Month: November 2017

Sunday 5 November

People put pumpkins outside their doors for Halloween here, but not carved Jack-o’Lanterns. Not surprisingly, they don’t celebrate today, but neither have there been any fireworks for Diwali. In fact, we are in an incredibly peaceful spot, where people go for Sunday morning jogs, walk the dog, feed the flocks of coots and sail traditional dinghies. My crew were glad to stay tucked in, warm and snug, as a weather system passed over, dumping rain, hail and a very brief thunderstorm.

Saturday 4 November

The day dawned optimistically, and in spite of feeling below par, Mate decided she’d rather make the most of dry daylight – the weather’s been very calm since we arrived in the Netherlands – to continue to make our way North. We slipped away from the wall, turned neatly in mid-channel, and immediately turned left onto the Oude Wetering for the Ringvaart van de Haarlemmermeerpolder: ooh, how I love trying to get my tongue around these wonderful compound nouns. Ringvaart is a ringway, and polder is a means of draining the land, like a bigger dyke (dijk in Dutch), so we were travelling along the Harlem-lake-ditch-ringway, but it’s so much more colourful in its native language.

Although cold in a fresh Nor’easterly breeze, it was a lovely day for a detour, as per the Pilot’s suggestion, into the Kagerplassen, a lake of many islands and depths varying from shallow to dry. Mate kept a close eye on the chart plotter, but was still able to enjoy the rural idyll of cattle grazing before a backdrop of windmills against a wide, wide sky. Being Saturday, a fleet of traditional gaff-rigged dinghies was out racing with the local Scout troop, and, apart from one German Hanse on transit a couple of days ago, it was the first day we’d seen any other yachts enjoying a late season potter.

We looked at a possible anchorage in the lake, but Mate was keen to keep going, feeling this spot would be rather bleak and exposed if the weather changed. Also, we needed to stop for a couple of nights, as the bridges into Haarlem don’t open on Winter Sundays, and she might want to go ashore…

Back on the Ringvaart, the bridges were coming thick and fast, and we had to weave our way around a number of rowing fours out training. During the afternoon it started to rain and became very unpleasant, and by now we were diligently searching for somewhere to stop, lunch still pending and Mate’s enthusiasm and energy having long since disappeared. Unfortunately, I am much bigger than most of the leisure boats on these waters, and the Dutch system of ‘boxes’ – piles at regular intervals instead of finger pontoons – are generally too narrow for my 4.5 metre beam. I know, I know, I’m a bit hippy and have a wide rear, but I’m very comfortable to live on: what can I say?

Anyway, after the double drawbridge at Cruquiusbrug, we turned left into the Zuider Buiten Spaarne (South Outer…Spaarne? The name of the river, I think) and Skipper spotted a small yacht haven at Spaarneborgh, just up a branch of the canal, nestled amongst a couple of apartment blocks. Mate was able to tuck me into an alongside berth at the entrance, long enough that I wasn’t sticking out into the channel. In the pouring rain, approaching dusk and general misery, happy hour was an extremely brief affair, not that I blamed them, and soon my heads and tech room were a wardrobe of dripping foul weather gear.

Mate managed a small bowl of homemade pumpkin soup and retired to bed, leaving Skipper to make contact with the harbourmaster, plug in the power and later cook himself supper.

Friday 3 November

Opting for the cautious method, Skipper reversed me back down the channel to the main canal, where we waited for the railway bridge to open for us to pass through. This was a more interesting and varied stretch of the journey, passing some very elegant riverside properties in a mixture of towns and villages. After following a barge through a very narrow part where the houses were close to the waterside, some leaning perilously askew from their neighbours, the vista suddenly opened up to vast swathes of farmland. Like railways and major roads, the canals are mostly built above land level, so my crew looked down on fields, many in their winter dormancy, some arable land for sheep, cattle, goats and horses, and acres of glasshouses where Mate imagined salad crops and soft fruit are produced, much of which are exported to British supermarkets.

By now my crew had established a routine for the frequent bridges: when they come into view, radio the watchkeeper to ask for it to be opened, hover at a safe distance until the lights change from red to red-over-green, which indicates the opening procedure has begun, listen for the bell that warns of the barriers coming down (red lights are flashing on the approach roads as well), watch the bridge open in one of three ways, gradually creeping forwards, and then when the lights change to green only, give Trevver a burst and through we go, giving a cheery wave of thanks as we pass the control booth or camera, as many are remotely operated.

Bridges are either swing, which pivot horizontally; bascule, which raise from one side to nearly vertical; or lift, where a central span is drawn up to the appropriate height. The operator of the latter assesses our mast height as we approach, and each time has lifted the bridge to 24 metres, as displayed on a light board beside the bridge. As soon as we are through, the bell sounds again and the bridge is closed for land traffic to resume its journey. In Holland, even motorways have bridges that open for canal traffic.

Having joined the Oude Rijn, we paused for fried cheese sandwiches with salad for lunch on the town quay at Alphen aan de Rijn, a busy shopping centre with another church with a carillon sounding every half hour.

Following the channel across Braassemermeer, a shallow lake, as the evening sun sank below the cloud base to give a last burst of golden light across the water, huge skeins of geese were spotted, first by their calls, streaming across the sky towards the Northeast.

Having been on the helm most of the day, Mate brought me neatly into another alongside mooring for the night, next to a fairly quiet road on the edge of a small town just North of the Meer.

Thursday 2 November

This morning my crew walked into town to catch the market, and Mate was delighted to find it was a ‘proper’ one, with a colourful array of beautifully fresh fruit and vegetables, and a stall offering only fungi, but more types of edible mushrooms than she knew existed. There was also a wide range of fresh and smoked fish and shellfish, breads and bakery goods, cheeses (as well as every vintage of the eponymous Gouda) and a variety of other goods.

After a reviving coffee and samples of excellent local patisserie at a heated pavement café, they wandered through the shopping area to visit St John’s Church, the longest in the Netherlands at 123 metres, and famous for the ‘Gouda Windows’, enormous panels of stained glass dating from the Sixteenth Century. The building was originally dedicated to the Roman Catholic faith, but since the Reformation was donated to the Protestant community and now represents the Dutch Reformist tradition. The organ is stunning, pipes towering to the roof, and the floor is laid with flagstones carved in memory of wealthy and influential parishioners who were buried in the church until 1832.

Walking back home along some of the attractive canal sides in the town centre, they noticed square brass plaques inlaid into the pavement. These are engraved with the names of Jewish people who lived in the houses above the plaques, who were lost to the Holocaust during the German occupation of the Second World War – a simple but powerful memorial.

Wednesday 1 November

I knew it was going to be a different kind of day when it began with two unusual events: first, we were ready to leave Veerhaven on time, and second, Mate was at the helm to take me away from the pontoon and back out into the river. Granted, it was a pretty straightforward departure, but there wasn’t a lot of spare space, should anything have gone wrong.

We rejoined the river traffic safely, and then dawdled ahead of a huge barge attended by two tugs, while we waited for the nice man to lift the opening part of the Erasmus Bridge. This is an enormous piece of engineering, as the bridge carries road traffic, trams, the ubiquitous bicycles and pedestrians from the North to the South side of the city, and the whole operation took fifteen minutes. There are special traffic lights, which go from red to red-over-green and eventually to green, far too slowly for my impatient Skipper, nervous of bigger ships bearing down on me from behind.

Mate kept her cool, and further up the river was to need it a lot more, as I passed under a motorway bridge with a clearance of 24 metres. My air draught is 21 metres, so from down at deck level the underside of that bridge looked very close to the top of my aerial, some 30 centimetres higher than the masthead. With the relief of that particular clearance still fresh, it was time to cross the channel to follow the Hollandse IJssel river to the North.

It’s all very well being a river/canal barge for a while, never feeling the wind in my sails, but it’s a bit undignified for my fenders and mooring ropes to just be left lying along my side decks. I suppose it makes sense, when I passed through a number of locks and under bridges that open over narrow channels at the side of the waterway, but still.

Gradually we left the city wharves and apartment buildings behind, and the scenery became more attractive: smarter houses with their own river frontage and moorings, the occasional windmill, a ferry, trees… and reeds. Apparently it’s very like sailing on the Norfolk Broads, where the dykes are high enough to contain the water, and seriously limit the view.

It was a dry day, but overcast and the light breeze was quite chilly. Still on the helm, Mate was glad to make the final turn into a narrow channel to our mooring for the next two nights, on the edge of Gouda.