This is "Onbekommerd"!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Sean's first day at work - Lyn's birthday

Sean had his first day at work yesterday. We met up with him at the 'Railway' pub at Kew Gardens Underground station, also because he could not make it today for Lyn's birthday as he has a 'work dinner and drinks' tonight. He looked rather professional in suit and tie, the image fits him perfectly!



Today is Lyn's birtday, so we went to visit her favourite shop in London, Foyles bookstore. Five floors of books is heaven for Lyn and she bought a few 'birtday presents'. On our way there, we walked past Sean's office. Its in Jermyn street, which runs parallel to Picadilly. Its full of (expensive) mens outfitters and shirtmakers. Here are 2 pics.



Note the typical 'pillar box' (postbox) and phone booth (which is right in front of #54 where Sean works)

Monday, July 25, 2011

Back in London - Sean's news!

We are back in London. On Thursday last week, after some more varnishing, we treated ourselves to a quick visit to Amsterdam. After that the weather got worde again, fortunately a lot of the most pressing maintenance work was done (not all of it, there is always work to do on a boat).
The Saturday and Sunday saw increasingly bad weather, rain, cold and windy. We were wondering whether it was 24 July or 24 October when we closed up the boat and walked to the bus stop. For us not that big a deal: we had nine wonderful weeks on the boat, but if you have 2 weeks leave, spent a lot of money on renting a boat and then this weather.... that's 'not fair'. We did remark that, if given the 'Schengen days', we would have loved to stay and go South into Belgium and France. But we'll leave that for another year. I am going back later, probably late September, to 'put the boat to sleep' for the winter (and do or make arrangements for some more work, like anti-fouling).
The trip back to London was uneventful and it was nice to see the clouds disappear when we were crossing the North Sea and by the time we got out of the airport it was 24 degrees instead of 14 and sunny instead of rain!
We quickly contacted Sean and he met us in Richmond  for supper and then  spent the night with us. The really big news is that he has got a job! On Wednesday he starts at Pallinghurst, an investment company specialised in mining activities. They are in the centre of London, off Piccadilly. It seems to be a 4 month probationary contract, we'll learn more when we see him again on Wednesday evening, so we'll report back then. In the meantime, he is buying more shirts and an extra suit as that is the expecyed business wear here. Here is a picture of Lyn and Sean in front of 12 The Avenue, our current abode!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Maintenance day

Hurray! The weather was a lot better the last two days, so we got an opportunity to do some essential maintenance. Firstly we filled the tank with almost 300l of diesel yesterday. That was after 6 weeks of heavy cruising and itb was less than expected.
Today, I sanded and varnished the wood around the teak decks as well as the back handrail. It still needs an extra coat Maybe even two) but it already looks a lot beter. After that it was bilge-cleaning time, so that is also spick-and-span now. Lyn polished the wood inside the main cabin.
Still quite a bit to do but with a few more nice days we'll get there. Otherwise, if there is a lot left I'll come back here mid August. If it is a small amount, I'll do it at the end of September when the boat goes back to winter storage.

We spoke with the boys on Skype on Monday (and again with Sean today) and they seem to be doing well. Sean had a meeting with a Lord about investment job opportunities and got some very valuable advice (and possible further contacts) and also was shown round the Houses of Parliament by this Lord. He also has a job interview tomorrow, so life is exciting for him in London!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Back in Monnickendam

Yesterday we stayed in Baarn and got the opportunity to see family and friends in the area.
Firs we cycled to Soest, to see my uncle and aunt, Hans and Phlip. It was very nice to see them, especially as Lyn had never met Phlip. They were cheeful and optimistic, which is good when you are 92 and 87 respectively with the problems which come with old age. We had a good few hours of animated talk about the Thijsse family but also about curent events. Both Hans and Phlip are very alert at that age!
Then we also saw Hans and Jet for lunch and exchenged stories about our respective trips. After they had the problem with the 'Waterbufvel' in Zoutkamp, they had the boat fixed quickly and took a trip on the inland waters in Groningen and the West of Germany.
And in the evening we had Hoyte and Carien for coffee and a glass of wine and again had a cheerful chat, so all in all it was a good day for socialising!
This morning (Sunday), we left aropund 10am (after leaving an envelop with the harbour fees in the yacht club postbox as there was no harbour master) and set course down the river Eem, along the Eemmeer, Gooimeer, IJmeer and Markermeer to Monnickendam. By the time wegot into the Gouwzee, the weather got quite bad and we abandoned our plan to stop in Volendam for diesel and went straight to our box in Marina Monnickendam. Home after about 6 weeks. We'll get the diesel later this week, hopefully we'll get a long enough dry spell to go to Volendam and fill up, filling up when it is raining is not good practise as the tank must start as dry as humanly possible. I just read that the past three days there has been more rain than in a normal month of July!
We'll basically stay here until next week when we'll fly back to London. So only blog updates if someting interesting presents itself!


Uncle and nephew


Aunt and nephew!


As we approached the Gouwzee, there was a big storm brewing!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Elburg - Somewhere near Baarn

During our stay in Zwolle, the weather was really quite bad, rainy and cold. So we did not have a chance to look around properly, but from what we saw, Zwolle seems quite nice!
The following day, Thursday,  we moved to Elburg, again in wet and cool weather. The papers here talk about 'autumn weather' and I guess that's quite correct. From our contact with Greg its a lot better in Cape Town and it is mid-winter there! Not to worry, inside the boat it is comfortable (although we had the heater on in Zwolle). Elburg is nice, we had visited it a few years ago with a boat we chartered. A well preserved old fortified town. As the holidat season has started, it is getting more difficult to get nice places in the more popular towns and you need to get in early. We arrived in Elburg at around 2h30 and got one of the last places before having to 'double up'. Imagine in 2 weeks time when all the schools are off (now only in 2 of the 3 parts that the country is divided in for school holiday purposes) and especially if the weather improves!
We left Elburg earlyish this (Friday) morning and went up the little river 'Eem' as far as a place just before Baarn. The weather has presented a nice day, sunny from about midday, so that gave us an opportunity to get the boat dry. Tomorrow we'll cycle to Soest to visit my uncle Hans and aunt Phlip, we have arranged to go for coffee there. After that, on Sunday or maybe Monday its back to Monnickendam.


As Elburg is an old fishing town, you can get fresh smoked eel there!


No idea what bird this is.


Lots of birds on the 'Veluwemeer', we went straigh through a flock which had settled on the water!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Cycling and Zwolle

As reported, we cycled around Meppel yesterday. The weather was very good for cycling, quite sunny, not too hot and little wind. The surroundings of Meppel consist of nature reserves (we cycled through 'de Wieden') and small scale farmland (mainly dairy farming). We also went through Giethoorn, which is called the "Venice of the North' as the houses are built on islands and are only accessible by boat or on foot over little bridges. All in all we cycled about 35KM and really enjoyed it.
Today, the weather is very different. Cold and a persistent drizzle make it quite unpleasant outside, but after motoring the 3 hours to Zwolle we have time to do some work and catch up on emails etc.


Meppel: Nice spot right under the windmill!


Giethoorn


I thought storks were quite rare!


Waterlilies in 'de Wieden'

Monday, July 11, 2011

Meppel

The plan was to get up early this morning to get ahead of the 'crowd' of boats that we expected to go through the remaining locks to Meppel. The geting up early succeeded, but we had a bit of a delay due to some confusion with the instrumentation. A few minutes after we left, the motor temperature showed high and the oil pressure low. We immediately stopped and waited a bit to let the engine cooll down and tried again. No problem, everything fine... During the next hour or so, we deduced that there is an instrumentation glitch: as soon as you swith the navigation lights on (which we had, as it was very misty early on), the oil pressure shows (a bit) low and the motor temperature (a bit) high. As we had switched the nav lights off during the engine cooling delay, we at first did not understand what was wrong, but the problem is perfectly repeatable. So I need to check out the wiring when I get a chance. As we very very seldom use the nav lights, its no big deal at the moment.
In the end, there was not a lot of traffic and after 4 locks and a few bridges we tied up in Meppel which seems a nice place. We'll stay here tomorrow and get the bikes out as the surroundings are very pretty and suitable for cycling.

The promised pictures:


In a very quiet 'passantenhaven' in Assen


Saskia and Harrie came for dinner


Some of the locks on the Drenthse Hoofdvaart are manually operated

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Groningen - Assen - 1ste Uffelterbrug (yes, you are reading this correctly!)

Well, Groningen did not ‘do it’ for us. Busy, noisy, dirty, vagrants in the street and an overfull yacht basin did not endear it to us. We prefer a bit more peace and quiet and a bit of space. Or maybe we are getting old?!

On Saturday we left after the lunch hour of the bridge keepers (we had to do some ‘business’ in the morning) and set course for Assen. That also brought us to Drenthe, our 11th province on Onbekommerd, the only one we have not been to is Limburg, in the South. That wont happen this year either. The weather en route to Assen was not too good, with rain showers every now and then, including the mother of all downpours just as we entered a lock. Bad timing! Otherwise it was quite uneventful but a bit slow and as we could not make the harbour in the centre of Assen before the closing time of the bridges (5pm on a Saturday), we tied up in a very quiet little ‘passanten haven’ on the outskirts of Assen. Apart from the fact that it was a bit shallow (we had to move the boat along the quay in order to be off the bottom), it turned out a perfect spot, very quiet and a nice smell of some flower in the air! My cousin Saskia and Harrie came on board for a meal and we had a very nice, interesting and lively conversation which lasted till around 11. This (Sunday) morning it was beautiful weather and we set off in the direction of Meppel at 9.30, knowing that we could not make Meppel itself as the speed limit on the Drenthse Hoofdvaart is 6KM/hr, there are numerous bridges and about 6 locks which all close at 5pm on a Sunday. So we are now tied up at 1st Uffelter bridge, just on the side of the canal. It is not a bad place, but there is a main road on the other side of the canal, so quiet it aint! Otherwise we are well, another 2 Onbekommerd weeks before we go back to London. We look forward to see Sean there and Lyn will go to Cape Town the week after to work on a project there for 2 weeks and also see Greg. We do miss our boys!

Pictures tomorrow. We only have a GPRS connection here, which is too slow to get pictures uploaded!

Friday, July 8, 2011

From Wilhelmshaven all the way to Groningen

Some Wangerooge to Wilhelmshaven pics to start with:

Fishing on the Wad


Last 'prikken route'


As you get up the Jade, there are more big ships


Wilhelmshaven is a naval port






As planned we left Wilhelmshaven around 8h40, but at the first bridge we were told to wait until 9h30 to get ‘in sync’ with the traffic in the canal. Once we were on our way, the canal was very nice, extremely quiet and quite beautiful. For a section, the bridge keeper travels with you in his car (or on his motorbike) to open the bridges (or to operate the occasional lock) so that the bridge or lock is already open when you get there. These are also very friendly individuals and you sort of ‘get to know’ them and wave goodbye at the end of the section.

Some impressions of the Ems - Jade canal:



A manually operated swing bridge and a big fixed bridge in the background





 It took us the whole day to get to Aurich, which is a mid sized town, OK but not that exciting with a very quiet and well equipped yacht harbour. The following day, we and another Dutch boat from Lemmer whom we first saw on Juist and had sort of been travelling together with, left at 9 and got to Emden at the end of the canal in the early afternoon. The highlight was the ‘Kesseller lock’, which connects 4 waterways of different levels and therefore has 4 exits! The picture below does not quite show it, but it gives an idea. Apparently this is the only 4-way lock in Europe, there are a few 3 way ones.



Emden is quite a big town with a few interesting buildings, most of the town was destroyed in WW2. We left just before 9 am in order to catch the opening of the railway bridge and hoping to catch the outgoing tide to Delfzijl, which is ‘back in the Netherlands’. The German helpfulness and friendliness which we had experienced so far and in such big measures had however run out: the lock keeper at the (admittedly very big) lock declined to run the lock just for 5 pleasure craft and told us we had to wait until commercial boats wanted to use the lock, in which case we could join in.


Inside the lock at Emden!


This caused a 3 ½ hour wait but more importantly, caused us the miss the outgoing tide so that we had to travel into 2 knots of tide instead of having 2 knots behind us, which almost halved out SOG (speed over ground) and added another hour to the trip. Once in Delfzijl, the locking procedure was fast and by 3pm we were on our way to Appingedam. Now there was a misunderstanding about the need to have a ‘self service key’ for the bridge giving access to Appingedam (no you don’t need a key to operate the bridge, but yes you do need one to call the bridge keeper!) so that it was 6pm by the time we eventually tied up in Appingedam, which is a very nice old town (but something must be wrong if half of the buildings housing the local shops and businesses are for sale…).



Appingedam is famous for these 'hanging kitchens', built like that to save inside space


This morning (Friday) we did some serious restocking of the provisions at the local ‘Albert Heyn’ supermarket which is just 2 minutes walk from the boat (we took the trolley back to the boat) and is brand new and enormous (and no, I don’t think that’s why the other businesses are closing as they are not ‘grocery shops). The next disappointment was that the water level in the Damsterdiep, a supposedly nice and quiet waterway was too high, making the bridges just a few cm too low for Onbekommerd so that we had to take the straight and boring Eemskanaal instead. So here we are in Groningen, a few steps from the city centre where there seems to be a market tomorrow.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Back to the mainland - Wilhelmshaven

We are back on the mainland in a marina in Wilhelmshaven which has got WiFi so I dont have to use the 'roaming dongle' That gives a chance for a quick update:

We left Wangerooge as early as the tide allowed, around 12.30 in cloudy weather with about 15 knots of wind. After passing two shallows, we got to the Jade, the 'river' which runs to Wilhelmshaven. It is not really a river as it does not go more than a few KM inland but from the sea it looks like a river the way it runs between the islands. There was quite a bit of shipping, big ships which are on their way to the oil and container terminals near Wilhelmshaven, which itself is a Navy port.
As we had planned to have the tide carry us in, we did over 8 knots over the ground (normal is just over 6) and we got to the big locks in Wilhelmshaven by 15.30. Fortunately the wait was quite short as they do not really have proper tying up facilities for small boats to wait: we just floated in front of the lock for 10 minutes or so before we were let in.
These locks are enormous, about 50m wide and 300m long I guess. It was just little Onbekommerd and one other (also Dutch) motor yacht of similar proportions in there, so it was quite someting to have this big lock with the enormous quantity of water that had to be 'shifted' just for us!
Wilhelmshaven itself is not very exciting and tomorrow we'll leave around 9 to go to Aurich, on the Ems - Jade Kanal.
I owe you pictures of today, but they are still in the camera.
Also, I have been asked what I mean with 'the Wad'. I realise that this is a difficult thing to explain or understand, so I am now working on a (small) illusrated treatise on this unique ecosystem! Watch this space!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Wangerooge (and pictures from Spiekeroog)

First we have the promised pictures of Spiekeroog:







The trip to the last island, Wangerooge, was only one and a half hours. There was a 15 – 18 knot NW blowing but on the ‘Wad’ it was nicely protected. When crossing the ‘gap’ between the two islands (the ‘zeegat’), there was a bit of bumping and rolling but nothing hectic and by 11.30 we were tied up in the very quiet harbour of Wangerooge. The harbour is 5 KM from the town, there is a train which only runs to connect with the (not too frequent) ferry service to the mainland, so we took the bikes and cycled to the nice town for shopping and to climb the old lighthouse from where you have a nice view of the entire island. In the evening, after supper, we walked around the West side of the island on the beach. During the night the weather turned as predicted and yesterday (Saturday) we spent on board reading. Today it is cloudy, cool (16C), dry but with a 6-7 Bft (25 knots or so) NW wind, so we are waiting for the wind to drop before we return to Wilhelmshaven on the mainland. We walked the 5KM to the town to have some excercise (and coffee and a waffle) and took the train back (to give me my 'train fix', but also because the train travels through the nature reserve with lots of birds!) The wind should drop tomorrow, according to the forecast and then we'll carry on. There is another Dutch boat here with the same plan: To Wilhelmshaven and then the Ems - Jade Kanal back to Emden and on the Delfzijl where we'll get back into Holland again.


The nature reserve between Wangerooge harbour and town


Wangerooge town seen from the old lighthouse


Wangerooge harbour master's office


Wangerooge public yacht harbour