This is "Onbekommerd"!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The end of the trip. And some statistics

We arrived in Franeker yesterday. Franeker is where "P. Valk Yachts" is, Onbekommerd's birthplace:





She will spend the winter here and some necessary maintenance will be done. It's amazing how quickly the list grows when you put your mind to it. But when you see the stats below, it's not surprising that some TLC on engine and ship is required!

This year, we spent 160 days on board, 71 in the Netherlands, 46 in Denmark and 43 in Germany. We tied up in 102 different spots.
The engine ran for 367 hours, in which it used 1410 litres of diesel. We covered 1895 nautical miles, that's is 3509 KM.

From now, our blog posting pattern will change. I still want to post a bit on communication, navigation and propulsion in different posts but that will have to wait a bit. Tomorrow we travel to London, to meet up with Sean. Next week Wednesday back to Cape Town, where we'll stay until after Easter. At that stage, blog posts will become few and far between, until we travel again!

Location:Zuiderkade,Franeker,The Netherlands

Monday, September 24, 2012

Leeuwarden

Apologies for the absence of a post this morning. We had a glitch with the Vodafone 'system', but that has now been resolved.

Not only the sunset on Saturday was nice, sunrise on Sunday was equally spectacular:





And the early morning mist, with an early rising duck also made for a nice picture:




You can see it's now later in the season: a few weeks ago, sunrise would have been to early to take photos ;-)

After morning coffee, we left our private jetty for Leeuwarden, where we arrived as the bridge keepers' lunch break ended so that we could move into the city straight away. This is the 'Oldenhove', Pisa has nothing on Leeuwarden!





Today, our friends (and Onbekommerd's previous owners) Elly and Ed came all the way from Alkmaar to have lunch on board, which was very nice of them.

Tomorrow after lunch we'll do this year's last stretch, to Franeker.

Location:Noordersingel,Leeuwarden,The Netherlands

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Somewhere near Mantgum

We spent a few somewhat productive days in Sneek. Lyn did some work, we did some boat-cleaning and took advantage of the good shopping opportunities to get all sorts of things, from prop-shaft grease to a new corkscrew in order to tackle a recalcitrant bottle!
We also had a rare 'meal ashore', at 'the Chinese'. A 'Chinese' restaurant in the Netherlands is actually usually a 'Chinese - Indonesian' restaurant, sort of linked to the period before 1948 when Indonesia was a Dutch colony (Dutch East India). These restaurants therefore serve typical Chinese- as well as Indonesian dishes. Every respectable Dutch town (or even village) boasts a 'Chinees'. There also is the 'afhaalchinees', which is "take away's" only. Anyway, we went to the chinees and had rijsttafel, an Indonesian rice dish. It was nice, although not nearly as good as the one we had two years ago in Leiden with my cousin and his partner.

Today, we started the trip to Leeuwarden, via the 'Middelseeroute', an old way to link the two cities. It has a head clearance of only 2.50m, so with mast, radar and searchlight down we can just make it! We tied up on the side of the canal, 'in the wild' after having to chase a colony of ducks who had taken possession of the jetty.

This is the view behind us:





And this was just before sunset:





Pretty rural and quiet, isn't it?

Tomorrow it is only an hour or so to Leeuwarden. We'll probably stay there for two days before the last stretch to Franeker where Onbekommerd will spend the winter.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The gas bottle that would not go empty

We are now in Sneek (or actually 'Snits' in Frisian). One of the 11 Frisian cities and one of our favourites for an extended stay as its quite lively, there is good shopping nearby and the view from our favourite spot is nice, the 'Waterpoort" is the trade mark of the city:





But nice as that may be, today's main topic is more unusual. Let me explain:

On Onbekommerd, we use bottled gas for cooking and for hot water, both in the galley and in the bathroom. Gas is in two 'bottles', of 10.5 Kgs of propane gas each. Normally, a bottle lasts about 7 weeks (49 days) before we have to change it. No problem, we just uncouple one and connect the other. They sit in a gas bin at the back of the boat, all very safe: if a bottle or it's connection would leak, the gas escapes out of the back and does not form a danger on board. Changing the bottle takes no more than 5 minutes. Gas is also not very expensive, a 10.5 Kg bottle costs €30 (you hand in the empty one and get a full one, so you only pay for the gas, not for the bottle).
There is one problem for us though..... In spite of the EU being responsible for everything (including saving the Greek economy), every country has its own design of gas bottle and it's own connections. So you can't exchange an empty Dutch bottle for a full Danish one! So what to do if you ever want to be away for more than 14 weeks (two bottles at 7 weeks each)? As cooking on board is sort of a given (eating out every night is not only unaffordable but not much fun either), we had to look at hot water usage. Now in almost every harbour there are good shower facilities on shore. Sometimes even free, but often you pay €0.50 or in Denmark 5 Kroner for a 4 or 5 minute shower. So we made sure we had 2 full bottles when we left Delfzijl, our last Dutch port of call at the end of May and dutifully showered 'on shore'. It's really no big deal. And we were extremely curious how long a bottle would last. If it was going to be 75 days or more, we would be happy: our future trips are unlikely to take us out of the country for more than 5 months, 'two gas bottles worth'.
We got back into the Netherlands on 27 August, exactly 90 days after we left. And the gas was still going strong! As the problem was solved: showering on shore gives us the required 'range' and moreover shore facilities in the Netherlands are - on average, there certainly are exceptions - much inferior to either German or (especially) Danish harbours - we decided to shower on board again. Of course we expected that now at any time the bottle would go empty. Just when you have a head full of shampoo and it's raining outside....
But no, today, on day 113, just as we were ready to start cooking, the gas went out. What luck, it was not even raining when I changed the bottle:






So there you have it: cooking takes very little gas, compared to showering. I now have two equations with two variables, so I can work out exactly how much cooking takes and how much showering.

We'll stay in Sneek for a few days. Then on to Leeuwarden and finally to Franeker to put Onbekommerd to bed for the winter on Thursday next week.

Location:Geeuwkade,Sneek,The Netherlands

Monday, September 17, 2012

Morning view from our 'bedroom'

One of the nice things of 'staying in the wild' is the early morning experience.

This is the view we had this morning around 7:30:





After breakfast we decided to stay at this very nice place a bit longer and left after morning coffee. It was just half an hour to the village of Grou. There we tied up in an almost empty guest harbour and did our shopping.

We just had another walk through the village after supper. It's almost completely deserted: the only people we saw were those from the neighbouring boat and the boat next to it.

Grou is a very pretty village, but come the end of the boating season it's probably completely dead.

We'll stay tomorrow, watch the opening of the Dutch parliament on TV and leave for Sneek on Wednesday.

Location:Meersweg,Grou,The Netherlands

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Peanster Ee

We are in the middle of Friesland now, tied up on a little jetty on the banks of a lake called "Peanster Ee". It's unlikely that you'll find it on a general map, although Google Earth might to it for you.

We left Langweer after an interesting meeting: someone knocked on the boat who transpired to be one of the previous owners of 'Onbekommerd', he sold it to our friends Ed and Elly in 1993! The world is small indeed: he was lying just outside Langweer with his current ship, which is also a Valkvlet but a bit bigger and recognised Onbekommerd as he walked past to buy his newspaper and walk his dog.

As it was time for a bit of 'tying up in the wild', we decided to go to the lakes around the Frisian city of Grou. Remember that Friesland has 11 cities, which are cities not because of size but because of city rights which were bestowed upon them several centuries ago!

The lakes around Grou are very popular and there was a regatta going on. The boats were passing our mooring place (just a jetty next to a field, no 'facilities' at all) within less that a hundred metres.

Some are quite big traditional yachts:






Others are small versions of that:






And then there is the 12 foot dinghy, an Olympic class in 1928 when the Olympics were held in Amsterdam:






All in all, we had a very enjoyable afternoon, watching all of this.
Night is falling now and it's very quiet. There are a few boats on similar jetties, a few hundred meters away. But apart from that, it's very quiet. Nice!
The plan is to stay here until Monday morning and then move on to Grou itself to get provisions.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Still Langweer, election results are out

I read somewhere that the Dutch often produce surprising election results. The surprise this time was not which party(s) were winning and which were losing, but more the extent. Now I won't go into a full analysis here, but the two parties of which I mentioned in my previous post that they would be the biggest two indeed produced that result, but more extreme than expected: with 41 seats for the (blue) one and 39 for the other (red), it seems that a 'purple' government is unavoidable. But how these two extremes are going to be married with a stable government as a result is a big question. Lots of water, not so much wine. Glad it's not my job!

Back to boating: the weather was not that nice today and as we have shore power, free Internet and a nice village on the doorstep, we decided to stay in Langweer for another day. Tomorrow promises something a bit better and we plan to move on and find a place 'in the wild'.



Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Election day

Instead of posting just another travel story (we are in Langweer, by the way), I thought I'd tell you a bit about the elections we have here today. It's a general election for the lower house of parliament, the 'Tweede Kamer'. Normally, these should take place once every 4 years, but the (coalition) government fell well short of two years in office, in April. Now 5 months seem a long time to wait with holding new elections, but apparently having holidays was more important than getting a government sorted out, so today is the day.
Lyn and I , being Dutch citizens, could actually vote but as the registration process only started early May, our itinerant existence has stood in the way of us registering to exercise our electoral privilege.
Elections here are interesting to say the least. The electoral system, the political landscape and some strange influences on voting behaviour will ensure that the country will end up with a government which few (if any) of its 12.7 million voters actually want, which - I respectfully suggest - is strange in a democracy!
What makes me say this and why?
The short answer is: "an overdose of coalition politics". The country has 21 parties contesting the 150 seats in the lower house today. Thanks to the proportional representation system, of those, 10 are currently represented in parliament, it seems likely that there will be 11 this time around. With this number of parties, it is unavoidable that no single party will get the 76 seats required for a majority so there is a need for a coalition of two or more parties. Now the latest polls (more about polls later), suggest that the two largest parties will get around 35 or 36 seats each, so even those can't form a majority government (the fact that they are very unlikely bedfellows - at least when looking at their manifestos - does not help here at all: think like making a conservative - labour coalition in Britain!). So we need more than two parties, maybe three, four or more. With possibly very small (2 seats) parties as 'kingmakers'. Now here, like everywhere, a political party likes nothing more than being in government, so they will be willing to give up quite a lot of their 'principles' to rule. So much so, that a coalition of those uneasy bedfellows I mentioned is far from unlikely! They just call it 'purple' (what you get when you mix red and blue) and it does not sound as outlandish anymore!
So there you have it: a government that no-one really wants in a very robust democracy!
I read this morning, that 40% of voters still did not know what to vote when they got up this morning. Yet, the parties all published quite detailed and clear manifestos some weeks ago. So it should be possible (if not easy) to make a pretty well founded decision. But it appears that 'what a party stands for' (the manifesto) is not all that important. For the last two weeks, there has been a barrage of interviews (sometimes more like interrogations) and televised debates, which appears to have more influence on the voters than the substance of the party policies. After all, these 'shows' highlight only some of the more crowd-pleasing issues. The polls (there are 4 polling bureau's, which in the last few weeks have published their findings every few days) show sometimes very significant shifts. This appears partly due to the results of the debates and partly as 'poll feedback': many not too well informed voters believe that a party that does well in a poll must be 'a good party'.
Now a lot of the above is - only a little bit - tongue in cheek, but maybe Churchill had a point when he said that 'the best argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter'.

We eagerly await the outcome tomorrow. It should be announced sometime during the morning: they use the 'red pencil' voting method and not the 'voting machines', which slows down the counting process a bit.
Then we'll know the composition of the 'Tweede Kamer'. But not of the government itself of course: there will be an awful lot of horse trading required to cobble together a coalition. It seems to be generally expected to take up to three months to complete that process!
In the meantime, next Tuesday is 'budget day', together with the annual opening of parliament and the Queen's speech from the throne.
As the reason for the fall of the previous government was their inability to agree on a budget that satisfied the EU requirement of a shortfall of 3% or less, the budget had to be put together by a 'temporary coalition' (which succeeded to do this in a remarkable short period of a week). But if this 'temporary coalition' has no majority in the new parliament, we may enter even more interesting times......!

Location:Bast-Bakkerpaad,Langwarder Wielen,The Netherlands

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Life on Langepôlle

We stayed on Langepôlle today. The weather was not great, but we did not have a lot of rain and in the afternoon the sun made an appearance. That gave us some fairly typical Dutch landscapes:





Lyn did a lot of work on the 'maths module' of the educational programme. I just read (Dickens) and started to think and plan about next year's voyage.

It's pretty quiet on the island tonight, apart from us there are only three boats. Last night there were a lot of kids from some sort of sailing camp who had a lot of fun, but they have left.

Of course we have a sunset to share:





The plan is to go to Langweer tomorrow. The fourth boat has just arrived...

Monday, September 10, 2012

Langehoekspôlle - into Fryslân

Yesterday was a perfect summers day, unusual for September. Sunshine, little wind and around 25C. We had friends from my high school / university days for tea and later drinks, which was very nice!

This morning, the weather was already changing. We did our shopping and left Hindeloopen after midday so that we would get to the lock at Workum after the lockkeeper's lunch break. As we entered the channel to Workum, you could see that the wind had picked up quite a lot:





We worked our way through the lock and bridges of Workum and tied up on an island between the Fluessen and the Heegermeer. The island is called 'Langehoekspôlle'. It's just a mooring place, organised by an outfit called 'Marrekrite' which sets up moorings 'in the wild' all over the province of Fryslân (which is Frisian for 'Friesland').





It's blowing quite hard now and as I write this, I can see the clouds of the cold front appearing in the distance. It's predicted that we'll have more autumn-like weather, the next few days.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Hindeloopen

We had a great trip to Hindeloopen, a beautiful late summer day, with little wind and plenty of sun. As it is Saturday as well, the IJsselmeer was full of boats, especially near popular harbours like Stavoren and Hindeloopen.
We passed the characteristic church tower of Hindeloopen shortly before arriving there:





We had planned well to get there relatively early (around 2pm), we knew it would get busy later. This is what the 'old harbour' looked like just before sunset:





And although we have posted quite a few 'sunset pictures' (Lyn's speciality!), this one is not to be missed, we think:





We'll stay here tomorrow, the forecast is for more good weather. To get into Friesland through the lock, either at Stavoren or Workum on a Sunday after such a nice weekend is going to be stressful and time consuming. So we'll do that on Monday, when schools and work have absorbed all the boaters!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Still Urk

As the weather seemed to be better to stay than to leave (sunny and a bit windy) and we have plenty of time and plenty to do, we decided to spend another day in Urk.
It's clear that summer is drawing to an end, the weather is nice at the moment but the days are getting shorter, it's a bit cooler all around and the forecast for next week looks not as good as it is now.

But we had a productive day, with some work on the boat. Lyn also worked on her educational programme and played the piano for a few hours in the afternoon.

Here are a few Urk pictures we took last night:










Tomorrow, the forecast is ideal for our last 'big water' trip of the season, probably to Hindeloopen.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Urk

A four hour trip, first the Zwolle-IJssel Kanaal, then down the IJssel and over the Ketelmeer to the IJsselmeer brought us to Urk, which was an island until it was connected to the mainland by a dike in 1939 and became part of the Noord-Oost polder in 1941.

We quite like Urk, it still has a little bit of the 'island atmosphere'. We treated ourselves to a meal of mussels and chips tonight and will stay here tomorrow.

Now that we have still three weeks to go, and would be able to get to Franeker (the winter storage / maintenance destination) in a day or two (if we had to), we finally seem to have found a bit more of 'inner peace' and find it easier to stay a bit longer in one place. We have already promised ourselves to time our life a bit better for next year's trip. It of course also helps that we now know how long (or short!) it takes to get from the Baltic 'back home'.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

An outing

We are in Zwolle, but today we went on an 'outing'.
Took the train to Zutpen and then to a small station called Klarenbeek.
Good friends of ours, the crew of the 'Waterbufvel' which accompanied us on the 'German Wadden' part of the trip, have recently bought a house in Empe and Klarenbeek is the nearest station. We admired the new house in very nice rural surroundings and had a nice lunch:





The weather was very nice and it is predicted to continue like that for the next few days, including the weekend as well!

Our plan is to leave Zwolle tomorrow and head for Urk. That's on the IJsselmeer; by now we need a bit of 'bigger water' after all the canals.
We'll slowly move to Friesland, still over three 'Onbekommerd weeks' to go!

Sunday, September 2, 2012

A weekend in Meppel: Picnic in the park

We have spent the weekend in Meppel. It's a really pleasant little provincial town. Now that the season is drawing to an end, the harbour in the town centre is very quiet (we actually are the only boat in the town harbour proper, that is BEHIND the lock which after 1 September does not operate on Sundays).
But yesterday, Saturday, there was market and the town centre was buzzing. And one of the two windmills was in operation.

We spent the weekend doing some useful / important stuff: We finished the photo book of this year's trip, which can now be sent to the printers in London as soon as we have good, reliable Internet. We can then collect the finished product when we are in the UK at the end of the month. And we did some 'boat stuff', maintenance and touching up some paintwork. The hull is filthy after the German canals and that still needs a good clean!

Today was the annual 'Picnic in the Park' event. Of course if you're Dutch, you go on your bike:

It was not far for us, so we walked.
Families having a proper picnic on their blankets, a band with 'traditional' Dutch music, canoes on the lake for which everyone queued up without pushing and shoving, it was all really nice family entertainment.

It's the second time we have been here, and we just like it: small enough to have a 'village atmosphere' but big enough to have enough 'going on'.
Tomorrow, the lock operates between 9 and 10 am, we'll be on our way, off to Zwolle then.