prelude

JOLI COEUR AS A WORKING BARGE - 1920




       



JOLI COEUR ORIGINAL CONVERSION 1979


The idea of owning a Dutch Barge and cruising the French Canals (and maybe even wider afield) came to us slowly and as a result of our years of cruising the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Caribbean Sea, first on our CT 49 Sailing Cruiser "Lily Mae", later on our Island Trader "Lily May" and finally during our three years of managing South Side Marina on Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Viewing the rapid approach of Simon's 71st birthday, not to mention Charlyn's somewhat lesser one, we decided that we should, for the second time, give some serious thought to retirement.

In spite of the ravages of Anno Domini we were still not ready to settle in one place and simply grow old (gracefully or not!) and having heard tales of the pleasures of barging from many sources - in fact as soon as we mentioned the idea to anyone, they invariably had either done a barge holiday, were contemplating one, knew people who lived permanently on barges, or knew people who knew people...... and all the reports were good, we decided that this might well be the way for us to go - but where to start???

Clearly there were major questons that needed to be answered before committing ourselves:
What type of barge should we buy, how long, how wide, how much living space?
Having decided that, could we afford it?
Where do we even begin to look?
Should we use a broker to help?
How do we "test the water" without plunging in and finding that we don't like it after all?
And, finally, how do we explain to Bob, Simon's boss, that we think it's time to move on?

As ever, many of the answers can be found on the Internet. We discovered several useful sites: Apollo Duck, which is a sort of "For sale by owner" site, but also used by most of the major brokers; Bourgogne Marine and H2O both situated near the centre of the French canal system at St Jean de Losne; Sander Doeve, probably the leading broker based in Holland and finally Bowcrest Marine, run by Tony Charman in England - the largest UK broker and in fact the one we eventually worked with. There are others, including a site run by the Dutch Barge Association (a "must" join club for all potential or aspiring bargees) or simply entering "Dutch barges for sale" on Google will find virtually everything that is on the market.

We accessed all these sites on a daily basis and gradually began to create a "template" of what we thought would suit. With so many barges on the market, it is important to set some parameters in order to avoid wasting a lot of time and effort. In the end our "ideal" specification came down to this:
Type of barge: (there are about 20 different varieties) - but for us, immaterial.
Size: There are 4 critical dimensions for canal barges: length, width, draft and air draft (the height of the highest point of the barge above water level). As we were intending to make the barge our permanent home, we wanted to have as much living space as possible, consistent with being able to handle and manoeuvre the vessel, so our specs were: length: max 25 metres (approx 80ft), width: min 4.25 metres (anything less we felt would feel claustrophobic), max 5m to allow (just!!!) passage through canal locks and narrow bridges, draft: max 1.5 metres, air draft: 3.5 metres, preferably with a demountable wheel house to allow passage through low tunnels and bridges and to make the entire canal network accessible.
Accomodation:
2 bedrooms (Master suite with walk round Queen size bed)
2 bathrooms
Good size living room with large windows for maximum light, with modern kitchen
Large wheelhouse to accomodate 4 or more people in comfort
Walk out aft deck with space for table and chairs

With a budget of around 200,000 euros (USD 270,000) and the above specs we were able to "manage" our trawling of the net quite effectively, so that by the time we were ready to go to Europe and start looking in earnest we had created a short list of some fourteen barges, scattered over Holland, Belgium and France. These were all discussed in detail at a meeting with Tony Charman of Bowcrest, who agreed that our stated basic requirements would be right for us, and we started to make appointments to view.
It was at this moment that disaster (or at least apparent disaster) struck. There had been virtually no movement in the barge market for several months, but suddenly four of our chosen fourteen (and high on the list too) were found to be sold, reducing our options considerably.

Somewhat daunted, we took the overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland and started our tour of discovery in that country, driving around in an old Mercedes estate car that Charlie (Simon's son) had very kindly given to us. The first day was somewhat frustrating, due largely to Simon's refusal to invest in a "TOM TOM" GPS device and resulting in Charlyn having her head buried in imaps covered with incomprhensibe and totally unpronouncable names. The barges we visited that day gave us no cause for excitement. Even the following day we had no better luck, and with our remaining list dwindling to a very few we began to despair of finding anything that we could remotely consider as a possibility.

After those two days of considerable disappointment, we were due to take a weekend break in Nice, in the south of France, to stay with Johnnie Stephens, Simon's long time friend and who was generous enough to put up with a regular annual visit. On our way south (and still consulting the map) we discovered that we were due to pass within a few miles of St Jean de Losne, in Burgundy, near where there was a barge that we were due to view the following Tuesday. A quick telephone call to the owners resulted in an early visit and a very happy result.

Joli Coeur, for this was the barge we visited that day, turned out not only to be just about perfect for us, but strangely enough was almost the first one that we had seen on the internet and which very largely formed the basis for our specification. Happily we were able to come to an agreement with the owners, Jim and Judy Gieske, that satisfied us all and we set off to enjoy our weekend with Johnnie in a very much better frame of mind.

In case any of you may wonder what happened to our plan to "test the water", I should add that as soon as we returned from Nice  (and had a second look at Joli Coeur which only confirmed our previous delight) we spent a wonderful week on the Charter Barge "The Jubilant" owned by David and Juliet Webb and in company with our very good friends Roger and Mary Ann White and John and Susan Hauge, having met both couples during our time at South Side Marina. David and Juliet gave us a great time - not to say including plenty to drink and eat - and introduced us to the enormous pleasure of travelling the rivers and canals of Burgundy, as well as exploring the surrounding countryside and local markets. Now we were well and truly convinced that this would be the life style for us, and what is more that we had found the right travelling home to enjoy it all from. I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who is either looking for a barge holiday or who, like us, wishes to "test the water" to contact David at theJubilant.com.

JUBILANT ON THE CANAL DU CENTRE

THE ANDERSONS, WHITES AND HAUGES

DAVID AND JULIET



Finally, what about Bob, who over the years of our association had become much more than just a boss. In many ways he made the whole thing possible (and affordable) by offering us the opportunity to return to South Side Marina for the main part of the winter season, which for 2010/2011 turned out to be a four month contract. Not only does this arrangement help considerably to spread the pension income, but also gets us out of the cold European winter into the very best of the Caribbean weather.