PIA = Pain in the ass.
Thank you everyone for the answers! I guess it's the radio aspect of it that I was most curious about, negotiating passing and such. On land, I've never had problems even in places where no one spoke English and I didn't speak the local language. For basic tourist things, pointing and gesturing has always been sufficient.
As Denver said above, the French are no no worse than anyone else in Europe.
Yes, VHF is an issue, but simply not important because there are many people, even on working boats, that may not have fluency in the land they are passing through.
Europeans expect you to know the rules of the road period.
And yes, they can be shy talking on the radio to an English speaker.
I heard an entire conversation in Dutch, as this barge and a ferry wondered if the "English" boat understood which side of the river to be on since the ferry was tethered with two row boats on the surface showing where the tether was. In other words the ferry used the current of the river to go from side to side by being tethered in the middle.
I figured it out; and thanked them in Dutch, which was the extent of my Dutch speaking.
But the chatter on VHF was much less once in eastern Europe. One does have to call port control in Poland, Latvia and Estonia before entering port, and generally just got a curt response is at all.
In Tallinn, they did tell me to wait, and that was clearly stated.
In Scandinavia, while many more people spoke English, there was much LESS radio talk and I had none for almost tow months.
At times I would have to dock without ever talking to anyone.
I just got back from my northern Spain reconnoiter. In the two marinas that I really needed information, A Coruna and Vigo, no one spoke English and Julie had to do the translating.
It will be a very interesting year for me.
