This is "Onbekommerd"!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Dutch ceremony

Today, back in London, we attended the naturalisation ceremony which made Lyn a Dutch citizen!
As the embassy is being renovated, the ceremony took place at the residence of the ambassador, which is right next to the Royal Albert Hall, in Exhibition Road. Handy when the ambassador wants to go to a concert I guess and also within walking distance of the embassy where he obviously works (I dont know if ambassadors walk to work or if they are too important for that!).
First the ambassador gave a speech about what it means to have Dutch citizenship, beyond just having the passport. Then each of the 8 new citizens had to promise that they would obey the Dutch constitution and perform the duties required by the constitution and laws of the country. They got their certificate and a book about Dutch history.

Here is Lyn, being congratulated by the ambassador:



As we keft, the ambassador's wife gave us a bunch of flowers (orange tulips), which we think were left over from a function last night (possible the celebration of the queen's official birthday which is on Monday).


Outside the residence after the ceremony.



On Tuesday we will go to apply for Lyn's new passport. That should take about 2 weeks to arrive. We will then return to Onbekommerd as soon as possible, she is waiting patiently for us in Monnickendam.
In the meantime, there will only be blogposts when there is someting significant to report.



Monday, April 23, 2012

Monnickendam

After we had tied up last night, we got some interesting pictures which we would like to share. One is one of Lyn's famous sunsets, the other one of a very patient (and tame!) fisherman:









This morning again, the weather was up to no good, with rain and wind and also cold enough to switch on the heater.





We walked into Hoorn to do shopping for the last few meals before we go back to London on Wednesday. We also treated ourselves to 'koffie en appelgebak', which is a typical - and decadent - Dutch way of spoiling yourself:





Fortunately, it cleared a bit and we left Hoorn.





And set sail to Monnickendam, where the boat will stay during our approximately 3 weeks in London to go to the naturalisation ceremony and obtain Lyn's Dutch passport. The trip to Monnickendam was fine, the weather cleared nicely when we approached so we could fill up the tank with 268 l (!) of diesel, that's what we used these 3 weeks, just under 4 l / hour of motoring.

Tomorrow, I will take the bus to Amsterdam to get some more charts for our summer trip. We have not got the lakes North of Berlin yet. On Wednesday, we return to London.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Across the IJsselmeer to Hoorn

This morning, the weather was pretty miserable, with rain showers accompanied with a lot of wind. But the forecast was that this would abate, so we just stayed put and read a bit. Around 2 pm, it cleared and the wind dropped a bit so we set off. It remained quite windy for the whole trip, about 5bft, but at least it was sunny and not too uncomfortable. We passed through the lock at Enkhuizen (a lock built as an aqueduct over the freeway, called 'Naviduct') and continued to Hoorn where we tied up around 6.15. Sorry, no pictures today, just the story!


Location:'t Oude Sluisje,Hoorn,The Netherlands

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Urk

A relatively short trip today, a few more miles of IJssel, then the Ketelmeer and into the IJsselmeer. The weather was not very friendly, cloudy, rain and hail showers quite windy and cold. But we had no problems with any of that and just after 12 we were safely in our berth in Urk. Urk used to be an island with fishing as its (almost) sole source of income. These days, since 1939, it is part of the newly reclaimed land and next to fishing (the Urk fishing fleet operates on the North Sea now, but the fish is still trucked to the market in Urk which is one of the biggest in Europe), tourism is also important to the economy.
When the rain stopped and the sun came out, we went for a walk:





This is not really showing anything typically Urk, but it's a nice shot, we think.





Later in the afternoon, it cleared completely and we are having our 'borrel' (pre-dinner drinks) in bright sunshine. Unfortunately, the weather forecast offers little hope that this will stay :-(

Location:Dormakade,Urk,The Netherlands

Friday, April 20, 2012

Further down the IJssel: to Kampen

We continued our trip down the river today. Although with 37 (nautical) miles it was the furthest day of our trip this year, with the current behind us it did not take us that long: by 2 pm we were tied up in Kampen, which is close to where the IJssel ends in the IJsselmeer.
It's a nice and quite rural stretch of river, between Zutphen and Kampen. You pass one town, Deventer and a few villages. Here are some impressions:

















Location:Kampen

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Starting down the IJssel

The first few hours today we were still going up the Neder Rijn. We passed the third weir and lock, at Driel and them came to Arnhem, passing under the bridge where the Battle of Arnhem, part of operation Market Garden, was fought in September 1944:





At this stage, we were doing about 6 knots. A few miles later, we reached IJsselkop, where the river IJssel splits off from the Rhine. We made the sharp turn to port to go downstream the IJssel and now we were suddenly doing over 9 knots, thanks to a 3 knot current downriver. This of course was good for us, but it is not so nice when one goes upstream! Therefore, the big commercial boats want to stick to the inside bends of this meandering river, where the current is less than on the outside. That means that every now and then, they need to navigate on the 'wrong' (= port) side of the river. They indicate this by showing a blue 'board', with a white flashing light on it. Like this, a rather rare (on this river) commercial passenger boat:





When you come across one of these, you need to quickly cross the river and pass 'starboard to starboard'). So you need to keep your wits about you, and look carefully at each oncoming barge to see whether or not he shows the blue board.

With this great speed, we soon reached our destination for today, the medieval town of Zutphen. This is a really nice and well kept historical place, one of the cities of the old Hanseatic league. These are part of the old fortifications:





As you can see, the weather is reasonable, we get a rain shower every now and then, but so far most of the rain has fallen at night :-)

Tomorrow, we plan to continue the trip down the IJssel.

Location:Zutphen

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Up the Rhine

This morning we started our trip up the 'big rivers'. After negotiating the lock at Vianen, we turned starboard up the Lek. This river is quite busy at this point, as the commercial Amsterdam - Rotterdam traffic passes here. But a few miles upstream is the intersection with the Lekkanaal and after that it's very quiet.

Next comes the weir ('stuw') at Hagestein. This weir is normally closed, so you have to take a lock around it. At very high river levels / flows, the weir gets opened to control the river level. It was closed today:





So we were by ourselves in a big lock, which took us up 3m.

Next was the intersection with the Amsterdam - Rhine canal, which is part of the main commercial shipping highway between Amsterdam and Germany.
Fortunately, there is a traffic control post here: you report on the VHF and they guide you across by telling you to wait or to cross in front of the approaching commercial barges. That takes a lot of stress out of the crossing!
By this time, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the name of the river changes from Lek to Neder Rijn (lower Rhine).

Then another weir and lock at Amerongen, so another 3m up.

The river was still very quiet. But we saw some interesting ferries, so called 'gierponten'. These are ferries which are connected, by way of a very strong cable, to a little boat which is anchored in the middle of the river. The little boat act as a pivot point for a sort of 'pendulum' with the ferry at the end. The cable is supported by two more little boats, the whole arrangement looks like this:





Unfortunately you can't see the ferry itself very well in this picture, it's on the very left. I'll try to get another shot if we pass another gierpont tomorrow.

It's very pretty on the river, the sun was out every now and then:





Before 3 we got to Wageningen and we decided to call it a day and have a look around the town, which is best known by the fact that the German occupiers surrendered here at the end of the second World War in 1945.

Location:Wageningen

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

A cold and quite long day

When we woke up this morning, the cabin temperature was 4C! So we started not only the coffee machine, like we do every morning (it gets loaded up with ground coffee and water before I go to bed), but also the heater. So the boat warmed up whilst we had coffee in bed.

By 8:30 we were off. Along the Hollands Diep, the Amer, the Niewe Merwede, the Boven Merwede, through the Linge lock at Gorinchem and along the Merwedekanaal to Vianen, where we are tied up now. It was a trip of almost 7 hours. It's still cold and there are rainy spells too now. The heater is on, so it's very comfortable on board.

The plan is to go up Lek and Neder Rijn tomorrow and start going down the IJssel after that. We are doing a lot of 'varen', this trip!

Sorry, no pictures today, not a lot of spectacular things to see.

Location:Merenborch,Vianen,The Netherlands

Monday, April 16, 2012

Back in Willemstad

We left Burghsluis early this morning, out of the harbour just after 8.
There were several rain squalls threatening, but they all happened to pass either in front or behind us. Outside, in the fresh wind, it was bitterly cold, but inside it was pleasant.
We again passed under the impressive Zeeland bridge:





Two locks and five and a half hours after departure we tied up in Willemstad again. Some shopping done for the next few days, soup for tomorrow and Wednesday prepared and now it's time for 'borrel' (= drinks).

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Burghsluis

Whist on our way to Burghsluis yesterday, we contacted our friends Jan Edu and his wife Manon. Jan Edu and I sailed Europe dinghies in the distant past and on two occasions I joined him with a bunch of students on a skiing trip to Adelboden where his family had a house.
We arranged that he would collect us from the harbour for a meal at their house nearby. We did not know about the existence of the 'Oosterscheldekreeft', a lobster which is caught in the part of the Delta where we are. But now we know all about these creatures:





Jan Edu had organised five of them to be eaten by us (including his daughter Martine, who is a doctor working in nearby Goes). It was a most memorable meal.






We decided to spend another day in Burghsluis, it is a nice, small and quiet harbour. The weather was sunny (but very cold) and it was blowing quite hard, about 20 knots.




The plan was to have mussels at the restaurant on the harbour, but it appears that fresh mussels are out of season until June (or so the restaurant manager told us). So we had different fish instead.

Tomorrow the plan is to leave early and return to Willemstad. We need to commence the trip 'back North' so that we are back in Monnickendam in time to catch our flight back to London on 25 April.

Location:Groenlandsweg,Burgh-Haamstede,The Netherlands

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Willemstad and beyond

Sorry, I did not get around to writing a post yesterday.
We left Rotterdam just after 9 and navigated our way through the busy harbour:





You see all sorts of pretty unusual things here. This is a big barge full of smaller (typical European commercial) barges. I guess it had come in from China and was being offloaded in Rotterdam:





After that we went via the Oude Maas and the Spui to the Hollands Diep. There was no wind at all, perfect motorboat weather and we made good time to arrive in Willemstad around 14:30. Willemstad is one of our favourite stopovers in the South of the Netherlands, it is very pretty and has excellent facilities. My cousin Carel and his wife Mieke live nearby and they picked us up from the boat and took us for a very nice dinner. It was good to see them again!
This morning we left at 9 again, this is our now empty mooring:





I am writing this blogpost whilst we are motoring on the Volkerak. It is nice and sunny with a light breeze behind us. Here is the helmsman:





Location:On the Volkerak

Thursday, April 12, 2012

To Rotterdam

Early in the morning it was quite misty, too misty to leave actually, but that was no problem as we wanted to have a look at Schoonhoven anyway. Although it is supposed to be the silver jewellery town, we had to look around a bit before we found this:





But all in all, it is quite a nice old Dutch town on the riverbank. We left around half past eleven, this is what it looks like from the river:





In the beginning, it was pretty quiet, but as we got nearer Rotterdam, there was a lot of traffic on the water and it was important to keep your wits about you.





After 3 hours we were safely tied up in the City Marina, with nice and luxurious hot showers but not the promised wifi Internet.

Location:Vijf Werelddelen,Rotterdam,The Netherlands

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Schoonhoven

At around 10 this morning the heater mechanic 'phoned to say that he had repaired the heater and was on his way to us to put it back into the boat. Once that was done, and the repair tested and found to be successful, we quickly walked into Utrecht for a small shopping expedition. The we set of on the trip right through the city. You go under 16 arched bridges, which is quite pretty. Fortunately the sun had come out as well, and people were sitting on the terraces on the side of the canal.









We had carefully planned our departure time so that we hit the first low bridge, which had to open for us, immediately after the lunch break. Several bridges and two locks further found us on the river Lek. We have done a bit of 'river cruising', but this time we have planned to follow the Lek to Rotterdam and (much) later we'll tackle the Maas, a little bit of the Waal and the IJssel.
The Lek was not too busy today, we were passed by only two big tanker barges and saw about ten going the other way. After just under two hours we arrived in Schoonhoven, the 'silver jewellery' town. The weather changed just after we arrived, so we'll go into the town tomorrow, the forecast seems reasonable.

Some Lek-pictures:









Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Utrecht

We spent the weekend in Loosdrecht, at the club I belonged to over 30 years ago and where I learned to sail.





Yesterday, Easter Monday, Jaap (a friend from my primary school days) and his wife Liesbeth fetched us and took us to the visitors' centre of 'Natuurmonumenten'. That is an organisation which buys specifically important areas in the Netherlands to protect nature there. My great grandfather was one of the founders in 1905. In spite of the poor weather, it was a very nice visit. Afterwards, we had dinner at Carien's house, which is very near that visitors centre. Carien and her brother Hoyte are friends from my high school days, it was a day of seeing 'old' friends!

This morning we set off for Utrecht. The weather was still cold and rainy. We stopped just before Utrecht to consult a mechanic about our diesel fired heater which does not want to start. He removed the heater and took it to the workshop and phoned a bit later that he can fix it and will bring it back by noon tomorrow. We then carried on to Utrecht itself where we are now.

The final picture is of our new soup-making efforts. We bought a very nice handheld blender with which Lyn now makes great soups!





Location:Nieuwekade,Utrecht,The Netherlands

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Loosdrecht

After leaving the berth in Amsterdam, we crossed through the city, which is always nice:





Then through the Weespertrekvaart and via the Vecht to Loosdrecht, where we are currently tied up at the yacht club where I was a member 33 years ago. And what's more, the first person I walked into recognised me! So I guess I haven't aged that much after all....

We stay here until Tuesday. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. On Monday we go to the open day of 'Natuurmonumenten' in 's Graveland. Natuurmonumenten is an organisation of which my great grandfather was one of the founders.

Location:Oud-Loosdrechtsedijk,Loosdrecht,The Netherlands

Friday, April 6, 2012

Alkmaar - Amsterdam

As promised in yesterday's post, we start with some pictures of the launch of Onbekommerd after the winter storage period. As you can see, this time we were actually on board during the process. Once we were afloat it was simply a matter of turning the key to start the engine and reverse out, waving goodbye to the capable and friendly Nicolaas Witsen crew and Ed (who came - with Elly - for coffee on board that evening and gave us these pictures:




After a good night's sleep (we did not sleep all that well on the ferry the previous night), we quickly went into Alkmaar as it was the first Friday this year that the cheesemarket was on. It was absolutely packed with people, it being school holidays as well as nice and sunny weather. We found this street organ:



And these cheesebarges going through the canal:


Then we left for Amsterdam, where we arrived mid-afternoon. We went to the shop where thy sell the charts you need to get anywhere in the world (you tell us where you want to go, we'll get you the charts, the owner said). A dangerous place for planning / navigation enthousiasts like me.... We got the chart sets we need for our planned trip to Denmark this summer.
Finally we took the tram to Lyn's favourite shop, Broekmans en Van Poppel which specialise in sheet music. Lyn wanted a copy of Beethoven's C Major piano concerto, because the previous day, we bought this:


The idea of living on the boat for 6 months without being able to play the piano was really difficult, so after a lot of research we got this digital piano. It (just) fits into the wardrobe in the cabin. We have a stand for it and also a set of headphones so that Lyn can practise without disturbing the neighbours. The first session was this afternoon and was very successful by all accounts. Onbekommerd is probably the only Valkvlet with a piano......

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Back afloat!

Just a very quick post:
Onbekommerd was back in the water just after 12 today. All well, the engine started immediately as expected and we motored the half a mile or so to the 'Bierkade" in Alkmaar. Cleaning the interior and provisioning the boat took most of the afternoon. There was one particular purchase which is unusual for a boat, we'll leave you in suspense and publish a picture tomorrow, together with one or two pics that Ed took of the launching process (with us on board). We are pretty tired now, so it's bedtime in our snug front cabin. It's so good to be back on board again!



Location:Bierkade,Alkmaar,The Netherlands

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Almost travelling

Sorry, not much posting this last week!
On Wednesday we went for a celebratory lunch with Gwilym and Janine to mark the granting of Dutch citizenship to Lyn (which officially was granted on 7 February and will be confirmed in a ceremony at the Dutch Embassy here in London on 26 April). After lunch we went to the 'Isabella plantation' in Richmond Park. Later this spring, this will be full of Azaleas and Rodondendrons, the first bit of colour is already appearing. We'll go back when we are back in London in May.


On Sunday we went to Stratford City Westfield shopping centre with Sean, not to shop but to have another look at the Olympic Park and have lunch.
Tomorrow we are off to Onbekommerd on the Harwich - Hook van Holland night ferry. Subject to WiFi availability I'll try to post a picture from the ship. Otherwise it will hav to wait until we have revived the internet connection on Onbekommerd. We plan to spend the first night (Thursday) in Alkmaar, there is no WiFi there so we need to get 3G for the iPad and Lyn's iPhone before we can communicate. From then on we'll try to have at least short daily posts of our travels.