London Calling

What a difference a month makes. Although our whole sailing season this year has been focused on getting somewhere warm for the winter, we have decided to change our plans and overwinter in London. At least it will be warmer than Toronto, probably no snow and  there will be sunlight, unlike our winter last year. So, instead of continuing to Le Havre and the French canals to the Med as planned, we crossed the North Sea from the Netherlands to the U.K. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. I left off last month when we were just about to leave Stockholm.

It was a pleasant trip from Stockholm to Nynäsham where spent two nights in the very nice marina and town there. They were having some kind of a summer festival and the town was packed. From our berth we had a perfect view of the start/finish line for the sailing regatta.

start of the Nynäshamn sailing regatta

It was a very windy day, so, we stayed an extra night until we had a favourable weather forecast for the seventy mile passage to Visby, on the large island of Gotland just off the Swedish mainland. We left very early with a F4 (11-16 knots) west wind forecast, just about perfect. That was the forecast. After we left the shelter of the archipelago, we had 31 knot headwinds (F7), with gusts to 40 knots. In addition, we had black rain squalls with thunder and lightning. No mention had been made of these in the forecast. I don’t know if this happens to everybody, but, we’re really losing any confidence at all in weather forecasting, it seems you have to be prepared to expect the worst and then if it turns out nice, consider yourself blessed. Anyway, after a futile struggle and progress of 29 miles in 29 hours, we altered course for Kappelshamnsviken, in a large bay on the north end of Gotland. We made it here, 37-1/2 hours and 64 miles after leaving Nynäshamn, what a relief. We had  arrived at a derelict, abandoned ferry port, but, we were able to tie up alongside an old wharf and rested for two nights. The price was right too, it was free.

At Kappelshamnsviken, we were very close to the island of Fårö. This is where Ingmar Bergman shot many of his films and I think he also resided there at the end of his life. In the tourist shop at Visby, you can buy a brochure to enable you to identify and visit many of the film sites.

After the wind blew out, we had a lovely sail down the coast of Gotland to Visby. Visby was a nice surprise and we enjoyed it more than Stockholm as it was smaller and without crowds. Visby is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, having been designated as such for its fully intact, 13th century ring wall, with 40 towers, that completely encloses the town. The town’s medieval buildings and layout are still intact. There are ruins of 10 medieval churches with the town walls and it’s like a living museum with its cobblestone streets. It also has Northern Europe’s tallest 13th century medieval warehouse.

Visby, Gotland

Visby, Gotland

 We left Visby heading for Kiel, Germany and the Kiel Canal which would take us out of the Baltic and into the North Sea. We had planned to stop at a couple of places on the way, but, as we had good weather with favourable east winds, which we weren’t likely to see again anytime soon, we decided to go straight through to Kiel, The first two days were good and we were able to sail most of it, around the Danish islands of Bornholm and Kristiansø.  The barometer started to drop, the wind veered to the west and rose in strength. We were anxious to pass under the German bridge at Fehrman before dark as it is a shallow, narrow channel. Progress was slow as we were again trying to motor into head winds and seas. A few miles from land, we had an unexpected visitor on board. A pigeon had been blown out to sea and couldn’t make its way back. It was exhausted and cowered on deck behind one of our dorades. We really thought it would die, but, it stuck with us for about four hours and as soon as it saw land was close, it took off directly for it. We made it under the bridge with about twenty minutes to spare before darkness really set in. It was then a long night motoring to Kiel.

We arrived at Kiel around 5 a.m. and hovered around outside the lock entrance as we’d heard they won’t let you through the lock until daylight. We’d planned to stop at Rendsburg, about ½ way along the canal. The canal itself is 53 nautical miles in length and only has one (large and easy) lock at either end. It’s also wide. It needs to be considering the size of the boats that travel through it.

Rendsburg was a good, solid German small town and gave us a chance to re-diesel and provision before setting off again. The weather had really turned miserable and poured rain.

Rendsburg

Rendsburg

Rendsburg transporter bridge, trains travel on the top of the bridge and cars and people travel in the moving gondola hanging from it. We also saw one of these in Bilbao, Spain.

It should have been an uneventful trip to the other end of the canal, at Brunsbüttel. But, for us, uneventful it was not. We left in the pouring rain, but, it got brighter as the day went on and we were almost enjoying ourselves. About ten miles from Brunsbüttel, around 16:00, our engine died! We tried to start it three times and each time, it died. We were afraid to do further damage, we thought maybe it was the transmission as the engine would rev way up, then, down and then stop. We were directly in front of a ferry crossing, but, we were luckily able to just coast across it and tie up to a little dock on the other side. Now, what to do? As leisure boats are not supposed to be on the canal at night, we were in a bit of a conundrum. After some sign language (we don’t speak a word of German), the ferry captain told us to call VTS (vessel traffic services). Yes, we thought, there must be some kind of towing service available for just such eventualities, right? I explained the situation over VHF and asked for a tow. They said maybe ‘Jeanny’ would be able to help us. We thought this must be the name of the towing company. Anyway, when ‘Jeanny’ arrived it turned out to be a seventy foot long Dutch barge with lace at the windows, not your usual towing vehicle! We couldn’t figure out who they were, but, they were friendly, spoke English and said there would be no charge for a tow (I felt like an ‘ugly American’ asking about $ as they seemed taken aback by the question, but, not doing so in some jurisdictions can lead to the loss of your boat, due to archaic marine salvage laws that are still on the books.) We created a bridle on our bow and tied to a bridle on their stern and then just steered alongside as they pulled us. Once we got to Brunsbüttel, an official, orange pilot boat came alongside, tied up to us and we released ‘Jeanny’ and waved goodbye to our good samaritans. The pilot then manoeuvred us over to the fuel dock where we spent the night.

‘Jeanny’ our Dutch barge good Samaritan.

The next morning, we tried the motor and it started. We prayed it would last long enough to get us into the marina which it did. This was Thursday, no mechanic was available until Monday. We tried to reproduce the problem and after about 15 minutes of running, yes, it would start to rev up, then down. Could it be bad fuel, or, dirty filters? We had changed our primary fuel filter only a couple of weeks before, but, we didn’t change the secondary, or, tertiary filter thinking everything would get stopped at the primary. We had nothing to lose, so, we decided to change all the filters. When we took off the one that sits on the engine, it was black and grungy and we were hopeful that we had found the problem. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a huge transmission job after all. Put it all back together and tried to start the engine, now it wouldn’t start at all. Tried to bleed it twice and it still wouldn’t start.

We needed to charge our batteries as there was no electricity hookup available. So, we thought we’d just start up our diesel generator. It started right up, then, Glenn decided to just have a look at it, he opened the lazarette to be greeted by clouds of black smoke and a lovely view of black oil sprayed everywhere inside. We turned it off, cleaned up the mess and put another item on the to-do list.

In the meantime, we were berthed right next to the locks and it wasn’t a hardship to just sit and watch the action. Tugboats, pilot boats, cruise ships, ferries and huge container ships were passing by our berth only about 100 metres distant.

two huge container ships in the locks at Brunsbüttel

We also had wi-fi and I received an out-of-the-blue email from an American couple we had met in the Shetland Islands last year. By sheer coincidence, they were just one day behind us and would be arriving the next day. They also were going to be spending the winter in London! We were so glad to see them. Although he must have been exhausted, Gary offered to look at our engine. After an hour or so, he was able to bleed the air out (we hadn’t been doing it correctly) and we were back in business. They pushed off the next day to Cuxhaven before the weather closed in, we wanted to wait to be sure our engine was ok. After running for a while it seemed fine, but, we were caught by the weather. We ended up staying at Brunsbüttel for seven days until the weather improved.

Now that we’d made the decision to head to the U.K. and stop, we were anxious to get there and hoped to be able to go straight through, which should take about four days. However, we knew the likelihood of the weather lasting that long wasn’t good.

During our stay in Norway and the Baltic, we hadn’t had to worry much about tides. Now, we got reintroduced to them with a vengeance. The stream outside Cuxhaven in the Elbe estuary can run up to five knots at springs. You’ve really got to time it right to get through. We took it on the ebb and had hoped to clear Cuxhaven and the estuary before the tide turned. Our boat is slow, everybody that left with us in the lock that morning was long gone and we got caught by the tide about a mile or two outside of Cuxhaven. It was that same awful feeling of zero progress, so, rather than sit in the same spot holding station and wasting diesel for the next five hours we turned back to Cuxhaven, got there in about 30 minutes flat (with the tide) and tied up to wait for the next tide before setting off again.

It was a mix of sailing and motoring for the next couple of days as we rounded the Frisian Islands, left Germany and entered the Netherlands. The forecast didn’t look good for a North Sea crossing, so, we decided to pull into Den Helder. Luckily we did for it got nasty and there was a gale overnight. We weren’t in Den Helder five minutes before we got boarded by the officials and had to show our papers. We thought this was kind of unusual, but, maybe it was because it’s a Navy port.

The North Sea is a bit of an obstacle course with many windfarms, oil rigs, precautionary areas, shipping lanes (both deep water channels/anchorages and traffic separation schemes) that require dodging around. It’s also shallow and has many currents and strong tides on both coasts. Our chosen route was from Den Helder to Harwich which looked to have the least amount of obstacles in our path. The shallow seas can get very nasty, short and steep, particularly with wind against tide/current. Our wind instrument had died completely now so we weren’t sure how strong the winds were, but, they were strong and on the nose, as usual. We couldn’t motor into the head seas, so, we spent about eighteen hours tacking back and forth on the same line before we could use the tide to our advantage to approach the coast. There was an incredible amount of shipping and we had to cross many lanes and traffic separation schemes, not without some anxious moments. We crossed paths with the ‘Queen Mary 2’ at one point. We also lost our radar reflector on this trip, don’t know where. Another fix-it item to be added to ‘the list’. The seas got very messy close to shore and we were slowed right down by them, so, unfortunately we couldn’t make landfall in daylight as we had hoped. We were so close and couldn’t face another night out, so, we crept into Harwich in the dark.

We were heading for ‘Halfpenny Pier’ right in the town. The only really difficult part was crossing the deep water channel so we could pick up the ‘recommended yacht track’ into the harbour on the south side. There is a single point designated where you’re supposed to cross the channel. Unbelievably, we had three large ships come out of the channel in twenty minutes. We waited for one, didn’t see the second one, started across, saw it finally and had to turn back as we weren’t going to make it. As it passed, went right behind its stern, got almost to the other side and saw the third ship coming, but, we were across by that point. All the locals told us the next day ‘…there’s never a problem crossing there, I’ve never had to wait…they must have been trying to test you!...’.  It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is to pick out a huge ship moving against all the background lights. In the end, you just kind of sense a large, black shape and stay out of its way.

The channel lights going in were also very hard to pick out, but, the approach was made easy as all we had to do was look for the deep water channel lights as each was highlighted on the side of a large ship as it passed adjacent to them and follow them in.

Harwich was a nice surprise, a very lovely ‘old town’ with a fascinating maritime history. There was quite a bit of swell at the dock, especially when the tide changed, but, it was made up for by the extra-friendly and helpful welcome we received from the piermaster. He drove us to get propane, helped us move the boat and just generally made us very welcome and glad to be there. It also was only £10 ($15) a night. First thing, we both had a ‘full English’ (breakfast) at the café on the pier before walking the maritime history tour route through the town and admiring the old buildings.

Now we were just two days from London and they were blissfully easy days although both had 4 a.m. starts to catch the tide. Straight through to Queensborough at Sheerness where we picked up a mooring, then, right up the Thames to St. Katharine’s Dock, adjacent to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The lock into the marina is only open for a specific period to coincide with the tide and we were a bit anxious whether we would make it in time. As it was, we arrived with an hour to spare and were locked right through. We are glad to be stopped for a while and expect to be here for the next six months at least.

a windfarm in the Thames Estuary

Tower Bridge from the water

our boat is directly behind this restaurant, the Dickens Inn