Another record?

When I switched on the GPS this morning, I was surprised to see that we were at 7degrees East of Greenwich. I know that the German island of Juist is at 7 degrees, there is a plaque in the marina to show that. But a place in the Netherlands? But of course the GPS does not lie and looking at the map, I found that we were close to the most Eastern point of the country. Never too old to learn!

But that's by-the-by, today we set off from Musselkanaal to the Zuidlaardermeer, a lake near the town of Groningen. Not a particular long trip, about 35 Km, but the significant fact is that we had to pass 59 bridges (of which 56 had to open for us) and 7 locks! That certainly is a record for us. As soon as we left the guest harbour at Musselkanaal, a small convoy of three boats was established. For the first three hours, the bridge- and lock keepers coordinated everything and we passed the first 5 locks and 25 bridges. Then it was lunch break, and at 1pm, our private two (!) bridge / lock operators reported for duty for the second part of the trip:





There they are, on their scooters. They stayed with us and operated the next 34 bridges and 2 locks, just for us three boats:






Of course during the locking procedures you get the chance to chat a bit and so we found that they do this up to 4 times a day and get up to 100 boats through the canal on a busy day. But today there only had been 3 boats ahead of us. And the 'convoy' on the way back (their last 'trip' of the day) appeared to consist of only one boat! After two and a half hours, we emerged into the Zuidlaardermeer. It was in all quite a tiring day: as the canal is both narrow and shallow (1.2 m), Onbekommerd has a displacement of 10 tonnes and the bridge operators urged us to go faster than one really should, the boat 'sucks' itself close to the bottom of the canal with the result that it needs a lot of heavy steering corrections. Add to that a few very sharp turns to be negotiated and you have a lot of effort on the steering wheel, which is unusual as normally Onbekommerd required very little steering corrections!

We'll sleep well, tonight.