Police, Camera, Action

We had to leave our sleepy little berth under the bridge at 7am to enable us to get through the paris timed water route. To simplify this, you can only go downstream for about 20 minutes of an hour and and upsteam for 20, the remainder is for boats to clear the journey.
My plan at this early point in the morning was to reverse out of our bridge span and swing round whilst reversing, then motor forward, slowly crossing the river to follow the barge which was running downstream.
Unfortunatley it was badly judged and the reverse swing did not work as I’d hoped as she would not swing very quickly at all so i gave up trying and turned to the right and motored ahead instead. The downstream flow was, by this point, taking us perilously close the the water police boats and we manage to swing around with less space than i had hoped for, to put it mildly.
We tootled off downstrwam following the barge through paris.

Two minutes later we were boarded by the river police!

Being stopped by the river police is not like a road stopping, you do not pull up somewhere safe and get told off, oh no, you carry on driving, observing the minimum speed limit, missing the bridges, staying aware of other boats, not crushing the police boat strapped to your side whilst being interrogated by three armed police officers!
Out came all my paper work for inspection and in broken french I was reprimanded for my manouver and breathalised!

Comments are closed.