“Sas van Gent” in the header, will tell those who have an atlas to hand, that suddenly we are in the Netherlands, and from that one could easily draw a conclusion that all is well with the world.
Of course it is, even if travelling seventy miles in a day does take its toll.
As is our way, we decided enough was enough this morning, gave Mr P a wake up tickle, turned right out of the port this morning with only the vaguest of destinations in mind, then we turned left before Gent in the direction of the Netherlands where once again we found ourselves playing with the really really big boys.
To emphasise the scale of our fellow waterway users, in the image above, if the wind turbines and nuclear reactor are not a giveaway, the tiny ship moored against the bigger one in this photo is about one and a half times as wide as we are long, it’s around 120 metres long too, or three times the length of the allotment on which our house is built. The big one? Well there’s a point where size really doesn’t matter, if one was to get hit by one of those, one would probably stay hit!
Sharing a lock when the time comes, will be a new and perhaps character building experience.
Our new AIS (Automatic Identification System) passed its shakedown with flying colours. It is not compulsory to have one fitted, and in truth it’s the kind of luxury that active cruise control is in a car, it’s easily done without but it makes life easier. The big locks and bridges appreciate knowing where we are, and we like the fact that the ships can see us too. From our perspective one would think they would be easy to spot in a relatively small crowded waterway, and of course mostly they are, but they typically travel at more than twice our speed and have a nasty habit of springing out from hidden docks just to test our mettle. We were surprised at how much easier avoiding them was now that we are able to read their speed and direction in real time from five kilometres away.
As for Mr P, well he seemed keen to get on with, and we pushed him rather harder than normal for eight or nine hours, as we need to get a gauge on which direction we might head over the coming days, and we need to be sure he can be counted on. We aren’t sure yet. There’s some water mysteriously appearing in his drip tray that might be a sign of impending doom, and one of the fuel lines has a misty leak which may or may not be a portent of more trouble, but we’ll check it out before we move.
The weather forecast for the next day or two says something like “best to stay in port and read a book” so in the name of good seamanship we might just do that.
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