12th December 2024:
Winter Paddling 2024

This is proving to be a busy winter for paddling on Lake Geneva. Not only have Rhone, Vevey and Italie been out on their weekend tourist trips from Geneva and in the eastern part of the lake but also Vevey, now joined by Italie, have been filling in on the main ferry services from Lausanne on weekdays as well. When I was there on Monday 2nd December Vevey was running the main ferry connection leaving Lausanne at 12.40 and 14.40 for Thonon followed by a relief single run from Lausanne at 17.15 to Evian. This is one of the busiest connections of the day taking the hordes of frontaliers, who live in France but who work in Switzerland, back home.

All this paddle steamer activity has been caused by the absence in service of two new hybrid diesel electric ferries which were ordered as long ago as 2020 with the expectation that they would both be in service in 2023. I saw the first one, Thonon les Bains, out on trials on the lake in 2023 after which she returned to the shipyard at Lausanne Ouchy where she has since remained. She was out on further trials in the autumn of this year.

The ferries are designed to have aluminium hulls and superstructures, to be 60 m LOA, carry up to 700 passengers and will feature advanced hybrid power and propulsion systems with two 920 kW diesel engines, two 225 kW electric motors and a 599 kWh Leclanché battery pack. The high-speed Wärtsilä 14 engines which were chosen for the project are compliant with the stringent EU Stage V emissions standard for inland waterway vessels, which came into force in the EU earlier this year. High efficiency and environmental compliance were key factors in the selection of this engine.

“Environmental sustainability was strongly emphasized in the specifications for this newbuild project. We are, therefore, extremely pleased and proud that the Wärtsilä 14 engine was selected to provide the power and reliability needed, while complying with the EU Stage V emissions standard,” says Johan Penninga, Account Manager, Wärtsilä Marine Power. “Minimizing the emissions from their operations is of great importance to CGN, and these new vessels are designed to operate cleanly and efficiently. The Wärtsilä engine was chosen with these criteria very much in mind,” said Martin Einsiedler, Head of naval architecture and engineering at Shiptec.

Now two years later than originally planned the first of these Thonon Les Bains is expected to enter service from 12th December. Although not exactly analogous maybe there are echoes of CalMac’s long awaited Glen Sannox here.

Work is currently in hand at Ouchy refurbishing one of the berths….

Here is Leman on the left about to make her 12.30 ferry departure for Evian on 2nd December with Vevey waiting in the distance to come in and occupy her berth when she has gone.

The afternoon crossings to Thonon was very quiet on my trip with just 20 passengers aboard the 12.40 departure and about the same number coming back. It was for the 17.15 departure to Evian for which Vevey’s capacity was really needed.

It was a lovely day with the temperature around 10C, the wind from the south west about 5 to 10 knots and a hazy overcast sky.

One of the issues with handling paddle steamers is trying to avoid landing too heavily. But however hard a captain tries sometimes it is pretty inevitable. This has a cumulative effect on the steamer’s rubbing band not only potentially damaging it but also over time setting the whole structure in. When KC was returned to service in 1985 the wood of the rubbing bands had been renewed but not the basic structure in which it was held in place. In her former life on the Dart KC pretty much always berthed starboard side to both at Dartmouth and Totnes. To the casual observer outside the paddle boxes both sides looked the same but inside the gap between the outboard edges of the paddle floats and the inside of the rubbing band was a good six inches on the port side but barely an inch on the starboard side such was the cumulative effect of all those heavy landings between 1924 and 1965 setting the whole rubbing band structure in.

This is a particular issue for paddlers with feathering paddle wheels as the eccentric mechanism for controlling the feathering gear is generally mounted inside the paddle box on the inside of the rubbing band. So cumulative heavy landings have an effect on that too, jiggling it up with each heavy landing. Over time this sets the whole structure in and so making it ever so slightly out of alignment with the arms going off to the floats. Inevitably this sets up stresses and strains until eventually a crack may develop somewhere leading to part of the structure failing.

The Swiss mitigate against heavy landings both by the structure of their piers which are deliberately designed to be bouncy. Look at the pic above. All the piles alongside which the steamers berth are separate from the pier itself. When a steamer lands heavily there is a lot of give in them to absorb the shock. You can see them physically moving. And because the steamers have their gangway positions either forward of, or abaft, the paddle wheels the part of the rubbing band adjacent to the feathering mechanism never, or rarely ever, bangs into a pier itself.

So if you would like a winter paddle steamer ride then Switzerland is the place to go with paddle steamer connections on the main ferry services from Lausanne at least up to 12th December as well as some weekend tourist trips. And on Lake Lucerne the paddle steamer Uri is scheduled to be out for some evening fondue cruises on Fridays and Saturdays in the run up to Christmas. Happy sailing!