7/7 – Rendsburg to Brunsbüttel
We tour the town which dates back to the 1200s. Very cool old part of town. We try to find an internet connection (no luck) and talk to the vodaphone guy because our phone that had been working in Sweden and Denmark now does not work. We had just bought a new prepaid card so knew we had money left on it and would like to get the system to work again. The sales clerk didn’t think it would be possible to get it working unless we could come up with a German address and a new German prepaid card. Because we only planned to be in Germany another 2 days, we decided to hold off until we get to Holland. Then we’ll figure it out again.
We spent some time after leaving Rendsburg practicing “touch and goes” with Jan at the helm. We took the opportunity to get some additional experience docking the boat when we found a dock that didn’t have many people on it. It was the perfect place to practice without a crowd.
Besides the occasional freighter passing, the big thing to concern us was the many small ferries that crossed the canal. You often didn’t see them until you were quite close. Sometimes the ferries were boats that crossed, one was on cables which hung below a bridge.
The marina in Brunsbüttel is quite small and just next to the large commercial lock. We arrived late in the afternoon and it was already packed without a slip available. Our only option was to raft alongside another boat. Sigi and Anna were across on the other side of the marina. After securing our lines, we decided to walk around town a little. But before we could leave, the locks opened from the Elbe side and several dozen boats entered the canal. As you may remember, small boats are not allowed to transit the canal in the evening, so they had to find a place to “fit” in, in an already full marina. Well, now a boat picked the spot next to us and we were rafted three boats out. The locks opened again and several dozen more boats decided to join the fun: now we are four boats rafted out. We didn’t think it would be possible to fit in any more, but what did we know. We spent the night rafted five deep. One more boat and you could literally walk across the marina on the boats. We’ve never seen anything like it before.
7/8 – Brunsbüttel to Cuxhaven
Upon leaving the Kiel Canal lock at Brunsbüttel, you enter the Elbe River, which has a large tidal current. The current can flow up to 6 knots either with or against you depending on the time of the day. Since, we can only do about 7 knots, we don’t want to fight a 6 knot current against us, so leaving at the correct time is important.
Our projected time to leave was about noon, so we had most of the morning to visit the town. We didn’t have much of a problem getting up, as most of the boats in the marina were heading east. Remember, the marina is completely packed. So the guy against the wall, who was the earliest in the marina the day before, is the early bird of the group and wants to leave first. Well for him to get out, every other boat must be moved. Upshot is that the marina is completely cleared out by 8:00 am.
We’re heading west, so we leave at noon to catch the tidal outflow on the Elbe to Cuxhaven. Wow, what a fast ride. With the wind directly on our nose, we didn’t want to tack back and forth across the busiest shipping channel in the world, so we motored along the extreme side of the channel. Seven knots of engine, six knots of current, we covered the 18 miles in a little less than 2 hours – a new speed record for Sugilite.
We had plenty of time to tour the town and were surprised by the high earthen banks and steel walls which surrounded the city. It was explained to us that during the winter storms off the North Sea, large seas have been known to enter and flood the city. Hence the efforts to create dikes, gates and walls to try to protect it.
7/9 – Cuxhaven
We had planned on receiving a package via Fed Ex to the American Express office in Brennan. Unfortunately, it was still not scheduled to arrive until the next day. Sigi and Anna, who live close by, arrived early this morning, planning on taking us, but we expained it was still on an airplane getting to us. So they indicated they would return later that afternoon and take us sightseeing and for dinner.
We happened to arrive at Cuxhaven during the finish of the Newport/Cuxhaven Yacht race. Over 60 boats left Newport RI several weeks prior and now were arriving in Cuxhaven. The storms were pretty severe and a dozen or so had turned back and quit the race. One hit a shipping container and sunk. Everyone was rescued by another competitor. The others were arriving 1 or 2 per day. Each time a competitor arrived, a flare would be shot off and everyone blew their horns. It was quite exciting.
Sigi and Anna arrived early that afternoon and gave us a tour of the area. First we went out to the coast south of Cuxhaven to the marina where they keep Tedje. The area is so tidal that it dries twice a day and their boat sits in the mud. You can only leave and return during a high tide. They then took us to Bremerhaven and we had a great dinner aboard an old ship that had been turned into a museum and restaurant. Bremerhaven is an industrial city, which was completely bombed out during World War II. Very little old architecture is left.
After dinner, we went to Sigi’s and Anna’s house for drinks. He has a very fascinating collection of nautical curios.
7/10 Cuxhaven – Brennan
The next day we needed to pick up some samples that were coming from China so we took the train into Bremen. Bremen turned out to be a lovely city with much of its old buildings still intact. We picked up our packaged and had wonderful tourist day walking around the old town. Late that afternoon, we took the train back to Cuxhaven and prepared to leave the next morning.
7/11 – Cuxhaven to Nordeney
The forecast was for force 4 to 5 winds from the southwest to the west. The challenges were that we had to leave just before high tide, to make sure we could get out of the Elbe’s influence, have enough daylight to make it to Nordeney (about 70 miles) and enter Nordeney on a rising tide because of the shallow water channels (zeegats) leading up to the harbor entrance. In addition, the pilot charts indicate that the zeegats are impassable if the wind increases above force 5 and comes from the northwest. Further complicating the passage is that, with a westerly wind, there would be substantial fetch for the waves to build over a relatively shallow bottom. This could mean high, steep and possibly breaking waves.
Leaving Cuxhaven, we had a “fast course over ground” as the tide carried us west out the Elbe River. The wind from the southwest began to veer to the west and build. We had a fast ride moving south, reefs in both sails. With the wind building to force 5 and 6, the waves also increased to 4 to 5 meters (12 to 15 feet). Steve became quite seasick and this time couldn’t shake it. Jan was put into the position of having to handle the boat by herself as we arrived at the zeegat into Nordeney. Since now the wind had continued to veer to the northwest and was blowing well above force 5, we were quite concerned about trying to enter the harbor. Our other option was to continue on through the night to the next possible harbor, about 60 miles away.
We tried to call the harbormaster to get his opinion as to whether or not is was safe to enter, but could not receive an answer. We noticed that we had been tailed for the past several hours by a German Coast Guard cutter. We decided to call them to ask for their opinion; however Jan would have to do this by herself, as Steve was too sick to assist. They replied right away to our call for assistance, talked to Nordeney SAR (Search and Rescue) and we were told that it was indeed OK to enter. Now all we had to do was to find the bouy which marked the entrance to the zeegat. That proved to be more difficult than we imagined at first, because these zeegat channels are shallow, move constantly. The bouys are moved constantly as the channel silts up and changes. So we wandered around and the Coast Guard saw that we were having trouble so they dispatched one of their small rescue boats and had us follow them to the outer marker.
Once we arrived at the outer marker, another SAR vessel from shore arrived and we were “handed off” and followed the SAR vessel to the harbor entrance.
Once inside the breakwater, the water was flat enough for Steve to recover enough to dock the boat.
Lessons learned:
The forecast was marginal for our trip. We should have been prepared to wait a few more days of necessary.
When Steve gets seasick, we need to take stronger medical action. He does not always recover quickly.
Jan needs to spend more time being fully acquainted with the operations of the boat, so she will feel comfortable handling the boat in any situation.
7/12 – Nordeney
Nordeney is a great resort island for German tourists. Lots of shopping opportunities in the quaint stores. It turned out that the Search and Rescue organization was having an open house that day so we toured their boat and thanked them again. The SAR also had a band, a display of the SAR history, and radio controlled model boats that actually ran in a small pool. The whole town had turned out for a pretty interesting afternoon along the beach and harbor.
The wind continued to blow hard as evidenced by the huge kites being flown. We decided to wait for the wind to die down a little before heading for Holland and the Dutch canals.
7/13 – Nordeney to Lauwersoog/Lunegat
The wind dropped to the force 3 to 4 range and we left about 11 on the rising tide for Holland. We had an uneventful sail along the Frisian Islands finally turning in to the Waddenzee (a very shallow body of water between The Netherlands and the outlying Frisian Islands) just west of the Island of Schiermonnikoog. Because the Waddenzee is so shallow, you can only follow marked channels. Because the channels move so frequently, they are marked with little brushy sticks, called withies, in the ground. If the withie has its branches tied down, this indicates you are to pass the stick on your starboard. If the branches are still pointing up, it indicates just the opposite, and you should have the withie pass you on your port. Because they are just a stick in the ground, they are a little hard to spot until you are right upon them.
We entered the Dutch canal system at Lauwersoog and motored for about another hour until Lunegat where we spent the night in a small marina off the side of the canal. What was most interesting about this lock is that we “locked” down instead of up. As Holland is mostly below sea level, the locks allow you to go lower and lower as you enter into the country.
7/14 – Dutch Canal System just before Lemmer
We were really feeling the pressure of getting to our final destination. We had planned a meeting for our European representatives on Friday 7/18 and our tickets to return to the States were for Monday the 21st.
We had called the Hallberg Rassy dealer in Holland a few days back and asked for his recommendation for a yard to lay up Sugilite. He had recommended a yard in Elburg, a small town about an hour by car from Amsterdam. So as lovely as the Dutch canals were, we were mostly on a mission to get to our destination.
Even so, there was plenty of intriguing sites to see. The pretty little towns, real (restored) windmills, drawbridges so that no two were alike. It seemed that each drawbridge was designed to be different and unique. One was so whimsical that it lifted the road over the canal from the corner. The piece of the road that was lifted was in the shape of a diamond. Some of the drawbridges required a toll for us to pass through. In these cases, the bridgemaster would lower a wooden shoe from a string on a stick. We would put our Euros into the shoe and the bridgemaster would retrieve it. If we needed change, we would slow way down and the bridgemaster would send the shoe back to us with the change.
This was offset with the need for the bridgemasters to take various coffee and lunch breaks. If you arrived during break or lunchtime, you just had to sit and enjoy the scenery until break was over. We made it about two thirds the way to Lemmer before the 6:00 pm closing time stopped us. At that point, we pulled along a dock in front of a drawbridge that wasn’t going to open until morning.
7/15 – Elburg
At 9:00 am sharp, we were ready to go as that was the earliest opening for the bridge. By 11:00 am, we were at Lemmer , which would be the end of our Dutch canal passage. At this point we entered the Ijsselmeer. The Ijsselmeer is a large shallow body of water which is left over from the old Zuider Zee after it was “diked” off of the North Sea. We headed south mostly motorsailing and late that afternoon, arrived at the last lock of the trip. This was just before the town of Elburg, our destination.
As we were going into that final lock, a boat that looked like a SAR boat came in behind us. We thought maybe we should give them our spot because they looked pretty official but all the boats fit into the lock. They were from Elberg, which is the town we were going to leave our boat in so we started talking with the captain, who introduced himself as Ben. He said the boat yard was really good, he knew everyone there and to tell them that “Ben had sent us over.”
It turned out that Elburg was a very popular tourist town for the Dutch, and particularly Dutch boaters. Also a couple of miles away was European 7 Flags amusement park. There wasn’t a place to be found to moor the boat. The place was packed. As we were beginning to leave the center of the town, we were hailed by Ben’s crew. He told us we could raft up next to him and they would help us get situated the next day.
They didn’t have to offer twice. They had cold beers to welcome us, we had some salmon and chips to offer and we had a great party on the back of Ben’s boat. The next day Ben took us over to the yard and introduced us around. We then moved the boat to the yard and began the process of putting it away for the year.
The next few days were spent going back and forth between Elburg and Amsterdam. In Elburg we were busy with securing the boat. In Amsterdam, we were busy with our meeting.
Elburg turned out to be a very old town, that was too poor in the 17th and 18th centuries, to even be able to tear down the wall built around the city for protection. Now, it is one of the few walled cities left in Europe and is a great tourist attraction. It turned out that Ben owned the largest business in the city, so it was ever so helpful to have him open some doors for us.
We took the mast down and pulled the boat out of the water. It was the first time we were able to see exactly how much damage was done to the keel from hitting the rock a couple of months back. We were relieved to see that it wasn’t too big of a problem. Something a little epoxy and paint would fix. The boat will be stored inside of a warehouse until we return to get it in May of next year.
It’s been a great first year on the boat. We’re just sorry to leave her in July with so much of the summer left. But there is always next year. Will it be through the French Canals to the Mediterranean or along the French, Spanish and Portuguese coast to Gibraltar?