Namur to Holland Meres

Blog 123 Namur to Holland Meres

Sorry folks! It’s been a long time since we wrote our last blog and we have met so many people and discussed so often what we’ve all been doing during that time that we actually thought we had posted another blog!!!!

So here goes, to make amends. We left Namur with a kind donation of a map of our next section from Sean and Lynne on ELLE but we failed to get their contact details. Do get in touch S and L so we can return it!

We made good progress down the fast flowing Meuse but after a couple of locks we came up against a long queue of commercials waiting at the next lock. Suddenly a voice came over the radio on Channel 10 saying “RICCALL come forward to the front of the queue; you can go in with the next commercial in front of me”. This came from the captain of a commercial who had assessed the situation. So up we went and just as we were about to enter the lock we got the red light. Wot! Again? The lockkeeper didn’t think we could fit in with the other boats. Actually, there was plenty of room but we waited and went with SINBAD and Captain Hank (who had called us forward) on the next lockage.

We arrived at Lanaye lock a few kilometres before Maastricht and turned into the Meer just downstream (Waterrecreatiecentrummere!!!!) We had been told of a little mooring behind the island and with some trepidation nosed our way round, keeping a watchful eye on the depth meter. All was well and it was so nice and peaceful we spent 2 nights there – unable to get off to go anywhere, but so quiet and delightful with just the occasional passing rowing boat.

We had contacted our friends Jeroen and Anja of DA CAPO II

who we had moored with 8 years before and who had been so kind to us. They said there were just upstream of the John F Kennedybrug in Maastricht, but we missed their turning and had to turn upstream to get back to them. It took ages against the strong current going nearly flat out, but we made it into their quiet and calm mooring and moored on their 39m barge.

A lovely couple of days’ catch-up with them and one of their delightful now-grown-up daughters Marijn (unfortunately Janne was away) then a late start for Maasbracht.

(More borrowed maps for our travels – thanks J and A.) 

The view from our mooring on Da Capo II - the Mastricht Treaty building

Another lakeside mooring that night but the level dropped overnight so a bit aground in the morning - but no problem pulling away and off.

Toasting our success at getting this mooring on meres right!!

A few days later we arrived at the Niewesluis Shijndal. An 80m commercial was moored up on the ‘sport wachtplatts’ (mooring for pleasure craft) and a 110m waiting for the 135m lock on the commercial side opposite. We moored behind him as we couldn’t see any mooring bollards for sport boats. We were gearing up to ask the lockkeeper if we could use the lock with the 110m when a 125m container carrier MISIKO arrived behind us followed by another 85m barge. MISIKO just kept coming on and on, and the two boatmen on the front told us to move (never mind that we could have gone in with the 110m barge in front) “Go to the other side, there ARE bollards” they said. We still couldn’t see any, but we just had to move as this behemoth kept coming closer and closer. So we started our move across the canal, but at that moment the lock gates opened and THREE barges started to emerge. Alex made a quick decision and in the face of the emerging barges swung RICCALL in a circle under full power to the opposite side facing back the way we had come, then we both frantically tried to secure our 80 tonne barge to tiny pins 20mm in diameter and 100mm high with a minimal taper towards the bottom, most of which had been broken off!

MISIKO - our bete noir!!

So we just stayed there until everything had calmed down and all the barges had gone, then asked the lockkeeper if we could just moor for the night at the very front end of the commercial mooring. “No problem” he said, so we did. (He had clearly seen the mayhem of our dismissal from the left bank to the right and took pity on us!)

We got to ‘S Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) where we were due to meet up with Alice and Bea coming for a long weekend, and finally met Michael and Susan of NAUTILUS who had been there for a few days (vet visits for their lurcher Elvis).

It was a great mooring but a shame about the weather which has been pretty variable ever since we started out this season and that weekend was no different.





However we managed to catch an hour or so of sunshine on Sunday morning for a trip through the canal tunnels UNDER the city of Den Bosch with A and B, a visit to the cathedral statues and then into a café just as the heavens opened.

Bea enjoys the experience

Lock 0 in Den Bosch only opens 3 times a week at 3 o’clock in the afternoons, and of the 4 lift bridges on the section only the first, into the lock, is raised. The one out of the lock is only 3.4m clearance when down and the other ones are a bit higher. So it was going to be roof off for us to go through and that would depend on the weather.

And then at 2.30pm the sky cleared, the sun came out and we said right, we’ll go for it. Our new friends on NAUTILUS have a fixed height of 3.4m so they were going to ‘test the water’ as it were and come into the lock too, the low bridge being on exit.

NAUTILUS in Lock 0

Well it was no problem for us and as we went under the bridge Alex used his measure and thought it was more than 3.4m so radio’ed that info to Michael. They decided to give it a go and got through with 20mm to spare – pretty close.

Underneath Den Bosch's amazing railway and road bridges

From the lock it’s about 2kms to the next mooring and we could see a black cloud coming towards us. Could we make it before the heavens opened again? Alex gave it full speed ahead quickly onto the mooring, full reverse to stop, the front rope missed the bollard but Alice jumped off and popped it on, then the back rope, then we managed to get the roof back on. It settled into position just as the first drops of rain began to fall and before another absolute deluge!

Alice and Bea left on the Tuesday and we set off again the next day. The first hurdle would be the Egelen Sluis just before entering the fearsome Maas (Dutch for Meuse). In we went with no problem alongside an 85m barge on our right and a cruiser in front of us. Then as the gates started to open to let us all out the 85m engaged his propeller and just sat pushing against his front rope while the gates opened fully. We are not sure why he did this but it set up quite a circulation of water in the lock. Then he left and the cruiser left and we started to leave – ropes off, kick the back end off, bit of reverse to pull the front end off, then a VERY loud bang from the back of the boat. Alex dashed out to see what had happened. The steering ram and the rudder had become disconnected. Blimy!! Back to the radio, warn the lockkeeper, try and rope a bollard. No chance. Riccall was being spun round in the lock by the whirlpool set up by the commercial. Well, that was lucky really because we ended up on the opposite wall facing the other way and Louise just managed to get a rope on at the front and with a touch of reverse the prop walk brought the back end in and Alex could rope a bollard at the rear!! Phew!!

So now it was all out to fit the emergency steering. It’s so long since we did this that everything that had to be moved was jammed, and in the meantime a HUGE pusher and dumb barge had gingerly entered the lock (having been advised of our problem by the lockkeeper) and the lock was filling back up.

Finally, just as the gates opened again, we had the emergency tiller set up and with Louise on the throttle and Alex on the tiller we set off back out of the lock behind the pusher and his cargo.

“Just give it a quick burst of power”, said Alex, with the tiller set at about 45^o to get us pointing the right way – whooommf, Alex was catapulted across the deck by the force of the tiller. We had no idea what the back forces were like as we had only ever used the emergency tiller once before when being towed with no engine. So it was, “Easy on the power Louise” and hang onto the tiller for dear life Alex!

It turned out that the clamp bolts had come loose and the end bolt had sheared so Alex fixed it during the afternoon and we returned to Den Bosch for another night and a short ‘road or river test’ of the steering before going out onto the raging torrent of the Maas (only about 3kph actually as it turned out).

Whilst at Woudrichem Historic Harbour on the Maas

Snuggling up against some REALLY old ships
in the historic harbour at Woudrichem

we had heard from Nicci and Peter that there was the possibility of a good mooring in the historic barge port of Vreeswijk, a couple of days’ cruise away.

Vreeswijk historic harbour

And sure enough, we were welcomed by Dick the Havenmeester and slipped into the mooring space vacated by Jeremy and Carol on ANTHONIA.

We decided that perhaps a trip back to the UK would be useful to tick a few more boxes vis a vis our move south. As it happened Nicci and Peter were also returning to the UK and could give us a lift as far as Bruges where our car was parked. So that was excellent and thanks very much to them for that.

About 10 days back in the UK, a trip north to check on the Newton Aycliffe house and to bring another load of stuff down to Hawkinge, the usual appointments with doctor, dentist and hairdressers, then back to France on the 14^th. We were hoping to do a quick shop in a French Lidl for the stuff they don’t stock in Holland – but we hadn’t clocked that it was JULY 14^th - Bastille Day in France - and everything, but everything was tight shut.

Back at Vreeswijk we stayed another few days (aware that we needed to leave before the Historic Boat Event coming up) for some socialising (including a lovely surprise visit from our Dutch friends George and Suzannah in their campervan – who we’d met in Dordrecht 8 years before on their tjalk AEOLUS: they had just got married after more than 15 years together) and a couple of evenings with John and Hilary of ISKRA who had moored in the adjacent port while we were away, then headed north again and onto the lovely, winding Vecht.

Lovely weather for our Vecht trip too

There we came across NAUTILUS again and had yet another boozy time catching up! It’s no fun this boating, but someone has to do it!

A couple of days later, we were out onto the southern end of the Markermeer which feels like being at sea without the swell, which it is, I suppose, but it’s quite hard at first to spot the buoyed channel. PC Navigo helps of course, but quite often seems to guide us to the wrong side of some of the buoys!

We risked going into Almere Haven for lunch and managed to moor up on a super quay next to a huge party boat called SUCCES.

It was so nice there that we asked to stay the night hoping against hope that the party boat wasn’t operating that night!! It wasn’t, and our mooring was fine with the Havenmeester.

Since then we have used an excellent ex-industrial quay and two or three island moorings on our way to our present position which is a canal-side ‘ligplatts’ – a boat mooring place provided and often free – just south of a lovely town called Blokzijl.

From here it’s onwards into Friesland proper and then to our lift-out in Harlingen for our hull check and repaint. More of that later.