Saturday, March 16, 2024, Jérôme Delage sits at a small picnic table at the Fontet nautical stopover on the Canal Latéral de la Garonne. He's there, contemplating the cormorants diving around his sailboat, motionless, moored alongside the quay where he's been waiting for almost 15 days to be released to continue the adventure with his crew en route to Greece.
Blocked by a falling tree
Jérôme sails as a family with his wife and 2 children on "Le Ruzé", a Trisbal 36 full aluminum dinghy. Leaving Brest on February 16, 2024, the crew attacked the Canal Latéral à la Garonne on March 3, after dismasting in Bordeaux. When Jérôme bought his VNF vignette to obtain authorization to navigate on the rivers and canals, he was told that a tree had fallen on February 22, hindering navigation at the Tersac bridge. On March 5, a decree prohibiting navigation was issued. Since the beginning of March, the sailboat's crew has been stuck downstream of the bridge damaged by the falling tree, in the commune of Meilhan sur Garonne.
The life project of a 6-month family trip to Greece from Brest came to an abrupt halt at PK 182. 2 years of investment in time and money to prepare the trip and the boat, only for this new life to be reduced to waiting. But waiting for whom? For what?
An inextricable situation
VNF (Voies Navigables de France), to whom he had paid his 30-day vignette for 153 euros, let him enter the Canal Latéral de la Garonne, knowing that there was a problem 10 km further on.
And since then, it's been a merry-go-round of responsibilities: VNF as manager of the canal and banks, and therefore of the plane trees, the Val de Garonne Communauté de Commune as owner of the Tersac bridge, and the Lot et Garonne Prefecture as the state's Mr. Security... passing the buck at a pace that has them all in a tizzy. Although VNF has cleared the tree in question, no expert opinion has yet been announced as to whether or not it is possible to pass under the bridge. The crew of the Ruzé have no prospect of reopening the bridge in the near future.
Other boats in the same situation
With it is also blocked another yachtsman who has to transport a boat to the Mediterranean. But while the Ruzé still has the chance to turn around, or even to be grilled to take the road, upstream, a Freycinet barge is also blocked, unable even to turn around, being too long for this width of canal and the space provided for the manoeuvre requiring it to pass under the bridge!
Jérôme adds laconically: " A prefectoral decree prohibiting passage has put our trip on hold, and it's a daily battle to get out of this administrative trap by phone and email. This story is not the one we dreamed of when we were preparing our beloved Ruzé. "
