boy, 16,” a woman told me later. “He was on his scooter and was hit by a car.”

It occurred to me that the impact of one boy’s death on a town like this was incalculable.

Day 7

The Nivernais was losing its rural charm. The slow pace was more annoying now that industry had encroached on the scenery.

The final lock, No. 72, was ahead. Following that: the Loire.

The Loire has a current, and crisscross wakes made the Tamaris bob and the kitchenware rattle. Our job was to maneuver to Decize without being rammed by working barges carrying enough coal to light Normandy.

At 2:30 on the afternoon of the seventh day, I eased the boat to the dock at Decize. The Wife leaped onto the concrete bank and, using perfectly executed clove hitches, tied onto the mooring posts.

“Well, we did it,” I said. “And we’re still married.”

The Wife, retying the forward line to keep the bow from drifting into the river, looked up briefly, then pulled the bow toward her.

“You know,” I said, “when we get back to Paris, let’s take one of those sightseeing rides on the Seine.”

The Wife stood, the loose end of the line in both hands, the bow fighting her like the great fish of Hemingway’s Old Man, and looked straight at me.

“You don’t really want to get on another boat.”

(I did. She went. That’s why she’s the Wife.)

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Guidebook: Cruising the Nivernais

Getting there: Our Nivernais Canal cruise started in Tannay, about 125 miles southeast of Paris. From L.A. to Paris, Air France and AirLib fly nonstop; American, British, Continental, Delta, KLM, Lufthansa, United and US Airways offer connecting service (change of planes). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $299 on AirLib, good for travel through March 20 (must be ticketed by Feb. 28). Other airlines start at $646.

Where to go: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Scotland and Ireland are popular for nice scenery, good facilities (docking areas, freshwater spigots) and waterways that beginners can navigate.

Locks and bridges: Some lock keepers do all the work; others appreciate help. At some spots you’re on your own. It doesn’t take superior intellect to figure out the locks, but it helps if one passenger has a little dexterity and upper-body strength.

The boats: Our boat, the Tamaris, had two cabins and two bathrooms. It was listed as sleeping “4+2”--two people in each of the two snug cabins, plus two people in the boat’s sitting area. Four adults and two kids would have been OK; six adults would have been too cramped. Weekly rates range from $1,565 (early spring or late fall) to $2,240 (midsummer).

Bigger boats may provide more space but don’t improve the quality of the ride. Smaller boats have more docking options. A good travel agent can set up an itinerary for you; I used Abercrombie & Kent, (800) 323-7308. Or you can contact charter companies directly.

We used Crown Blue Line,

510 Sylvan Ave., Suite 204, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632; (888) 355-9491 or (201) 569-9588, fax (201) 569-6038, www.crown-blueline.com.

Others include Connoisseur (www.connoisseurafloat.com), booked in the U.S. through

Le Boat, 45 Whitney Road,

Suite C5, Mahwah, NJ 07430; (800) 992-0291 or (201) 560-1941, fax (201) 560-1945, www.leboat.com; and Rive de France, 55 Rue d’Aguesseau, 92774 Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex, France, 011-33-141-860- 101, fax 011-33-141-860-102, www.rivedefrance.com.

Expenses: Fuel, drop-off charges for one-way itineraries and other fees may cost extra. Expect for transportation to and from the boat, groceries and other supplies not to be included. We paid $45.95 to rent two bikes for the week. Village docks may charge for overnight mooring. It’s customary to give modest tips to lock keepers.

For more information: French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-2967; (310) 271-6665 or (410) 286-8310 (France-on-Call hotline), www.francetourism.com.

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Alan Solomon is a travel writer for the Chicago Tribune.