Paris and Beyond
In the outer suburbs of Paris, 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast, is the town of Draveil. The area around the residential district was once used for agriculture and today remains a nature preserve, home to rare trees and 100-year-old oaks on one side with the Seine River on the other.
The marina there is surrounded by a huge park with a large playground and lots of water sports: kayaks, sailboats, paddle boats and wind surfers. A pleasant walk through the park brought us out onto a busy street where we caught an Uber to Orly airport in Paris to pick up our Alaskan friends who would be joining us for a week.
We left early the next day, motoring out of the tiny marina and heading north towards the big city. We passed through some smaller communities, transited two locks and watched the scenery change as we approached Paris.
Port de L’Arsenal is the only marina in the heart of Paris. I had requested berthing for three nights and although I’d initially been told there was no available space, I sent a follow-up request a week later to see if anything had changed and to our surprise a berth was confirmed. We arrived at the entrance lock at mid-day and proceeded to the very back of the port where we settled ourselves between two large steel barges which were permanent residents.
Our neighbor on the boat on our port side, Mathieu, introduced himself and his wife and informed us that an increase in marina prices this year had prompted his neighbors of 10 years to depart. It was their slip we now occupied. He went on to explain that he was preparing to make a 3-hour roundtrip motorcycle ride.
Evidently a young mallard duck had chosen to lay her eggs aboard the boat that had vacated our slip the day before. With her eggs gone, the poor momma duck was quite frantic. In fact, she had landed on Meraki almost immediately after we arrived, unbeknownst to us hunting for her nest. Mathieu had contacted his former neighbor and made arrangements to ride his motorcycle 65 kilometers to where they were, pick up the eggs, turn around and ride back, where he would return them to the momma duck. He had lots of trees and plants growing on his boat where he hoped she would find a suitable nesting spot to hatch her young. We were doubtful that the eggs would be viable having been unattended for so long but we cheered on his kind and valiant efforts.
I hold very fond memories of the President Wilsons Market from my last trip to Paris with my mom and sister nearly 13 years ago, and I’d read it was only open two days a week, today being one of them. We wasted no time before setting off, descending into the depths of the metro to sort out how it works. Metro cards in hand, we hopped the train north to the market. Sadly it was closing by the time we arrived but we wandered the paths taking in the sights, smells and sounds. From there we walked back in the direction of the marina passing the Arch de Triomphe, Grand Palace, Champs Élysées, Tuileries Garden and the Louvre Museum.
We returned to the boat tired yet exhilarated and planned out how we would spend the next day. We had purchased tickets to tour the Eiffel Tower but there was a market happening in the neighborhood when we left the boat in the morning so we breezed through there before continuing on to the metro. The tower tour afforded us a fast-pass to skip the lines, and was quite informative. We especially enjoyed the views of the entire city from above.
We stopped for an amazing lunch and along the way we happened upon the Rue de Passy, one of the area’s most upscale shopping districts, brimming with boutiques and specialty stores. There was a flea market setup along the sidewalk with a great assortment of vendors selling vintage clothes and linens, antiques and collectibles, costume jewelry and furniture. After several hours of walking we made our way to the metro and back to the marina, cooked dinner and flopped into bed exhausted once again.
Our third and final day in Paris we decided to walk over to the Latin Quarter, home to the Sorbonne University. The pedestrian streets are lined with cafes and bookshops with large scale murals painted on the buildings which add to the vibrancy of the neighborhood. We walked through the Botanical Gardens, a vast park with plant species grown in alpine gardens and restored 19th-century hothouses. We stopped briefly to join a Tai Chi class in progress in the park.
After three very long days walking much of Paris the four of us were ready for a slower pace. We left the marina early hoping to beat the congestion of river traffic as the day evolved. We waved goodbye to Mathieu and Lily - wishing her luck with her ducklings, passed beneath the low overpass and out through the lock onto the Seine. Even without the river traffic it was a challenging two-person job navigating through Paris - there are more than two dozen bridges which must be tracked closely to ensure the correct right-of-way for vessel traffic.
Our northerly transit downstream (something about that seems weird???) was relaxing, observing the beautiful homes and the vast variety of floating dwellings. We tied up at the free pontoon in the town of Andrésy, a small village in Normandy on a side channel off the Seine. We took a walk and enjoyed some downtime planning to continue on the next day to the town of Vernon where our visit with our Alaskan friends would come to an end.
That evening some friendly locals stopped by the boat. They were super excited to meet Americans and we exchanged phone numbers so that they could share some photos they wanted us to see from their own travels.
The next morning we slipped the lines and drifted off the dock, but within seconds of freeing ourselves I knew something was wrong - we were moving erratically. Tom shouted to me to catch a cleat and I immediately tossed the line back onto the dock and pulled us in. Apparently when Tom had used the bow thruster all the navigation screens had shut off. The engines were still running but we had lost ALL power. The entire electrical system on the boat had gone dead.
While I re-secured our lines to the pontoon, Tom went to work trying to diagnose the problem. Upon inspecting the batteries he discovered the fuses for all three of our battery banks were blown. These are large 250amp fuses and we only had one spare aboard - furthermore they are not a common item which would likely be found in a chandlery. Nevertheless, I texted the folks we’d met the night before (thankful to have exchanged numbers) to see if they knew anywhere that might carry these fuses. They had one suggestion though they thought we might need to order them. Tom and Larry headed off on the bicycles in hopes of finding them locally but returned half an hour later empty handed. After some online sleuthing, Tom ordered the fuses to have delivered a few days later. We would be staying put for several more days. Our biggest concern now was water, we had less than a quarter of a tank and there was none available on the dock. We would need to be quite conservative.
Hopeful bike ride in search of fuses.
That evening a French river boat arrived in the channel and we went outside to slide Meraki further down the dock to make space for them between us and the dinghies. We caught their lines and started chatting. They asked the usual questions; where we’d come from and how long we were staying, and we explained our unplanned layover and our water shortage. The next thing I know they offered to give us over 100 liters of water from their boat! They would be traveling upstream in the morning where they could replenish, so they said after they each took a shower and washed up their dinner dishes we could run a hose directly from their sink to our tank. I am continually reminded how a fleeting moment of exchange can make such an instrumental and enduring impression. We were so incredibly grateful for their generosity.
As we would be spending a few more days here, I reserved a rental car so that we could spend our last day together adventuring. When we awoke the next morning we noticed a street market opening up just a block from the boat so we wandered over and picked up some fruit for the road. We set off driving north to Vernon, where we’d planned to visit by boat, and checked out the Old Mill - a half-timbered building that straddles two piers of the ancient bridge over the Seine. We took a leisurely stroll through the river park before carrying on.
Claud Monet, Water Lilies, 1916
We wound our way through the countryside passing through wheat fields and down into the town of Giverny, best known as the location of Claude Monet's home and his elaborate garden where he lived from 1883 until his death in 1926. It turned out to be Ascension Day, a public holiday in France, and the gardens and museum were crammed with people enjoying the long weekend. Despite the throng, we delighted in wandering the gardens and the village where Monet painted his famous water lilies series.
We returned home and spent the rest of the day talking, reading and relaxing - that is until Tom and I got a wild hair and decided to re-erect our mast. We cooked a late dinner and shared one last meal on the back deck before taking our guests to the train station the next morning. Being adaptable is the name of the game when living aboard, and despite our week not turning out quite as expected, it was wonderful to reconnect and to share Meraki-life with some of our favorite people.
Note: photo captions will not appear if viewing on a cell phone.