It was as if they knew we were coming and were going to get us back for all those phone calls and emails!
“In Belgium”, we were often told before we brought the boat here, “everything works”. This no doubt is why after six trouble free kilometres after setting off for the first time this summer, we encountered a lifting bridge where nothing did.
After thirty minutes and a relaxing morning tea, all was sorted and we were able to get underway once more, picking our way through the sailing schools in Nieuwport where our next navigational obstacle - the big lock known as Sint-Jorissluis would not be working the way everything else in Belgium does until six o’clock.
This was fortuitous as it gave one of us time to polish one of the cabin sides, and the other to slow down at last and have a rather long snooze.
To be a little bit fair to Belgium, the lock WAS back in operation an hour early, and the nice man in the control centre did allow us through all of the bridges ninety minutes before the scheduled operating times, and before we could say “that worked out well” we were in Oudenburg, exactly where we had planned to be.
Thirty-three kilometres in eleven hours. Not too shabby in the scheme of things.
Perhaps things do work after all.
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