Birvidik

It's a constant source of wonder, the human brain. It has a computing power of one exaflop (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 floating-point operations per second), a capacity not even approached by CPUs until this year when the new supercomputer, 'Frontier' came on line, but it's ofttimes as thick as a brick. Yup - the average slime mould could frequently give the human brain a good run for its money.

Evolution's crowning achievement shows a sad disregard for intellectual consistency. It disregards facts that question its already held beliefs, whilst simultaneously relishing, embellishing and propagating the most outrageously obvious fabrications just because they happen to accord with its distorted world view. This is particularly evident when there is conflict between statistics and anecdote. Anecdote wins hands down - every time.

A good example of this lies in attitudes to crime, and assessments of the prevalence of crime. The best source of data we have for this is the Crime Survey of England & Wales, and its findings are consistent: Crime has been steadily dropping for thirty years.

So how come 78% of the population are convinced that crime is rising?

Well, take your pick, but my money's on politicians and the media.

I'm just as bad. In fact, I'm worse because I should know better - I've got a basic understanding of stats. But that doesn't save me from the siren-song of availability bias. In common with most people, I have little personal experience of being on the receiving end of crime.

When we started cruising in 2006, I had been a victim of crime three times (OK - four times if you count being made to listen to Madonna butchering 'American Pie'), viz.

1976, Jersey - had a beat-up Moggie 1000 nicked.
1990, Jersey - had a 2,5 metre RIB vandalised.
1983, Seville - Smash & grab via the passenger window while stuck at traffic lights.

That's once every nineteen years, so I'm well overdue.

This is hardly surprising, though. For the last twenty years I've been a yottie, and cruising is generally a pretty crime-free lifestyle. This is partially because there isn't that much crime about anyway, but a major factor is the lack of anonymity. Pull into any anchorage, harbour, or wintering hole and you'll be surrounded by people you already know or already know about. Every yottie knows everything there is to know about every other yottie. Being anonymous gives a protective invisibility cloak that encourages the acting out of innate criminal tendencies. This doesn't work where everyone knows everyone else's business. So small villages, tightly-knit communities, closely related family groups and the like, tend to have little or no crime. Most of the places yotties visit fall into this category. No, if crime's what you're after, head for the anonymity of the nearest big city.

So anyway, there we were, moored in the middle of Lyon (population 2,308,818).

We had two guests on board with us, and we thought it would be interesting to show them around Lyon. It was great. Lots to do and see. Masses of entertainment, history, culture, restaurants, bars and a public transport system second only to Amsterdam's.

Like Amsterdam, Lyon has a well-designed, integrated public transport system interlinking trams, trains, buses, and a metro, all running under the aegis of a common ticketing system. As a result, it is extremely well patronised.

Absolutely heaving, in fact.

As are the ticketing machines.

This presents a potent mix of anonymous crowds, credit cards, and confused, bewildered tourists - an ideal hunting-ground for the hungry predator.

Our guards had already been lowered by the fact that thus far, everyone had been supremely courteous, helpful and friendly, so when we were approached by a smiling Frenchwoman, early twenties, smartly-dressed, immaculately coiffured, and she asked Chris, in accentless English, if he wanted any help, our antennae didn't even twitch.

At first.

Well, perhaps a bit.

Quite a lot, actually.

There was something about her manner, her demeanour that just didn't quite ring true. On top of which, the advice she was giving was wrong, so obviously wrong that even we knew it was wrong. Nevertheless, I complied. I inserted my card, tapped in the PIN, and put a totally unnecessary €6.80 top up on our tickets.
"In God's name, why?", you exclaim, incredulously (and with good reason). "Are you a complete imbecile or just a weak-willed, easily manipulated Jessie?"

Well, both. And neither. I plead Britishness. One just can't go around accusing complete strangers of being thieves. It would cause a scene. One might make an exception if one came upon a complete stranger in one's dining room loading one's family silver into a bag marked 'One's SWAG', especially if he/she/it/they was/were wearing a black mask and a rather démodé jumper with horizontal yellow and black stripes. Even then, though, one should remain cognisant of the possibility that he (/etc.) might be an actor getting into character or had lost his (/etc.) way en route to a fancy dress party.

In any case, I didn't really see that I had much to lose - €6.80 tops, so I went along with the charade for the sake of a quiet life. I didn't see the big picture, did I.
Our suspicions were confirmed when we got off the metro. I went to get my wallet from my pocket, and there it wasn't.

By pooling what we each saw, or heard, we managed to piece together their modus operandi. Yes, their. This was a four-man team, or, to give credit where it's due, a four-woman team. It comprised The Scout, The Dip and two Blockers
.
The Scout was our chic, anglophone, purported mentor. Her job was fivefold:

1 Identify a likely target, the older, frailer, more confused, pressurised, harassed and bewildered, the better. So naturally, she picked on me.

2 Discover where the target keeps his (/etc.) money and bank cards.

3 Shoulder surf the target and memorise the PIN that he (/etc.) punch(es) in the machine.

4 Identify the target to the others and inform the Dip of the whereabouts of his (/etc.) wallet/purse/moneybelt/pension book/Keister bag.

5 Persuade the target to enter the most crowded carriage.

The scout then hands over to the other members of the team. The blockers barge into the carriage as if in a minor altercation, pushing, shoving and jostling each other and, more importantly, the target, in this case, me. While the target is thrown off-guard and off-balance, and distracted by the jostling, the dip deftly removes his (/etc.) wallet. It was a very slick, well-oiled operation, carried out with practiced aplomb. I couldn't help but admire their confident chutzpah.

And I can't help but hope they rot in Hell.

Their haul was €185 in cash plus €600 in ATM withdrawals and a contactless-fuelled shopping frenzy taking in most of the posher emporia of downtown Lyon. That explains the scout's chic ensemble. They also showed good investment planning by stocking up on metro tickets to facilitate screwing the next poor unsuspecting bastard. Oh the irony!

It's not the money so much, though, it's the bloody inconvenience and hassle. Apart from the cash and two debit cards, the wallet also contained my driving licence, my European Health Card and, most galling of all, my all-singing, all-dancing, all bells & whistles, ultra-modern, super-whizzo-ace biometric Portuguese residency card. These things are like a cross between the Holy Grail and rocking-horse shit; They're extremely rare and the world and his wife spend all their waking hours trying to get one. The latest Government estimate puts the backlog of applications at 347,000 and climbing.

To all intents and purposes, possession of a biometric residencia neatly sidesteps virtually every regulatory consequence of Brexit. Every limitation, every restriction, every constraint disappears in a puff of bureaucratic smoke when you wave the magic card under the nose of even the most hard-boiled, anglophobic apparatchik.

And I had one. Or at least I used to have one. It took me eighteen months of threats, flattery and negotiations with Portuguese officialdom, but I got one. I could saunter insouciantly through EU immigration, smiling only slightly patronisingly at the Hoi Polloi glumly taking root in the 'Non EU' cattle pen. I could treat the 90/180 day rule with supercilious amusement.

Not now, I couldn't. Not now that the Fagin-bloody-ettes had taken it from my wallet, giggled sarcastically at the photograph and, ignorant of its immense value and totemic power, tossed it casually in the bunny bin.

Now, I am going to have to gird up my loins and once more line up to do battle with Portuguese bureaucracy. I should be about 347,459th in the queue.

So I've joined the 78%.

Crime!? - It's bloody everywhere. Streets ain't safe for decent people no more. The police are worse than bloody useless; they should spend their time stampin' aht this epidemic of pick-pocketin' an' knife-crime, not bustin' some law-abidin' Beemer driver after a session dahn the Whip & Gibbet.

What?! Crime's actually going dahn? Bullshit! Doan' gimme all that statistics arsewipe wiv its nancy-boy standard deviations and its poncy p-values and its bleedin' clever-bollocks regression coefficients.

An' you can stuff yer commie representative samples where the sun don't shine.

If you want to know abaht crime, Sunny-Jim, you wanna ask someone 'oose bin at the sharp end.

Someone like me.

You don't see one for months ...

Then you get a blog entry the size of a breeze block.

So I've split it into four more digestible chunks. If you unaccountably manage to complete a section, move onto the one that follows by clicking 'older'. or 'contents'

Good luck.

"What do you do all day?", ask the uninitiated with tedious regularity. Well, judging by recent events, our days are filled to overflowing with getting into trouble, getting out of trouble, clearing up the mess that trouble had left behind, and writing long, rambling blogs detailing the aforementioned trouble.

These last few weeks, for example, have been so bounteously blessed with disasters that I haven't had time to draw breath, let alone put finger to keyboard and record them on the blogosphere.

The shower drain-pump finally gave in on the unequal struggle with our combined bodily detritus, gave out a defiant, gurgled death-rattle and gave up the ghost. We managed to hit a boat as we were attempting to moor up in a strong current in Chalon, an offence that was punished even unto the fourth fold by subsequent arrivals. I got myself comprehensively de-walleted by a resident gang of young, female pickpockets on the Lyon metro and the piece de resistance was to run up on a reef and find ourselves stuck high and dry for three days.

Any of these could warrant a blog in its own right, but I'm going to have to prioritise here, so I'm going for the 'Last In - First Out' principle. Hence - the grounding it is.

Those of you with long attention spans and even longer memories, will recall that over the whole eight years of our travels on the inland waterways, we have been plagued by low water levels. Whole sections have been closed, available depths reduced to critical, and widths shrunk too small to allow two vessels to pass.

"Not this year!" we crowed. "This year we're going down The Rhône. That's not going to run out of water."

Bloody right it's not.

Two thousand and twenty-four is on course for record rainfall in Europe. Canals and rivers are now being closed because there's too much of the bloody stuff. Calm, placid backwaters have been transformed into raging torrents, reducing headroom on bridges, eroding levées, bursting banks, and flooding towns, fields, roads, railways, and nuclear power stations.

The Rhône, though, has (so far, at least) escaped the worst of this. However, it's not the benign somnolent giant that it usually is this time of the year; water levels are rising, and flow rates are increasing in step.

Ah yes - flow rates.

I learnt to sail in the Channel Islands, as I never tire of boasting to anyone who'll listen (or anyone who won't, for that matter). "I've transited the Alderney Race." I proclaim with smug, quietly understated hubris.

The Alderney Race? - Hah!

The Alderney Race can do eight knots downhill with the wind behind it. That's near as spit ten kilometres per hour. The Rhône can do that before breakfast, and that's without changing into flood mode. The Race spreads this speedy turbulence out over an area the size of Maidstone, leaving loads of space to bagatelle, bounce, and bugger about in. The Rhone funnels the same current through spaces the size of a football pitch and enhances the challenge with a liberal scattering of dykes, barrages, groynes, weirs, disused locks, floating forestry, and submerged walls. Head upstream and you'll be chucking out smoke like a Maltese bus and still be lucky to overtake someone on the towpath crawling on hands and knees over broken glass. Head downstream and you'll burn a thimble-full of diesel a fortnight, but you'll have the steering response and manoeuvrability of a lawnmower on a black run at Obergurgl.

The real killer, though, is when you to try to turn round.

It's geometry - you can't get around it. At some point, you have to end up side-on to the current. In this position, you are travelling sideways at three metres per second and have about as much control over the boat as Miss Goadeasy, the supply teacher, has over set 10-feral near the end of double maths on Friday afternoon.

Which brings us to The Unpleasantness at Cruas.

Cruas is an interesting, and convenient little stop between Valence and Viviers. Its approach and entry, though, require knowledge, preparation, skill, and consummate boatmanship, as well as calm, measured consideration, good weather, and an inordinate amount of luck.

Well, five out of seven ain't bad.

The pilot is quite detailed on the approach to Cruas, as well it might be. The channel runs East to West, which puts it at 90 degrees to the current. Good game, good game. To further complicate matters, it is situated in a narrowing of the river, which increases the flow and produces chaotic eddies. Downstream of the entrance, there is an extensive area of hazards - reefs, rocks, groynes and a submerged wall, all marked off by thundering great concrete pillar spars. Just to put the cherry on the top, the channel is only twenty metres wide, and the water is about as transparent as a chocolate milkshake.

Oh - and the echosounder is accurate +/- about ten feet.

So, in essence, your problem reads as follows: (You may turn over your papers now)

You have the con of a boat, length 12.5 metres, beam 4 metres, draft 1.4 metres, gross laden weight 18 tonnes, engine 135 H.P. You are to manoeuvre your vessel through an entrance channel 20 metres wide, running at 90 degrees to a current of ten kilometres per hour. You will be free of the current once past the green spar to starboard. (100 marks)

Marks will be awarded for unscathed entry, style, panache, and a plausible pretence of confidence.
Marks will be deducted for:
Whimpering pathetically: (- 2 marks)
Screaming uncontrollably: (-3 marks)
Urinary incontinence: (-5 marks)
Double incontinence: (-7 marks) (+ 2 skid marks)
Crashing: (- 10 marks)
Running aground: (-10 marks)
Running hard aground: (-12 marks)
Running really hard aground: (-15 marks)
Writing off the propellor (- 10 marks per blade)
Writing off the rudder (- 20 marks)
Punching a hole in the hull: (-25 marks)
Sinking: (-150 marks)

Negative scores are permitted.


Things started off according to plan. Liz is an accomplished helmswoman, far superior to me. She controls the boat with the finesse, accuracy, and attention to detail of an Olympic dressage finalist.

We were coming with the current, so phase one was to go well past the entrance, turn round where there was plenty of manoeuvring room, and crawl back up against the current - nice and slow with plenty of steerage. As we approached the channel entry point, stomachs tightening, Liz took a deep breath and went for it, full ahead and wheel hard over to port, aiming to follow the pilot's stern instructions to pass as close to the green upstream marker spar as possible.

"Right,10-Feral, here's your Friday afternoon challenge"

The current is running North to South at 10kph. If Liz lines up for the channel as far upstream and close to the green spar as depth allows, use v=s/t to calculate how long she has before the current carries her the 21 metres onto the opposite shoal.

"Surprisingly, that's right, Nero Divers, - 7 ½ seconds."

Well that's not going to work is it? She'd have the boat balanced on a rocky spike like a fairy on a Christmas tree before you could say 'Loss Adjuster'.

Luckily, she has another trick up her raglan helmswoman's sleeve, namely the Ferry-glide. This is easier to explain graphically, but this platform doesn't support graphics, so we'll give it a go verbally.

Imagine looking down on the boat, which is positioned at the centre of a clock face. The current, if left to its own nefarious devices, will carry it to 6 o'clock and its associated shoals etc:

↓

Point the boat to 12 o'clock and give it just the right amount of power & you're not going anywhere:

↨

Ease the rudder over to about 10:30, ↖, throttle up by exactly the right amount, et voila! - you
beetle off to nine o'clock, straight through the entrance channel:

←

So she did, and had us trogging straight down the channel, hugging the upstream edge, as strongly recommended by the pilot. We started to breathe again. Safety, comfort, food, drink and adulation beckoned enticingly. We turned and smiled at each other.

Remember that seemingly encouraging note from the pilot; 'You will be free of the current once past the green spar to starboard'. We hadn't really thought through the full implications of that seemingly innocuous piece of information. Being conventional little souls, we were going forwards. This meant that the bow would get into the lee of the current first, while the stern would remain subject to its full force. The resulting gross imbalance of forces caused Birvidik to execute a sharp right turn. Eighteen tonnes of boat, travelling at 10 kph, has 4 times the energy of an assault rifle bullet at point-blank range. There was no way to stop it. Birvidik ploughed into the rocky, overgrown spit. The bow rose up the ballast of the spit, parted the brush and scrub, and came to rest like a stranded whale, the pulpit nestled in a bush, less than a metre from the green spar.

That close enough for you?