Luciole Blog

Cruising to the shipyard

The cruise to the shipyard went well, despite everything storm ‘Dennis’ could throw at us. We sped along with the current, the journey took us 4.5 days of cruising time over a week. We cruised the Yonne in tandem with another barge, the newest hotel barge, together with the oldest. At the end of the Yonne it was so windy and rainy at one point that we had to call it a day, we were being blown out of the wheelhouse, the waves on the river were smashing into the bow and were reaching the passenger deck, we spent the night on the confluence of the Yonne and Seine.

Continuing the next day, we pulled up for fuel in Saint Mamme, the river getting wider and locks getting larger. There’s a lot of freight traffic on the Seine and we shared the locks with huge barges, some 120m long. We made it to the suburbs of Paris on Valentines day and moored just above a lock, so Will could rush into Paris and meet his valentine off the plane, she then joined us for the final stretch to the shipyard the next day, arriving on the Saturday, just in time for the next storm to roll on through. Out of the water on Monday!