Severance Prepares for Crossing France – The Return of Jean-Yves!

Once the idea of crossing France via boat and taking Severance to Paris took hold I contacted Jean-Yves, I knew he would be up for it.

Jean-Yves is a great yachtsman and this would give us some time on a boat with him....so far we'd only shared time in marina's.

France is a place where your approach to things is very important, and knowing how to do that, and knowing people is very, very important.

And, he'd told me how important it was that I visit Paris. I didn't see that happening on this trip, but circumstances had changed and I really wanted to have him aboard when we got there.

So we were really happy to reunite with him.

There were a number of things that absolutely needed to be done to prepare Severance for the inland route through France.

First, the mast.

Many people take the mast down and carry it on the boat.

In what may be the one and only good decision I've made on this expedition I decided to ship it across France.

Severance is a racer-cruiser, meaning a lot of canvas, meaning a really tall mast. Plus it is keel stepped (more feet).

So, the mast would have stuck out many feet on both ends of the boat.

I've read about canals and locks and I knew the whole deal is a real bitch, locks are bad news (more on all that later)....so there was no way I was going to carry the mast on board.

We scheduled a mast removal and “pulled the stick”.

I could write hundreds of pages about that day and the process, but let's just say it went very badly, not according to plan but, in the end, we had a well wrapped mast ready for transport and a boat with a bunch of stuff to stow below that typically had a useful spot aboveboard!

We spent 3 days in Le Havre getting “ready” (more on that also later) and it was time to pull the trigger.

Oh, did I mention that the VNF no longer had an office in Le Havre?

I would need to go up the Seine to Rouen before I could get to an office where I had no certainty of the outcome.

But Jean-Yves had a couple of ideas.

One was that I could draw up a legal document and rent Severance to Armando (see prior blog), I believe I snarled at him about that idea.

Second he produced a forged document for me, one problem I had (besides the obvious of serious jail time) was that the picture was of some guy with a full head of hair (I thought the French were supposed to be masters of forgery...they always fooled the Germans in the movies I've watched!).

3rd, Jean-Yves had a copy of his brother's certificate, same last name but these guys could not possibly have had the same parents.

But, I've seen Jean-Yves pull things off before, I no longer had a mast, so off we went!

-- Scott