Navigation

The waterways we travel with 'Onbekommerd' are very varied. Sometimes we are on canals in Holland, sometimes on rivers or on lakes. Then there is bigger water: we go to the Friesian Islands to the North of the Netherlands and of Germany. And last but certainly not least there was the Baltic this year.
Everywhere, there is some form of 'navigation': where are you, where do you want to go and what is the best and safest way to get there.
On the canals and rivers, this is fairly straightforward: you use a chart (a map on a boat is called 'chart') and you can see easily from features on shore and in the water where you are. Having said that, its important that you use a chart and not a road map. The world looks quite different from the water and you would not be the first one found to be completely lost using a road map.
Open water like the IJsselmeer and the Baltic are one step up in complication. Sometimes you cant see the shore that you are going to, so you dont have a point to steer to. And there may well be shallows or shipping channels, which makes it important to know where you are and where you are heading. These days, we have GPS to help with that. Onbekommerd has two GPS systems, which can be run independently if needed. The one gives a position, heading and speed and can be programmed to give course and distance to a 'waypoint'. Its the rectangular 'box' in the top left hand corner of this picture:

Together with a good chart and some understanding of navigational principles, it is straightforward to navigate with this.

One system up is when one connects the GPS to a chart plotter. We use a laptop with electronic charts for this purpose, and a programme called WinGPS5. The signal comes from the GPS box (or from an external antenna, which looks like a mouse) and the computer shows the position, speed and heading as well as the course to the next waypoint, a trace of the route to follow and of the route already covered and some other useful information.
This can be seen in this picture:

The position is indicated by the little boat (on the border of Germany and Denmark in this case), the green line is the route we have planned. The navigation data is on the left.
This is the system we have used for our entire trip, it can also give us interesting trivia such as the most extreme Southerly, Westerly, Easterly and Northerly positions reached this year.

South: 51 deg, 36.16 mins (on the way to Burghsluis in Zeeland, in APril)
West: 3 deg, 45.31 min (Burghsluis itself)
East: 12 deg, 40.41 min (the Swedish island of Ven) and
North: 56 deg, 7.87 min (Gilelleje, on Sealland)

The most complicated navigation is on the 'Wadden', the area between the North Netherlands / German coast and the islands North of that. Here we have big tidal differences (up to 3m), causing the area to fall dry twice per day and then fill up again, which is accompanied by sometimes fierce currents. And the channels between all the dry falling 'plates' are continuously moving by the scouring action of the currents. So here you need accurate and up to date charts (electronic as well as paper) and knowledge and understanding of the tides. There is a very useful programme called 'Quicktide', which will help one tremendously to calculate when certain passages are safe.

But all these electronic gadgets can fail one day, so we also use the paper charts, the compass and the speed to give us estimated positions, especially on big and / or complicated water:

As this is the "Onbekommerd blog" and we are now back in Cape Town for the (European) winter, this is probably going to be my last post until we go back to our floating home next year. We have exiting plans, which include a 'spring trip' to the Dutch Wadden, a Friesland tour in convoy with South African friends and thereafter a 'long distance' voyage to Gotheborg in Sweden and from there through the Gotha canal to the Swedish East cost, Stockholm and along the coast back South.

We enjoyed writing the blog, we hope you enjoyed reading it!

See you next year.

Communication

My apologies, I promised a few more "Onbekommerd" posts but now that we are in London for a few days, the rythm of the past 160 days is broken and I simply have not thought enough about posting.

When we set off on our first our 'Onbekommerd' trip, in April 2010, we tried to keep in touch with family (parents, children and siblings). We used the laptop, with a GSM 'dongle' to connect to the Internet when there was no WiFi available and sent emails.

That worked, but we wondered if they really all wanted emails that often and also some friends wanted to know what we were up to. So at the start of the 2011 trip, we decided to start a blog.
That way, we can send the link to the blog to family and friends and they can decide for themselves if and when they want to look at it. We still used the laptop / dongle / WiFi combination to connect, but it was getting a bit more tricky when we left the Netherlands and went to the German 'Wadden' Islands. The problem was that the dongle only works with the Dutch SIM card and when you use this in Germany, you are 'data roaming', which is very expensive. And WiFi is not as readily available as we would like, plus it is often unreliable  and / or quite costly. So although the blog was by all accounts a good idea, but we were not quite there yet.

But later in 2011, whilst in London we had an opportunity to get better aquainted with the iPad and there was the solution! So in December we bought one of those things. We now use an iPad with 3G capabilities, and by now have no fewer than 5 SIM cards for it, one each for South Africa, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. They are relatively inexpensive and if you get the right type of data bundles the use is affordable as well.
Of course there are still frustrations, as for each card, there are different methods to get the data 'on to the card'. Even when the service providers are supposedly the same company (Vodafone in SA, UK and Netherlands), there is absolutely no commonality in loading the data. Usually you end up having to find an outlet of the specific service provider to get it done. That is not easy as there are none in the small places we go to, so we need to plan our 'entry' into each country in such a way that we hit a biggish place early on. Or you have to take the bus to the nearest town (like to Norden from Greetsiel). The only exception is Vodafone UK, where the SIM has an application which allows you to buy data 'from the comfort of your boat'.

Here is the iPad:

Of course, apart from doing the blogpost (incidentally, we use an 'app' called "Blogpress" for that, which makes it extremely easy to do), the iPad is also very useful for getting weather forecats, seeing the news and receiving and sending emails. And last but not least, it has got Skype installed which makes it possible to talk with the 'home front' from time to time, someting we always look forward to!

Apart from the iPad, we have a mobile phone with a Dutch number, which we use on a roaming basis so we can be reached in case of an emergency.

Tomorrow we fly back from London to Cape Town, I'll try to do the 'navigation' post which I also promised some time during the weekend.

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

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

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.

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

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