Tuesday 31 October
Two curious points about the church in Maasluis: at night, the face is lit with little dots of light at each hour, and the hands are lit with lines of dots of light; on the hour and half hour (in daylight hours) a carillon plays a different tu
ne every time. Maasluis is a pleasant town, with a museum including two traditional ships, and a good selection of food shopping, fashion boutiques, hair salons and restaurants. There is some attractive architecture among the buildings lining the waterways on which the town is built.
After a successful first attempt at pump out (already enough information), we left smoothly for the nine miles upriver to Veerhaven in Rotterdam. On the way we navigated heavy traffic of all shapes and sizes, while being handed on like a relay baton from one sector control radio to the next. Fortunately, English is the international language for VHF.
Veerhaven is a complete contrast to the quiet, snug marina at Maasluis: just an inlet from the river, so quite bouncy from the wash of vessels constantly passing the entrance, and full of beautiful classic Dutch barges and herring fishing boats. My crew found themselves just a few minutes’ walk from a reasonable supermarket, the ‘West End’ quarter full of bars and restaurants, a peaceful park and an Oriental supermarket. This is afloat in the next inlet West, at the foot of the Euromast, a popular tourist attraction. Also afloat is the building housing ‘our’ facilities; it’s already obvious why Holland is known as the Venice of the North.
It’s an easy city to walk around, as long as you remain alert for trams, traffic on the wrong side of the road, and bicycles all over the place, in heaps at every building and street corner, and whizzing along their own traffic lanes, merging with vehicles and pedestrians at junctions.