Csárdás

Day 5 - 19th October Continued. Written by Dominic.

Since the last entry a lot has happened. Firstly Carrie rang us to say that she was nearly back but not quite. We waited next to the bridge, which was meant to open at nine. Nine o’clock came round and no sign of Carrie. Strange considering she had over an hour to get there at apparently she was only 2 miles away. Anyway Carrie or not we had to get through this bridge or we were stuck behind it for another 24 hours. One and a half miles later we were 3.5 miles from Carries last know position. She could have walked it by now! Finally another phone call confirmed that she was now going to catch a taxi as she had got to the end of the tube line and was 3.5 miles away. Has anyone else noticed that roughly two hours have gone by and it would appear that Carrie has mode no further progress towards our position! GIRLS!!!! The best plan seamed to be to get a taxi to the hotel we just went past. Gilly walked back to the hotel to meet her. Another hour went by. What is it about girls; do they walk into black holes that seemingly stop time for them and no one else? Why is it that unsupervised it can take them ten times longer to do simple jobs like shopping then when under surveillance! About an hour and a half later both of them returned. It turned out that there are two hotels that go by the same name in Amsterdam. Carrie had got a taxi to the furthest one. This meant that she had managed to travel about 5 miles in the wrong direction. Apparently the taxi driver returning her to the correct hotel joked that it must happen about thirty times a day! SO WHY DON’T YOU GIVE THEM DIFFERENT NAMES THEN! Maybe the taxi drivers could learn to ask which one you wanted! Anyway that evening we ploughed on to somewhere tied up against a wharf and went to bed at about midnight.

Day 6 – 20th October

Woke up quite early and set off to Gouda. Gouda was the home of the bridge that according to the useless book was closed. We were all praying this was not the case. Between waking up and arriving in Gouda the only interesting event was a tutorial in the wrong way to manoeuvre a Dutch barge. The lesson was provided by Dominic Horner and Marcus Tettmar, onlookers were provided by the local residents however a couple of motor boats turned up for the event and unfortunately two tankers with a combined tonnage of roughly A LOT. To set the scene we were trying to mill around in front of the bridge waiting for it to open. In order to make life easier we decided to tie up against a pile. Big mistake. The bow got blow off and it turned out that there was nothing we could do about it. Not that we didn’t try, we did and most of our efforts were making things worse. By this stage the bridge was open the VHF was going ballistic in Dutch; everyone’s heart was in their mouth. The motorboats were looking very unhappy and the ships were ordering new paint on my credit card. The result was that we ended up on the wrong side of the channel, the ships slide past with inches to spare and the motor boaters cast the most effective evils I have seen in a long time.

Egos bruised we trundled on. Gouda arrived at about four. The bridge was not open but did have an “open at …” sign. Unfortunately Microsoft must have got in the way of progress as the fancy computer sign refused to offer any useful information. Unsurprisingly the VHF was also useless. It would appear that the Dutch are not particularly keen on talking to Brits or maybe anyone on the VHF, which after a week of bridges and locks gets quite tiresome. A quick phone call informed us that the bridge would open at eight. That meant that we had about four hours on a pontoon with no means of getting ashore. The obvious course of action was to try and lower an 18m mast, which must weigh well over a tonne. The poles for this job were at one stage re manufactured. Unfortunately the idiot that did it put the ends on the wrong way round. This meant that we had two port side poles and nothing on starboard. Earlier that day we had bought the biggest hammer in the world specifically for hitting the ends off the poles. This plan was floored. Ten minutes of bashing had achieved nothing more that a sweet. The next plan was to bend the ends, again with judicial use of the big hammer. One side beaten we offered them up. Cursing we bent that one back and started on the correct one! Idiots! Half way through bending this one the end fell off allowing us to turn it through 180 degrees. Of course we then had to bend the half bent end to its previous shape. So to recap we bent the wrong one then bent it back, then bent the correct one turned it through 180 degrees and then bent it back. It could be said that the operation was not going well so far. Offering the poles up again we discovered to our surprise that they actually fitted. Lacking bolts, we improvised by using shackles. Everything was in place, or at least to the best of our knowledge, the thing is no one provided a manual. Maybe the RCD regulations aren’t that stupid after all. Anyway everything had been checked and double-checked and we were sure that everything could go wrong but for some reason it wouldn’t. Carrie was granted the dubious pleasure of pulling on the runner until the mast started to fall on top of her. Marcus and I stood over the winch with muscles at the ready. It started to move. Slowly. Thankfully the Dutch have been at this game for a significant number of decades and have got the purchase system just right. We were expecting the mast to come crashing down destroy Carrie and then crack on the back of the boat. In practise it was quite different. Everything was carried out in an organised and controlled fashion.

Mast down we went under the bridge, laughing at the yacht that had to wait until eight. We turned up a small canal into a yacht haven in the centre of Gouda for the night, which after about 100m got smaller. Then it went round a corner. Humm. When I say small I mean that it was about 6m wide and we are 4.2m. The question on everyone’s lips was where is the turning place. I don’t know if I have mentioned yet but Dutch barges do not go in reverse well at all. Upon engaging reverse the stern tends to make off to port at an alarming rate leaving the bow to fend for itself. This makes straight lines almost impossible. The end the channel revealed itself and the turning space did not. Reverse was engaged and the stern ended up in the reeds. For the first time the flagstaff and another pole, which had not come in useful so far, were called upon. Once out of the reeds and rushes (did Paul Simon have the same experience?) the barge started to handle a bit better. Marcus was on the helm and did an excellent job. I reckon I could have done better but don’t tell him that. Over the next half hour everyone’s heart was given a work out. On the one side there ware the reeds, on the other several thousands of pounds of fancy yachts and our bow. It could have been a good insurance claim. Having found nowhere good to stay we moored up against two pole designed for big ships until the sluis opened at nine that night. The biggest problem with these mooring poles is that they are typically at 65ft intervals. We are 64ft long. This means that we don’t really fit between them like a yacht would, nor do we sit very comfortably along side. Some ingenious rope work was employed and we were sorted for an hour or two. Nine came and went the sluis opened and off we set. Moorings the other side were no better. An hour in we were tired and cold. Two more piles were found and an uncomfortable night was had by all.

Day 7 – 21st October

Today nothing really happened. Woke, ate breakfast, covered loads of miles, ate, covered some more miles, ate, and then turned up in Willemstad. Arrived at beer o’clock, which was a nice change. Next job was to put the mast back up. Luckily there was a chandlery so all the shackles were replaced by bolts and new shackles were bought to replace some of the rather small ones around the boat. It would appear that the previous owners philosophy to life was “the cheaper the better”. Putting it back up was a bit of an effort and I got quite a few cuts from the frayed old wire halyards. Whilst the men were playing with masts and rigging the girls went to do the washing, what’s all this rubbish about women’s rights? The mood on the boat had defiantly improved. Never underestimate the power a good mooring and facilities can have on moral.

Day 8 – 22nd October

Late start today. Basically Willemstad was too nice to leave. It had shops, bars, restaurants, and facilities including a laundry. In addition to this we were asked if we were there to take part in the barge race this weekend. I would have loved to have stayed if only to spectate however some of us are keen to get back to work and others have to. Marcus and I spent a good proportion of the morning rigging the boom for the jib, an item that had confused the previous owner for the last 15 years. When handing the boat over he explained that it was needed to lower the mast. I thought it odd that I needed three poles but trusted him. Looking at it and other boats it was clear by day three that it was in fact a jib boom and we were missing a couple of joining sections. These were duly sourced from the chandlery. We managed to tear our selves away by about midday and headed for the first sluis. This was a so called jachtsluis which basically means that it is meant for recreational craft so as not to get in the way of the big ships using the two other locks. The bridge over the sluis was 19m above NAP. The water level was one metre above NAP. This meant and air gap of about 18m, and I think De Verwachting has a 16m mast with another 1.5m to the waterline. It was going to be close. We decided we would not fit and the best option was to try the big ship locks, one of which has an opening bridge. Motoring back took a further 20 minutes. We radioed in and were told to “sod off” back to the jachtsluis, plus another 20 minutes. Concerned about hitting the bridge we obeyed. We entered the lock and surveyed the bridge. The lock keeper came out and had a look at us, asked for our air draft and thought for a bit. I didn’t much like the fact that he had to ponder whether we could get under. It was obviously going to be close. In the end he told us to stay towards the back of the lock so that he could drop us down before we had to go under. The drop was a disappointing half metre. Slowly we edged towards the bridge. Again our hearts were in our thoughts. Strangely they seam to have spent quite a lot of time there this holiday. It’s hard to judge distance when one is at a relatively acute angle however it was clearly close.

The next lock was only 18m so this time we were allowed into the big boys lock. Suddenly mine looked small! The next few hours were spent motoring to windward. We did briefly get the jib up which I might add looks a lot better for having a boom on it. How could someone go fifteen years without figuring it out! On route we saw dozens of barges sailing to Willemstad, which made the trip far more interesting. We are now in Wemeldinge on the visitor’s pontoon. It feels like a quarantine section, as there is no way onto land.

Copyright 2004 DoZ

Delivering Doz & Gilly’s new(to them!) barge. Written by Dominic.

Day 1 – 15th October

Enthused with lethargy the somewhat nervous four loaded into a small car to make the first leg to Manston INTERNATIONAL airport. The title is, believe me, far more grand than the portacabin building would have you believe. With five minutes to spare the check in ordeal was approaching. Passports were handed over closely followed by overweight bags from the boys. Upon turning around we were both greeted by the sight of Gilly covered in jam, bleeding and surrounded by half of her packing and most of Carries including a now rather annoying and soon to become infamous guitar. It would appear that their parents brought them both up to be as much of an embarrassment as possible. The logic behind repacking ones bag, at check in, two minutes before the plane actually takes off is still a mystery to me. As I am sure everyone is on the edge of their seats wondering if we made the plane, we did.

Our visit to Amsterdam was short and reasonably sweet. It consisted of passport control, baggage reclaim and jumping on the train with 10 seconds to spare. Not bad really. Two and a bit hours later Leewarden rolled up. This was the closest city to where the boat/ship was kept and provided us with an opportunity to stock up on food. The market was in town and provided the first of the Gouda. The only point of note was that in a 30 minute period the boys managed to loose Carrie no less than 11 times, which when you consider how long it took to find her each time was quite an effort. It should also be mentioned that every time Carrie returned she appeared to be holding ANOTHER pair of stripy tights.

First impressions of the boat: Good, WOW, that’s big, oh, and various other comments including Marcus “oh good god!” We slipped our berth and made tracks towards the first bridge. Upon our arrival it duly opened, the gap between was however not particularly large. I remembered a conversation with the previous owner about the fact that this was one of the narrowest we were likely to encounter, my heart started pounding. Good grief that was close. Marcus was bestowed the job of placing one euro fifty into a wooden clog as we went through, which was something Marcus has had previous experience with. I didn’t believe they still did things like that.

Day 2 – 16th October

Cold does not really describe how I felt last night. A steel barge in October is not exactly comfortable. Sorry, a steel barge in October without ANY heating is not exactly comfortable. Having made it through the night (just) I/we set out to do some more shopping. Why stop the spending spree now! More food, more oil, more grease, all the essentials to make a 64ft Dutch barge go. The sail for today consisted of a short jaunt to Lemmer on the edge if the Ijsselmeer. Nothing much to comment on really. We pootled along at 5 or 6 knots through the Princess Margaret Canal, under a few bridges and at one stage over a motorway, strange but true.

Day 3 – 17th October

Day three and the sailing excitement begins. Leaving Lemmer we motored down the channel as we didn’t want to risk the shallow bits on our first day. Its strange to think that a Dutch barge which has a draught of only 0.8m will draw 4 meters with the leeboards down. The main went up first, not too bad so far. There was of course a bit of head scratching as we tried to get to grips with the mast winch. What a wonderful piece of engineering! It has two handles, which unless you are careful will hit each other. Then there are some gears to allow the main handle to operate different line. Then on top of all that there are brakes and ratchet arms. It all makes sense eventually, or so I am told. Having put our brains to good use we then had to employ more conventional muscles to hoist a gaff and a lot of heavy sail. About half way up you really wish you hadn’t started. Next up was the jib. It has a self-tacking track, probably a prototype for Hanse! Once Marcus had found the correct sail the jib was an all-together easier affair. Most of the day was spent sailing upwind tacking through about 120 degrees.

Later that day the more adventurous among us decided that we didn’t have enough on our hands to keep everyone occupied and the obvious solution was to try the Kluiver. This is another fore sail, which is flown from the bowsprit. It is smaller that the jib and has a more storm sail cut to it. During the inertial hand over the previous skipper had taken us through which lines do what around the boat, however when asked how one should lower the bow sprit and fly the Kluiver the reply came “oh well… It’s quite complicated”. That was it! So this time we really were left to our own devices. Bowsprit lowering must have taken about twenty minutes; they lying in the netting took another twenty. What a rush! The Kluiver really isn’t that complicated and added at least half a knot to our speed. The really plus point however was how much more balanced the boat was with it up. Having never sailed anything like this before we all assume that a flat-bottomed boat would not “get in the grove” and one had to accept it, the Kluiver forced us to re-assess our original thinking. Don’t get me wrong she still handles like a tub of lard on an ice rink, but it was an improvement over the squid like feel in the morning.

Enkhuizen was our next port of call, watch the shallows either side of the channel as you approach. Yes there was frantic leeboard winching session. This is the border between the Ijsselmeer and Markermeer, and is really pretty in places. We had a few beers in a vary local pub and then went back to enjoy another great meal cooked by Carrie. It should be noted at this point that Carrie has cooked nearly every meal and must have provided ninety percent of the tea and coffee.

Day 4 – 18th October

Early start, more sailing, more lying in the netting out front. Bit of rain the afternoon and then a couple of hours motoring into Amsterdam. Having poked our bow into a number of docks we finally settled on the Ijhaven, an old commercial dock with a couple of floating restaurants, one other barge and a tall ship. Having moored up our attention was turned to the next step of the journey. The trip through Amsterdam and then down to Rotterdam via Gouda. Simple yeah… NO! Firstly the cruising guide to the Netherlands by Brian Navin is useless. What an appalling excuse for a reference book. One would have thought that when going about compiling a route guide for a country some degree of research would be undertaken. Maybe even a trip to find out what these places are really like. I can quite honestly say that I doubt any of the above were carried out before this book went to print. A route is suggested in each section, which follows the mast up routes anyway, so route planning must have taken them all of 5 minutes. There is no real indication of where one might moor up for the night nor is they’re much commentary on local attractions. However all of this pales in comparison to the mistakes made concerning bridge timings, telephone numbers and VHF channels. Timings are creative at best. Telephone numbers usually end up with a margarita pizza and a bottle of coke or a fax screaming at you and the VHF channels probably correspond to a bridge in a strange Steven Hawkins, Star Trek parallel universe kind of way.

That evening saw us at our lowest so far. According to the aforementioned book some of the bridges on our route were closed for the winter as of yesterday and the poles for lowering the mast were symmetric rather than being mirror images of each other so we couldn’t lower the mast to get under. The weather forecast said gales so Ijmuiden and the North Sea were not an option and to make things worse the batteries were dieing, the generator wouldn’t run for more than 10 minutes and we had run out of food and gas. This meant no electricity, food, hot drinks and on top of that nowhere to go. Deflated would be a good word to describe our mood late afternoon. This was all to change. The owner of the other barge turned up with a very small dog. The small dog had no bearing on any subsequent events nor will it be mentioned hereafter. Being Dutch and a barge owner himself he knew all about canals and again due to his lineage he found himself predisposed to helping people. Apparently the route down to Gouda is used by commercial traffic, as we had previously thought, and as such does not close in the winter. Some of the bridges do have shortened opening hours but none are closed completely, or so we hope.

Dinner came courtesy of a local Pizzeria and was the first meal out so far, then we all had an hours sleep.

00:30 engine start.
01:10 arrive at first bridge.
01:30 waiting for Railway Bridge

The thing, Amsterdam is a fairly busy city and as such they don’t like opening the railway bridges. This means that if you want to get through the city and go south or even get into the old part you have to wait till two in the morning for the bridge to open. Apparently more than 60 boats have been counted waiting for a single convoy through although in the last 5 years the numbers are dwindling. When the railway bridge opened us and two yachts started out. Ten bridges later we were the other side of Amsterdam and waiting for the second all important railway bridge. Fourteen bridges in total were raised and most of them by one guy riding between each one on a moped. You do see strange things in Holland.

Day 5 – 19th October

We awoke and about lunch buoyed up by the thought that we had made it through Amsterdam. On the down side we still didn’t have any gas or food and the generator wasn’t working. Carrie set off into Amsterdam to see some art galleries and the three of us set about doing chores. I spent the next three hours covered in oil and diesel trying to fix the generator. The problem was that the diesel tank had a lot of rubbish in the bottom and the filter was completely jammed. Clean the filter I thought. No better. Check the lines for air. Still no better. Fuel pipes off. No fuel coming through, strange. I borrowed a small pump for another friendly Dutch man and pumped air back into the tank, after a while there was a bubbling sounds closely followed by diesel pouring into the bilges. This reminds me of one of Matt Hadfeilds boating trips. I frantically put the pipes back on bled the system and hay presto… No improvement! Five minutes later in desperation I tried again. This time it worked and has done ever since. Will keep you all posted on and further generator fun. In case you were worries we found the last gas cylinder in Amsterdam so at least we have one. Carrie has apparently bought food in Amsterdam, which will hopefully arrive soon.

Copyright 2004 DoZ

Csárdás has a cool new computer system. The laptop and all the wires are concealed securely in the chart table. A flat screen monitor is attached to a swivelling arm on the bulkhead and a wireless keyboard and mouse can be used from anywhere on board. The screen can be moved to face into the cabin for watching DVDs or at 90 degrees to the instruments for navigation and working at the PC. This setup protects the laptop from wet hands and movement. The worst that can happen is the mouse gets wrecked. A mouse is inexpensive. The screen can even be seen from the companionway. So while on passage a quick check on position and progress can be made without having to go below. Just for fun I can also connect my HP IPAQ PDA to the computer via WiFi wireless networking and view the computer screen from my PDA from anywhere on board, such as at the helm.

Check out some pictures here.

Ignore the cable running up towards the cabin roof behind the monitor - this is an extension cable for the WiFi network client which is hoisted up the mast temporarily while in Hamble Point Marina to get broadband internet access.