5/7 — 5/8 Elburg: For me it is an uncomfortable feeling when people go out of their way to help you and there is no way you can ever pay them back. Many times, you know that you will likely never even see them again. In Holland we had the fortunate experience to meet Ton and Riet. We had met Ton and Riet the prior year by happenstance. Ton had been the country manager for IBM before he retired to a life of restoring classic Dutch sailboats. In this rural part of The Netherlands, most of the locals speak very very limited English. Ton helped me a couple of times over the past winter by keeping an eye on SUGILITE and acting as a translator between us and the yard, mechanic and sailmaker.
Dick Knoll was another wonderful acquaintance who came to our aid. During the past winter, Jan and I had studied and pass our HAM radio exams. The advantage of having a HAM license, is that you can use the HAM radio frequencies to send and receive email. It requires a special modem to do this however. To send or receive an email, you must first send it to a shore-based radio system. There are operators all over the world who volunteer their time, energy and money to build these systems. The base stations are called PMBO's and Dick is one of three PMBOs in Europe and operates his station in The Netherlands.
While we were still in the States, I was enquiring around to see if someone had a spare modem. Through various connections, this led me to Dick, who got me a modem, did research on the cabling needed for my particular radio, came by the boat, spent a couple of hours installing the radio, trained us to use the modem, and responded to countless emails of questions I had. We offered to take Dick and his son Auke sailing for a day. Turned out, it was one of the best sailing days we had all summer. Look at those smiles on Auke's face.
(Map 2) May 9, 2004: We arrived in Urk in the late afternoon. We took a quick walk around the town before dark. Urk was an ancient harbor on the sea before the dikes were built changing the Zuiederzee from salt water to the current Ijsselmeer/Markermeer fresh water lakes. It retains much of its old world charm in the buildings and it's lighthouse.
The next morning we left early for Amsterdam, via a lunch stop at Enkhuizen. It was an opportunity to try our new cruising chute for the first time. Often while cruising in Dutch waters were the abundance of Swan. We would see flocks almost constantly. This photo is not representative as it only shows a couple. There were thousands.
(Map 3) May 09, 2004 — May 11, 2004: We arrived at Six Haven Marina in Amsterdam about 6 pm. Six Haven is located right across from the main train station in the center of the city. It was a time to provision for the trip ahead and finish some more of the ongoing projects.
We had been in contact for the last month with Jack and Pat Tyler aboard Woosh. They were due to arrive in Amsterdam on the “midnight canal tour.” They had spent the previous winter in London and were heading north via Dutch canals but had been delayed several days due to bridge maintenance.
Jack and Patricia arrived with the northbound boats in the wee hours of May 11. We spent time with them at the marina, traded information on best places to visit going each direction, then we left the canals of Amsterdam in the wee hours of the next morning.
There are two ways to leave the city in a small boat. You can take the main channel, used by the major shipping companies, to the English Channel at Ijmuiden. Or you can take the more picturesque route through the small canals and enter the English Channel somewhere further south. We chose to do the later. However, because of the major auto highways that crisscross the city, the city will only open the first (going south) drawbridge once, and only at 2 am! What happens is that the north going boats queue up south of the city. At about midnight, they will start opening one bridge at a time and let the convoy through. At about 2 am they arrive at the final bridge, it opens and the northbound boats scamper through followed by the southbound boats, then the bridge closes, not to open until the next morning. As you pass through one draw bridge, it will close. Then the bridgekeeper will get on his bicycle and pedal past you to the next bridge. He will then open that bridge, and the process repeats for about a dozen times throughout the night.
The convoy breaks up in a lake south of Amsterdam. We decided to keep motoring as far as we could even though it was a bit dark. Finally, we couldn’t go any further because “the next bridge was closed” and boats were stacked up along the shore waiting for the bridge tender, which we understood would not open until 7am. We both went to bed.
(Jan) After what seemed like just a few minutes, I was bolted out of bed when Sugilite’s engine started up, being as our bed is directly over the engine; so its very loud! I looked out the starboard window and Steve was running along the shore casting the lines off and the boat was already moving. I was a bit worried he wouldn’t be able to jump back onto the boat as it was moving down the river, but, not to worry. It seems a big freighter had convinced the bridgekeeper to open the bridge and Steve intended to be the next boat directly behind the big guy. We were off! It was a beautiful cruise through the canal.
May 12 to 16, 2004: Sometimes we had long waits at the bridges, but usually there was not too much delay. Thanks to our talk with Jack and Patricia, we knew that one of the locks on the southern route was broken so we detoured over to Rotterdam. Because its such a big port, Rotterdam doesn’t open their bridges to small boats too often. We ended up with a 3 hour wait in the Rotterdam harbor to get through the city.
We made it through the Holland canals to the locks at the southern part, then we headed out to the North Sea. We spent the night in Zeebrugge, Belgium – another big shipping port. After we were all tied up, a young guy came over and gave us a beer “for the good times he had in Seattle.” It was very friendly city.
May 14 to May 20, 2004: We left Zeebrugge in the morning with no wind so we motored to Calais, France. As we begin to enter the English Channel, tides and currents begin to dictate our ability to move from port to port and are the focus of our navigational problems. The tides are large in this part of the world and can exceed over 40 feet (10 meters). With so much water moving, it also creates large currents, exceeding 6 knots in certain places at certain times of the day. Harbors have locks or sills which can only be traversed at high water. This means you can only leave or enter most of the harbors along this coast for two or three hours, twice a day. A typical boat speed for us is 5 to 7 knots. So if we catch the current going the wrong way, we can be dead in the water. Of course the opposite is also true. Catch the current just right and you are really moving.
We have a rule not to enter a un-familiar harbor at night. Entering a new harbor in the daylight is hard enough, nighttime is nuts. So that often meant leaving at 2 or 3am to catch the high tide outbound and arriving early afternoon catching the low tide. Since we had to make the next tide, or wait another 12 hours, it required that we kept our speed up. This meant that if the wind was light or blowing from the wrong direction, we motored.
Along the N. French coast
When we arrived at Calais, we were ready to get off and find a restaurant for dinner. There was a large group of restaurants close to the marina from which to choose. We we were a bit surprised that the one we picked had belly dancing as entertainment during dinner. It was a bit strange as it wasn’t what we thought would be our first gastronomical experience in France, but we had a great time and enjoyed the show.
We stopped at two small towns on our way to Le Havre. Dieppe is a posh resort town with famous casino and Fecamp which is home of the Benedictine Monastery, where the liquor of the same name is made.
Dieppe is not a big harbor but has high speed ferries which travel to England. The small boat harbor (inside the main harbor) can only be entered at high tide, requiring you to lock in. But before you can even enter the main harbor, you must receive permission from the Harbor Master via radio. We arrived at the harbor entrance about 8:30pm. Seas were a bit rough as is normal in the English Channel. We called the Harbor Master, and he said we would have to wait about 20 minutes for two big ferries to leave. We did not have permission to enter the harbor. Well, after 30 minutes, we called again. We were informed it would be another 20 minutes. All this time, we are bouncing around as if in a washing machine, just outside of the harbor entrance. Finally after an hour, the ferries left the harbor, we got the green light, in we went and we tied up at the dock at 11:00, just as the twilight faded to darkness. It made for a long day!