Ireland to France (the slow way)

This is going to be a long post beacuse I basically traveled non-stop for 2 days. I bought a 10 Day Eurail pass to save transportation costs during my trip. One of the benefits of having the pass is it allows for 50% off of the ferry journey from Ireland to France on Irish Ferries. I figured why not cross the English Channel on a ferry (If I had planned this trip well in advance I could have probably found a flight from Dublin to Paris for cheaper than the ferry). The ferry goes from Rosslare in Ireland to Roscof in France. I took a bus from Dublin to Rosslare (about 90 miles). In typical Irish fashion the bus was scheduled to make it to Rosslare in about 3 hours. Because of traffic it ran almost an hour late. I almost missed the ferry. 4 hours to go 90 miles seems ridiculous to me, but I guess that is just Ireland.
The ferry was a pretty big ship that carried cars and people. All of the crew on the "Irish Ferries" ship were Russians who spoke English and French. The ferry ride takes 18 hours to cross the English Channel to France. It is a long distance as you can see on the map. The interior of the ship is quite worn. It is really in need of refurbishment. Some parts smell pretty bad too. I hung out in a lounge for a few hours reading and watching the sea go by behind the ship. I felt like I was coming down with a cold and I had nothing else to do so I went to sleep early. The sleeping area for people who didn't pay for a cabin was just a bunch of airline style seats that reclined a lot. I ended up sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. Not too bad. It was a really hard floor though. In the morning it felt like my internal organs were bruised. I did get to sleep for 11 hours though which was nice.
The ferry arrived in France on time. I wanted to try to catch the train to Paris that left at 11h30 (11:30am) about 40 minutes after the ferry arrived. Plenty of time I thought. I was first in line to get off when they opened the pedestrian door on the side of the ship. Beacuse it was a really low tide however, they couldn't use the pedestrian bridge. I went down to the car decks to try to walk off the ship, but they wouldn't let me do that either. They told me I had to wait for all the cars to get off then a bus would come get us. An hour later we were just getting off the ship. Needless to say I had missed my train. The next train to Paris was 2 hours after the first, but it was sold out. The next was 2 hours later and I got a reservation for that one. I took a train from Roscof to Morlaix and then the TGV from Morlaix to Paris. That put me in Paris four hours later than I expected around 20h30 (8:30pm). Luckily there was still one train that evening that went from Paris to Orléans, my ultimate destination. I left paris around 22h (10pm) and got to Orléans at 23h (11pm) where I was met by Fabien's father Claude. This wouldn't be the last time on my trip where I caught the last possible train headed to my destination because of unforseen delays. I would not recommend this route to other travellers. I basically traveled non-stop for about a day and a half which is really too much. I could have flown the same distance in probably an hour to an hour and a half.