A TURNIP FOR THE BOOKS - SUNDAY 20TH JULY - WILLEMSTAD TO DORDRECHT

"Early morning starts can be fun", I’ve heard it said, and with a bit of rain and a bit of wind apparently set to fill in later in the day, we thought we might give it a bit of a try.   

It wasn’t spectacularly early of course, just enough to have breakfast underway, but it was very pleasant, drifting along in a blanket of grey with only a hundred ships to keep us company going every which way, and the AIS happily ensuring that they knew we were there.  It was looking as though we’d be in Dordrecht comfortably in time for morning tea, when we received a call from the Harbour Master, asking if we’d terribly mind being a little later.

Slowing down, is something we’ve had a lot of experience with, so we assured him it wouldn’t be a problem, and that is precisely when things began to go awry.

After days of struggling with currents at speeds as low as five kilometres per hour, we quite suddenly found ourselves doing twelve.   Even with Mr P on tickover we could barely keep things below ten, so despite our assurances to the contrary we arrived early.  Thankfully someone had departed early leaving a spot just for us so all was well with the world.  After completing the necessary formalities we wandered off for a quick exploration of the deadest, quietest old town we’ve seen since the last time we walked through a graveyard. 

With our hearts set on a simple lunch, we stumbled on a cafe which did not appear to be open, despite it being ten minutes till early lunch o’clock, but the friendly staff helped us with a disappointingly insufficient snack menu and we set about enjoying our solitude, wondering how they could justify even opening.   While nibbling and sipping and generally breathing happily, we noticed the tables gradually filling, and shockingly massive piles of food that was certainly not on our menu, being delivered to them.   It seems that at lunch o’clock an entirely new menu magically appears, and had the friendly young lady known we wanted to eat, well she would have happily brought it out for us!

As we meandered our way back to the boat, we couldn’t help but notice that the streets were suddenly mysteriously almost teeming with people heading towards the centre of town, the cafes, closed thirty minutes before were abuzz, the transformation remarkable, as though we’d been the victim of some sort of practical joke.  

Much later, we read the tourist brochure “On Sunday, the shops begin to open at midday, and the town comes to life….” ahh.

So we’ve tried “early”, it didn’t work that well, tomorrow we’ll rise at a sensible hour and see if there's an improvement.

LIKE A SORE THUMB - SATURDAY 19TH JULY - WILLEMSTAD

Even fleet of motor cruises, we are something of an oddity.  Our Joyeux is awkwardly different with a number of redeeming features, none of them aesthetically pleasing.  She is just not the way people build boats, unless those people live on the Norfolk Broads in which case she’s exactly how people build boats. 

Our “always-on-the-cusp-of-coming-back-into-fashion” swimming pool blue cabin tops never seem to compliment any background, yet more and more it is attracting compliments for its retro 80’s chic, by those confirming their doubtful expertise in fashion,

To be fair, fashion is said to run in forty year cycles so we are right at the top of the cycle for reasons that seem completely inexplicable.

Quite near the absolute limit of our attention spans when we arrived yesterday, and unaware that there were three separate harbours in town under one management, we logically chose the wrong one, the one principally for sailing yachts, and quickly found what we thought was our allocated berth, to be occupied.   

We squeezed into a handy spot temporarily, which might have been three sizes too small, and after a very friendly chat with the harbour master, to our great relief were given permission to remain where we’d settled.

Fortunately for the adoring public, this put us on full view of anyone promenading between the public carpark and the old town.  Willemstad is a beautiful village with a rich history and fortifications to underline that, and of course a windmill which seems to be trying to peek over the hedge, calling us into town whenever it thinks we are looking too relaxed, which seems to have been most of the day.

It did not take a very long time at all to explore the perimeter of the town and all it contains this morning.  Of course we were being careful not to be drawn into too many museums and places of historic interest  for fear of overtaxing ourselves, so it’s been a perfect place to spend a completely free day, 

We’ll probably go back for a walk in the evening, even if only because that gives us an excuse to go back onto the walkway and view our little boat standing like a rose among thorns, and it will make the windmill happy.

IN THE DOLDRUMS - FRIDAY 18TH JULY - WEMELDINGE TO WILLEMSTAD

 

Dave and Ria’s advice is usually without fault, so when they suggested that we spend a few days exploring the natural attractions of region we were in, we gave it serious thought.  Then we thought about how it will take another day to cross another estuary and the forecast for a marked deterioration in the weather on its way, and we decided with mixed feelings to continue our run north.  

When the time came to depart, we were still tempted to turn left and procrastinate, but faced with a glassy calm sea on a day,which they had warned would be long and hard, decided to stick with our decision.  On this particular topic we took so little notice of them they could have been mistaken for our parents, but we were keen to get on.

We pressed on into the wild grey yonder.   

Over the course of the morning we did not notice any change in the conditions.  Little did we know, we were frogs in a pot, and we were being slowly brought up to temperature!

The beauty of the greys and stillness of the water kept us transfixed, and keeping an eye out for seals was a novel distraction as we moved ever onwards against the tide at a steady six kilometres per hour, saluted byrather than waved at by hundreds of wind turbines lining our route standing patiently immobile.   

By the third hour of the morning with the hint of frustration creeping in, barely fifteen enjoyable kilometres had gone by, barely one third of the way to our destination, the temperature began to increase, the wind did not, the world began to melt into a kind of uniform grey splodge.   Not that there is anything wrong with grey splodge, but it’s a dish best served cold, and as the temperature reached the mid thirties on board we were beyond caring whether it came in any other shade.

Shade was what we longed for actually, or perhaps an air conditioner, but even if we had one, with not one wind turbine in the country able to turn even slightly there was probably not enough power to go round anyway.

Still, in the absence of any alternative we pressed on, pressing cool drinks into each other’s hands as we went along, wishing for the shade of a tree.  Oddly in our discomfort, we were passed by a continuous procession of speedier boats than ours laden with near naked, bright red people apparently enjoying the novelty of being dry roasted, admittedly in their cases with the benefit of significant apparent breeze.

Yes, the day was very long, and yes we had some mixed feelings about “missing” that south western corner of the country, and yes we had certainly had enough by the end of it, but two days later we are still slightly euphoric, pinching ourselves at the luck that the weather has brought, ready to make some plans.

A TOUCH OF THE BLUES - THURSDAY 17TH JULY - SAS VAN GENT TO WEMELDINGE

We have a friend who accidentally sailed around the world, and today is a perfect example of how that can happen to anyone.

Completely in line with the forecast we had a nice day ahead of us, perfect weather, twelve kilometres and a sea lock filled with big ships to go until our destination, so there was no sense in starting early, after all that’s our plan for tomorrow to catch the incoming tide.   

There were only a few butterflies at the great lock at Terneuzen while we worked out how to fit six ships and four pleasure boats in it when clearly it was only designed for six ships and two pleasure boats, but the friendly skipper of one of the ships took our lines and we had a four thousand ton floating bollard and not a care in the world while the lock did it’s thing.

Sticking to our plan, we departed the lock and choofed off for a few kilometres toward our destination to get some sort of idea what we might be in for in the morning into the startling blue stillness.  We’d arrived a bit early to catch the tide so progress was slow, but when not one of the hazards we’d been concerned about presented themselves, and with the tide slowly turning in our favour, we simply kept going.   

To be clear, if millponds had ships passing at thirty kilometres an hour, this was a millpond.   To be even clearer, even on a millpond it’s not particularly easy to estimate how quickly ships travelling at four times our speed, are closing and while there was never a chance of an accident, it was reassuring to hear Shipping Control calling a tanker to enquire whether they’d seen us crossing their track, through the magic of AIS referring to us by name to be perfectly clear.  

Dave and Ria, utilising the same magic were watching our progress live on the internet from somewhere in the north, hilariously updating us on our progress presumably in case we weren’t paying attention, capturing screen shots of each near death experience for the benefit of future generations.   

Now, here we are, on the other side of the Schelde quite accidentally weeks from where we thought we’d be, in a bit of a daze as we contemplate what our next move might be.

WELCOME TO THE NETHERLANDS - WEDNESDAY 16TH JULY - SAS VAN GENT

 

The evening calm belies the day and night that preceded it.

With squalls throughout the early part of the day, and a constant wind strong enough to blow a dog off its chain, conditions were perfect for doing a nice spot of not much.   

There’s a supermarket just across the road, so it was an easy exercise to stock up on provisions between the squalls, but given that simple mechanical jobs can become complicated in a short period of time, we chose to let Mr Perkins slumber in his box until the weather had cleared completely.   No doubt because of this precaution, the simple adjustments when we did get to them, did not bring any great complication, although there are still one or two little unsolved mysteries which will need monitoring.

Tomorrow the forecast is for near perfect conditions, which has done nothing at all to solve our dilemma of where we will go next.   To our north, the Scheldt Estuary is all that lies between us and the rest of the Netherlands, but it does present challenges at the best of times, which are the only times crossing it should be contemplated in our boat at least.  Fortunately a window of opportunity appears to be opening later in the week, and we are in a bit of a bind as to whether we should take it.  

The estuary is shallow and has strong currents which kick up short steep waves in even a small amount of wind and the huge number of ocean going ships travelling at many times the speed we are capable of, create awkward cross chop adding to the discomfort and in some conditions, the dangers associated with dropping off a near vertical wave.   

Short, light, flat bottomed boats such as ours are not designed to cope with waves and chop and wind, so it would be foolish to contemplate in anything but perfect conditions with a favourable tide, even then the wash from container ships could provide significant challenges at least to the contents of our cupboards.

We are a little nervous, perhaps more than a little, and perhaps unnecessarily so, but having waited for the weather to settle tomorrow we’ll go down to the sea in our ship,  gently poke around to see if we are comfortable enough to proceed, or whether a much more cocnservative new plan will unfold.  

Today, we’ll just enjoy the conditions we have.

THE FIRST TEST - TUESDAY 15TH JULY - BRUGES TO SAS VAN GENT

“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.  

LIFE IS A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT - MONDAY 14TH JULY - BRUGES

Like static on the dial, a look comes back in style.  Mr Perkins he just lost it for a while.

Quite a while.

When Franky came back (which is not the lyric from yet another song), it was quarter to lunchtime so our hopes of a long relaxing meal on a shady square in a little back corner of town were dashed.   He figured that it would only be fifteen minutes or so and he’d be on his way, but it wasn’t terribly long before in the great country and western tradition, the tears once again began to flow.  

The brand new filter housing fitted like a glove, but the fittings didn’t match the old odd Perkins ones, as we worked along the fuel line, every thing we touched needed modification or repair before it could be reassembled.  While Franky went off to have some hydraulic lines made, one of us sat quietly honing the faces of all the brass fittings.   At ten minutes to tea time, he came after all that kicking and screaming, into the world once more.

There he sat, purring like a kitten, running as close to Swiss watch-like as any Perkins ever has, with shiny new bits and polished old bits and with a little luck that’s the way he will remain for some time to come.

Strange though it may seem, it took something to break to finally make the repairs we’d been trying to arrange for years.  The problem seems to have been that in the absence of a breakdown, everyone we spoke with has a sense of foreboding about “touching anything that’s not broken”.  We’ve been warned for ever about opening cans of worms, and have always been disappointed in our ability to arrange suitable pre-emptive repair.

It’s not that we have anything but affection for our dear old MrP, heaven knows, we’ve given him enough attention, but if we may finish on the song we began this post with:-

If he takes us back to where it started, we will melt his heart of steel!