Birvidik

The next morning, our myrmidons showed themselves to be mythical Greek characters of their word. They started to dribble in at about eight o'clock and it became immediately apparent that they had decided to change tactic. The entire village must have been in animated discussion over their isles flottantes about the finer points of heavy lifting gear. General, uncontrolled forces, as provided by The Beast, had been eschewed in favour of a more surgical, focused approach. Base camps were set up on the two spits, one to our north, and one to our west. Both were then equipped with bloody great come-alongs. A come-along, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the esoteric varieties of heavy machinery, is a chain lifting hoist, cunningly modified by a range of gears, clutches, gypsies, levers, pawls, and ratchets, so as to be...

What's that you say? Oh sorry. A gypsy is a metal drum, shaped so as to accept links of a particular size of chain. Ratchets use swept gearwheels and pawls to...

Sorry? What are swept gearwheels and pawls? Swept gearwheels have asymmetric teeth which....er....

Look - tell you what, we'll approach this from a functional perspective. A come-along is a chain hoist that can work sideways. Chain goes in one end and comes out the other. When you waggle the steel bar on the side, the chain moves through the come-along.

Very slowly.

On one of the really big bastards, each sweep moves your hand about 70cm, but the chain only moves about 5mm. Doesn't seem much of a deal, does it. It does, though, have an up-side. The output distance may only be 1/140th of the input distance, but the output force is 140 times the input force. Hang an 80 kg man (or woman) on the end of that lever, and the force on whatever's on the end of the chain is over eleven tonnes.

Using chain also neatly addressed the weakest link in all the previous attempts, namely the tow rope. Actually, there's not a lot in it between chain and modern ropes. The breaking strains are about the same; chain is heavier and more difficult to handle, but if it snaps it only eviscerates and dismembers at close quarters. You'd have to be sitting on it when it snapped in order to risk any real damage and even then it would probably just sort out your piles.

They started to set up shop for a go at RB1. If that worked, they'd turn their attention to us. If that failed, we were on our own. In that eventuality, the only even feasible solution was to engage the services of a specialist fluvial salvage and recovery company. This posed a number of challenges, the first of which was to actually find such a fanciful entity. Despite our giving Google's algorithm an electronic cerebral haemorrhage, there didn't appear to be such a beast south of Antwerp. Secondly, you have to transport specialist hydraulic lifting equipment, the size of a small apartment block, diagonally across France by road. This can be done, but it involves knocking it down into manageable bits, stacking the bits onto specialised lorries, corralling the lorries into a convoy, sticking a couple of police cars fore & aft and then driving the whole caboodle diagonally across Europe, having first ascertained that there are no low bridges, narrow roads, tight corners, or cantilevered air-conditioning units lurking en route. When you get there, you have to reassemble the whole shooting match, spend fifteen minutes lifting the boat up and sticking it on another (empty) lorry you've thoughtfully brought with you and then reverse the whole process.

You wouldn't get much change out of two hundred grand, and that's before you factor in the inaccessibility of the grounding site and the difficulties of positioning heavy plant in a strong current. The boat and everything in it is only worth seventy grand. Our hopes rested on the skills, expertise and experience of the Cruas Republican Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (CRÉME). These hopes were not without foundation. We were their eighth grounding so far that year.

We watched with self-interested concentration. Yunel, the kayak king, had devised a cunning method of running two 30-metre lengths of heavy chain from the boat to shore. Firstly, he ran ropes from the boat to shore and tightened them up on the rope drums of the come-alongs. He then suspended the chain from the rope using cable ties at one-metre intervals. Once that was done, he made one end of the chain fast to the boat and fed the other end into the come-along.

When everything was balanced out to his satisfaction, he paddled to the midpoint of the tableau, and raised his arms like a conductor, which is effectively what he was. He dropped his hands and made circling motions. The two teams took up slack. He raised cupped hands together; both teams ratcheted up the come-alongs. A flat hand patting downwards slowed the chosen team down. A tapping forefinger elicited vigorous cranking. Unbidden, but unstoppable, the William Tell Overture played vividly in my head.

Ratchets clicked, chains rattled, ropes creaked and cleats groaned. The chains slid along the taut ropes like curtain rails until they reached the point where rope and chain diverged, whereupon the cable tie would snap, drop into the water and give a large fish a nasty case of constipation. RB1 quivered, slewed sideways, lurched forwards about a metre, and then stopped. Our hopes were not raised when the skipper climbed off the boat to check the depth. It only came up to his knees. The area was prone to silting and re-deposition, and RB1 had found a nice new shoal. This did not bode well for Birvidik. She needs 1.2 - 1.4 metres to float, which is nipple height on me. Knee-high just wouldn't cut it.

Undeterred, CRÉME went nuclear and brought in their secret weapon: a John Deere 7R 310. This 300-horse monster is the mother of all tractors and comes with its own dedicated hydraulic winch complete with a hundred metres of stainless steel wire rope, breaking strain C. 120 tonnes. They also deployed the SBS in the form of the previous night's jet ski, although we were initially at a loss as to how that could have any significant effect on 18 tonnes of stranded boat. All became clear in due course. With the tractor and the come-alongs working in concert, they steadily cranked up the force until the boat edged up onto the submerged bank. Then they stopped, had a cup of coffee and waited while Yunel made a phone call. We assumed he had a direct line to The Almighty.

Near enough. He had called the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, the company entrusted with ensuring the smooth running of the Rhône and its associated activities; maintaining the infrastructure, operating the locks, co-ordinating commercial river traffic, managing water levels, and making sure that the five nuclear power plants on its banks don't boil dry and blow a gasket.

Oh - and helping little piss-ant motorboats extricate themselves from the mess they'd got themselves into.

They shut off some of the downstream spillway sluices, which raised the water level at Cruas by about .1 of a metre. Every little bit helps. Then they radioed a bloody great hotel barge that was on its way, and told them to give it some welly as they passed Cruas, which they kindly did. In fact, I suspect they quite enjoyed it.

I'm not normally a fan of wash; it shakes the boat about and spills the Pouilly Fuisse. In very specific circumstances, though, it does have its uses. Especially when combined with the armoury already deployed. Every time a wave-peak hit it, the boat floated about thirty centimetres higher. The jet ski augmented this effect by circling the boat like an Apache round a waggon train, creating more wash. This, combined with the 10 cm increase in water level, was enough to allow the come-alongs to pull the boat half a metre or so before it grounded again. Step by step, half metre by half metre, RB1 crested the shoal bank, pivoted on the top, and slid triumphantly down the other side and into the deepwater channel.

That just left us. First in, last out.

Birvidik was harnessed, chained, and tied like a high court judge at an S&M parlour (Don't ask). She, though, posed a slightly more challenging assignment than did RB1. She was five tonnes heavier, needed half a metre more water in order to float, and there were no convenient, tsunami-producing cruise boats scheduled, so they saddled up the tractor and added that to the mix.

I must admit that I was beginning to harbour disloyal, and somewhat ungrateful, doubts about our would-be saviours' technical qualifications in this, somewhat specialist, field. My sceptical and paranoid subconscious sprang increasingly frequent and increasingly apocalyptic what-if scenarios on me. What if they block the inlet filter and seize the engine? What if they bend the propshaft and distort the hull? What if they punch a hole in the hull or spring a weld and sink the boat? Even with their new focused, surgical approach, the forces they were proposing to inflict on the boat were immense. Five mm steel is strong, but it has its limits.

Calling a halt now was a non-starter from the outset, on practical and financial grounds as well as the social conventions of honour, gratitude, obligation, and respect. We just had to grit our teeth and go with the flow.

Yunel paddled over to us and offered his services as helmsman/salvage engineer. We accepted. I realise that such a blatant abnegation of personal responsibility will cause apoplexy and death-by-indignation in old-school, proper big hairy sailors. Should I have the effrontery to enter the Yacht Club bar, a buzz of condemnatory mutterings will swell and thrum like a swarm of wasps trying to determine if there's a threat to the nest. Guarded glances will flick toward the door. Backs will be turned.

"Harrumph! That's him. Damned nerve of the man, showing his face in here. Let a bloody Frenchman drive his boat out of trouble. A bloody Frenchman! Brought shame upon the club. Man's a God-damned disgrace (Pardon my French)."

I don't care. I know when I'm outclassed, out-experienced, and out skilled. I have no shame; I'll say, do, and agree to, anything that's needed to get me what I want & out of trouble. No lie is too outrageous, no humiliation too shameful, no betrayal too disloyal. Mind you, I'm the epitome of rectitude compared with, er, what is his bloody name?

You know - blond hair, looks like a couple of storks have built a nest in it. Looks like a shar-pei dressed in an ill-fitting suit. It's on the tip of my tongue.

Got fired from The Telegraph for telling lies.

Tells lies to elderly, recently bereaved, ladies.

Genitalia in full working order

Oh it'll come back to me.

Unfortunately.


Yunel mounted Birvidik's console like a podium and signalled take up slack. Then he let everything loose at once. If RB1's rescue was a reworking of the William Tell Overture, Birvidik's was The Rite of Spring arranged for marine diesels, heavy lifting-gear and overstrained hawser, supported by chains, tractor & solo jet ski. Yunel was like a man possessed. He span the wheel until it hit the chocks, ramped up the engine full ahead, then full astern, then repeated the manoeuvre on opposite rudder, churning up the shoal bank and blasting it out with the prop. The cacophony swelled, roaring engines, squealing cables, groaning metal and teeth-on-edge screeches. The jet ski danced wraith-like in and out of the smoke billowing over the field of battle. Still Birvidik remained unmoved.

Then, just as we were feeling hope deflate, she shuddered and lurched forward. Not a lot, but enough to spur us on. We redoubled our efforts in one final putsch. She snatched forward, shook herself free and surged into the deepwater channel.

We won't know the full extent of the damage (if any) until we lift her out, but we've taken her as far as Armadon and nothing has shown so far, so fingers crossed. In fact, we're just approaching the pontoon now.

Hang on a minute. That looks a bit shallo...