London/Germany/France

I am writing this in January 2013, so, it’s somewhat old news, but, I thought maybe a few pictures of our travels might be interesting.

As planned, we were still based in London in June and still trying to get out and about town on various walks. We did a nice Grand Union canal walk where sometimes it’s hard to imagine you’re in the heart of the city.

Cygnets hitching a ride

A canal boat with feline crew

During June, A was hard at work on an assignment in Bonn, Germany. G was able to visit for a weekend and we had a really nice day out on the Rhine. We took the train (which travels at 300 km hour!) and got the tour boat from Mainz to Cologne. It was an all day trip through the most scenic part of the Rhine, including the fast stretch around Bingen, Lorelei Rock and the stretch where banks are lined with famous vineyards and turreted castles.

View on the Rhine

Castles and vineyards galore

We had an ulterior motive for the Rhine trip as we had been toying with the idea of taking the boat down the Rhine/Danube to the Black Sea and into the Med. After seeing the strength of the current and the volume/speed of barge traffic, we soon decided it’s not a trip for us. In an amazing coincidence though, we hadn’t been on the boat an hour when we saw a catamaran fighting the current coming the other way. It was Angel Louise, a U.S. boat, that had spent last winter at St. Kat’s with us! Ed and Sue successfully made it all the way from London to Istanbul where they are spending this winter. We heard they had to replace one of their engines along the way, so, fighting that Rhine current wasn’t without cost.

After A’s German assignment, while waiting for the next one, we were able to spend a week touring Brittany. We took the ferry to Calais and rented a car. In hindsight, it would have been better to take the ferry to St. Malo and start from there to save the long drive to Calais. Brittany is a unique region situated on the northwest corner of France. It has a unique culture with Celtic origins, more in line with Cornwall, rather than the rest of France. In Quimper, this was demonstrated with bagpipes being included in an open-air music concert.

We stayed in hotels and b&b’s and thoroughly enjoyed being land-based for a while. That didn’t stop us from visiting just about all the famous seaports around the coast. The coastline here has world-famous, often fog-bound, tidal races. It was nice to view them and the jagged, rock-strewn shoreline from the beach rather than from the sea.

Brittany street scene

Brittany stone house

Oldest calvary in Brittany

Reclining calvary figure

Manoir de Troezel Vraz, Kerbors, a really nice, quiet, rural, b&b, 17th century manor house with home-cooked food

Brittany shoreline

Dinan medieval street

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London continued...

Hello again. We left off writing last October after our arrival at St. Katharine’s Dock, London, unsure of how long we’d be staying here. We soon decided that, while the opportunity is available, it would be prudent to top up our ‘cruising kitty’. To that end, we now plan to stay in London for quite some time while A goes back to IT Consulting. It was a long winter looking for work, with a number of false starts and delays, but, now a regular paycheque has started once again and it is good to be able to plan for a few purchases and be able to deal with boat repairs without worry.

We had planned to spend a couple of years in Europe and we are still doing that, just staying in one place for now. Our longer-term cruising plans are still on track and we will pick up again when the time feels right although we may now bypass the Med. It may not be much of a loss with everything we’ve been reading about draconian taxation, rules, regulations and exorbitant berthing fees there. Instead, we plan to do some land-based Europe travel as well as see more of the U.K., all the while continuing to live on our boat.

It was hard to watch the departure of our new cruising friends that overwintered with us here in London. They have now all gone and it left us feeling quite bereft as the marina now has many empty slips and feels deserted. We envy them their summer out cruising, but, know that we will be back out there again with them eventually. We look forward to seeing two, or, three boats who will be returning to London in the autumn after cruising Scotland and Norway for the summer. A few short-stay cruising boats have been coming and going, but, the summer crush hasn’t yet started, maybe because the weather hasn’t been very summerlike. We had a wonderful few days at the end of March which we timed just right for a four day trip to Edinburgh. April has been the wettest in the U.K. since records began. It has been cold, dismal and wet. Whenever there is the slightest break in the weather, we try and take advantage of it for either a day trip, or, a boat job.

Most of the major boat jobs have been put on the back burner for now until we restart cruising again. We have laid-up the engine and wish we had the space to take off and store our sails inside, but, that won’t be possible. There are a few jobs we’d like to get done though, like our never-ending brightwork which, after our snowy winter in Norway, had deteriorated really badly to the point where we are going to strip totally back (again) about ½ of it and leave it to mellow to its natural, silver patina. We’d like to maintain that beautiful, traditional, varnish-look on some of the more protected areas though and will be trying to touch it up, weather permitting. It’s seems impossible to ever get a long enough stretch of good varnishing weather here. Another job we plan to tackle is replacing our diesel stove so that, if successful, we can have a decent source of quiet heat for next winter. We plan to install a Danish Refleks heater to replace the old Dickenson which just never worked for us (burned great, but, absolutely no heat).

Now that boat jobs have slowed down and we’re not busily planning for daily cruising, we have had time to plan and enjoy a few day trips. Although we’ve seen a good part of the U.K. already, there’s always more to see and now that we no longer have a car, we’ve found foot travel to be a wonderful alternative. A website for the Saturday Walker’s Club was recommended to us and it has proven a wonderful resource (http://www.walkingclub.org.uk). They have a list of 220 walks that can be done within easy reach of London. Most are off-road walks and they wind through fields and woods on public footpaths and byways. We decided on a top twenty list that sounded appealing to us and have already done about seven, or, eight of these walks. We usually travel by train, then, walk about 8-12 miles broken with a leisurely pub lunch. Travel in the U.K. can be difficult with just a simple day out requiring a few hours of planning. The free, detailed walk directions by this club are a pleasure as they spell it all out including how to get there, history of the area, what to see and where the best place is to stop for lunch and afternoon tea. Just print, go and enjoy. Highly recommended. A few highlights have been:

1) Winchester – a hidden gem, with so much history from its ‘plague pits’ (where the plague victims were buried) to the house where Jane Austen died, to the Cathedral and many other historic sights

the famous 'Round Table' of King Arthur fame is in Winchester

2) Cambridge – heaving with tourists, but, so scenic and fun to walk in the footsteps of Woolf, Byron etc…

3) various London walks – a number of these take you to hidden places where it’s hard to believe you’re still in the City

4) seaside walks – there are many wonderful coastal walks, most of which we’re saving for the summer, but, we did do a lovely, flat walk along the Kent coastline near Herne Bay

5) Chartwell – a visit to Winston Churchill’s home of forty years

bluebells in the woods on the way to Chartwell

the gardens at Chartwell

Sheep in a field on the way to Chartwell. I don’t mind mixing in with the sheep, but, we had to go through a field with many cows/calves and one extremely large bull in it whose close proximity made me nervous. Glenn says I was being a ‘cow’ard about it, but, actually, I’m just a little ‘cow’ed by their presence.

We plan to continue with the walks, but, soon may diversify to do some cycle routes as well. This month, we plan to purchase some folding bicycles to facilitate this. On our four day trip to Edinburgh in March, we rented some to see if they would work for us and although horrifically expensive to buy, we have made it a priority to get them. It will allow us to go further/faster and extend our travels. We will have to make room for them on the boat somehow as they will be invaluable later when we’re back cruising for shopping and laundry trips as well as sightseeing.

On the Union Canal towpath near Edinburgh with the folding bikes. We did twenty-five miles on them (to Falkirk) and found them adequate for riding and easy to travel with on the bus and train

The Falkirk Wheel, a boat lift on steroids, a fascinating engineering marvel that replaced eleven locks.

Here are a few photos of some of the other trips we’ve enjoyed recently:

1. Canterbury.

gate to Canterbury cathedral

inside Canterbury cathedral

2. Edinburgh

Edinburgh castle, with a wonderful display of spring daffodils.

Edinburgh castle again with the view from Princes Street Gardens at its base.

A typical streetscape in Edinburgh’s ‘New Town’. We stayed in this area in a hotel that looked much like this row of terrace houses. We immediately picked the hotel when we found that Shackleton used to live there.

3. Rotterdam – we paid a visit to Rotterdam in February, not the best time to visit, but, we wanted to look at a boat for sale. The boat turned out to be a big disappointment, but, we had a great four day visit anyway, despite the weather which was freezing, windy and with a mix of rain/snow. We needed to rent a car to get to the boat and this was a bonus as it was so easy to get around that we saw most of the country with just a few days of touring.

At the Kinderdijk windmill site, near Rotterdam. Note the hood to keep out the freezing sleet.

At the old harbour in Rotterdam.

4. Copenhagen – don’t have any pictures from Copenhagen as we forgot the camera, but, it was a destination that we’d had on our list for a long time. A was working there for a few weeks and G visited for a weekend. It is a lovely city, very clean, bicycles everywhere and very walkable. One of the perks of A’s job is that she will be travelling and this means warm, dry hotel rooms with hot water and decent showers! It seems like such a luxury now when we have these basic amenities. A will be heading off to Bonn, Germany for her next assignment and maybe we’ll be able to spend a weekend there exploring the Rhine.

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London

We are enjoying being securely tucked into our berth here at St. Katharine’s Dock, London, miles from the sea. It’s hard to imagine that we are located right at the heart of the City, yet, we are in a marine environment with all its charms (and drawbacks). Although surrounded by apartment blocks, shops and restaurants, it’s remarkably quiet. We have lots of coots (very loud squawkers) and mallard ducks swimming around the boat and occasionally tapping on the hull. We even have a beautiful heron fishing from the pontoon that can be seen in the early mornings while on the trek to the toilet/shower block.

I really enjoy seeing this heron every morning.

The marina this year seems to have an extraordinary number of cruising boats, there are two other Canadian boats and around six/seven American boats. It’s our first real experience of being with other cruisers and it’s quite a social whirl with coffee mornings and outings. As we’ve lived in the U.K. before, it’s maybe not so exciting for us to be here, but, it’s fun to see them all buzzing around and enjoying things for the first time.

The marina facilities are not the best we’ve encountered with spotty wi-fi, one washer/dryer, cold water only, for the entire marina and floating cabins with toilets/showers that often have a queue in the mornings. However, I’m not really complaining as we’re paying about the same as we’d pay in Toronto for an average apartment for our berth. At this location, I’m sure it would be at least quadruple that for an apartment. In London, rental apartments are priced by the week, not the month, maybe they’re trying to lessen the sticker shock!

London is changing rapidly. One of the things I always liked about it was its low-rise nature. Not sure if it’s the Olympics coming next year that has spurred on construction, but, the horizon is literally dotted with huge construction cranes and there is construction everywhere in the city, with gleaming towers getting inserted everywhere into tiny downtown plots. It’s losing some heritage, but, there’s still a lot left. Every streetscape has new and old buildings side-by-side. The street names are also so evocative. Close by, I happened across ‘Seething Lane’ and ‘Crutched Friar Street’, names that really make you wonder how they came about. (I found out later that Seething Lane is where Samuel Pepys lived and actually the name only has something to do with corn processing, not quite as dramatic as I had imagined.)

The London street market culture still exists with both flea and food markets thriving. I recently encountered ‘Borough Market’ which is a fabulous food market with absolutely everything you could imagine set up on stalls. Luscious French cheeses and pastries, British cakes, white truffles in honey, ostrich and other exotic meats, wonderfully fresh and unusual fruits and vegetables are all on display.

Just walking the streets provides entertainment: a very old man on a bicycle riding by with a huge bouquet of orchids slung over his shoulder, a red double-decker bus festooned with crepe streamers with a Japanese wedding party, including the bride and groom in all their finery inside, another wedding party in a horse-drawn carriage, a building with blue/gold human-like, sculpted figures climbing its front and another with gold-leafed figures diving off the roof, a doorway with a very old skull and crossbones sculpted above it and many other fascinating sights. Just yesterday, I came across a man, dressed in full Cockney ‘Pearly King’ regalia waiting for the bus.

Growing up in Canada, our British heritage has had more impact than I think we’re aware of. It seems that almost every city and town name in Canada has its original version in the U.K. Streets in London have such a familiar ring to them that even if you’ve never been here, I’m sure there would be a familiar sense. Street names like Fleet Street, the Strand, Chancery Lane, Pall Mall, Cheapside, Threadneedle Street and the Embankment are all so familiar. Likewise, London neighbourhoods like Knightsbridge, Kensington, Soho and Westminster all live in our collective memories. Having said that, I found it really interesting to see that there has been some Canadian impact on London as well. The Canary Wharf and Docklands areas were redeveloped by Canadians and Canada is well represented with street names like Quebec Way, Maple Quays and Canada Water among others.

Generally, we prefer smaller locations and avoid big cities like the plague. I’m finding though, that now we don’t have to actually work and/or commute to the big city, it’s actually quite enjoyable. We can walk in any direction from here and see fascinating sights at every turn. You don’t need a tour map, there are big and little treasures everywhere.

Some of the big treasures:

St. Paul’s Cathedral

The Monument to the Great Fire of London

The famous Savoy Hotel

Some of the smaller sights are little details like the following examples:

A Viking ship weathervane on St. Olav’s Norwegian church, London.

A Twinings tea shop with a fabulous sign.

An interesting church clock near St. Paul’s.

The gates at Buckingham Palace.

We are looking forward to a winter’s worth of such sights. In addition, of course, we’ll be weaving in work on ‘the list’ to get the boat ready for another season of cruising next year. In the meantime, as I’m sure most people are already familiar with London, I’ve decided to take a break from writing this blog and will resume again once we restart our cruise. Right now, we’re unsure how long we’ll be in London. We hope to be on the move again in the spring, but, we may stay longer, depending on events. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog so far and that you will rejoin us in our travels when we resume our voyage aboard Black Sheep II. Thanks for reading…

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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

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Hello Sweden

I’m posting a little early this month as we are leaving Stockholm tomorrow, August 26 and will likely be without internet access for the next week, or, longer. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ve been in Sweden for all of August having left the lovely ‘white’ town of Mandal, the southernmost town in Norway on July 30th for the passage to Göteborg, Sweden. It was an uneventful thirty-four hour passage (thirty hours of motoring and four hours of frustrating sailing). The heavy shipping that we thought would have been coming out of the Baltic around the northern tip of Denmark didn’t materialize and we were thankful for that. There were only a couple of really high-speed (30 knot) ferries to dodge.

An impressive building, built on rock, seen on arrival at Göteborg

We were a little nervous as we were heading for a new country, a new type of sailing and a more urbanized marine environment than we’d experienced in Norway over the past year. The marinas and anchorages in south Norway weren’t as busy as we’d been led to believe, but, we didn’t know what to expect in Sweden. Prior to arrival, all I could think about was how we were going to deal with the ‘lazy lines’ that we had to use for mooring in the marina at Göteborg. We’d never even seen these before, let alone used them. The theory is simple. On arrival, the crew on the bow is supposed to pick up the lazy line which is fixed to the harbour bottom and run it to the stern of the boat where it is tied off to hopefully stop the forward motion. Then, the bow can be tied off. An additional complication on our boat is we have a very long, very high bowsprit which makes it difficult to even get near the dock without ramming anything, let alone get off over the sprit onto the pontoon.

So, we arrived. The marina was packed full and just waiting for some mooring entertainment.  There looked to be a spot if we squeezed in between two boats. A large ferry was coming in behind us and we had to move fast. We pulled into the spot and were resting on the adjacent boat’s fenders. G got off the sprit with difficulty and tied up. Then, we started looking for the lazy line and realized that’s why this spot was empty, there wasn’t one. It soon became apparent we’d have to move as we had nothing to tie the stern of the boat to. We were too heavy to raft up to the adjacent boat and there was no room for a stern anchor. Reluctantly, we untied and with difficulty got over to another spot that had just become vacant. No lazy lines there either, but, we managed to get tied up after a lot of messing around. We met some people later who told us that, as the season progresses the lines get caught in props and cut off. They related how a motorboat got one wound around their prop in the middle of the marina and had to sit in the fairway overnight for a diver to come the next day and free them. Now that’s entertainment! Luckily, it wasn’t our turn to be the entertainment this time. I hope we don’t have to deal with ‘lazy lines’, or, their absence, again any time soon.

In addition to new mooring arrangements, we were in for a new type of sailing. Although I wouldn’t say we are masters, we have at least experienced ocean sailing and coastal sailing. We’d never done ‘canal sailing’ before. Yes, we’d been through the Welland Canal in the Great Lakes in Canada, but, that was on a modern boat with two instructors and six crew. The locks are also so massive that they throw lines down to you from the top which you tie on and simply winch in as you rise up. It was easy. We didn’t know what to expect this time.

the series of locks at Berg on the Göta Canal

in the lock at Berg

The inland canal journey between Göteborg and Stockholm consists of two canal systems. The first, the Trollhätte Canal, runs from Göteborg to Lake Vänern and is still a commercial route used by large freighters hauling logs. The Gota Canal runs from Sjötorp on Lake Vänern, through to Mem on the Baltic Sea. From Mem, Stockholm is about three days away by various routes. The 190 km Göta Canal was built between 1810 and 1832 by a total of 58,000 Swedish soldiers who dug 87km of the Canal by hand! There are fifty-eight locks and innumerable bridges along the way. The Göta Canal is primarily used by leisure boats. We had chosen the west to east route recommended in the pilot guide although, judging by the number of boats seen along the way, the east to west route actually seemed more popular. There were a lot of Danish and German boats, a few from the U.K. and a few from Poland. We only saw one U.S. boat and no other Canadian boats.

Each lock had a pretty lockkeeper’s cottage alongside.

What we hadn’t realized and luckily found out in time is that the sailing season comes to an end in Sweden around mid-August when the kids go back to school. The ramification for us was that the Göta Canal would be effectively closing on August 17 when all its university student staff left. After this date, you have to pre-book a passage and you are escorted through in a flotilla. The price also doubles! So, we had a time constraint which luckily we were able to meet and came out at Mem on the Baltic on the very last day possible, good timing for once.

Speaking of price, we started to call it the ‘Gotcha’ canal after a while because it was so expensive. For our small boat, the transit charge was 4400 SEK (around $900 CAD). This is more than the Panama Canal charges for a transit. To be fair, this does include up to five nights free berthing with showers/laundry etc. at each of 21 marinas along the route, but, the reality is you probably wouldn’t want to stay more than a night at each anyway and whether you are passing through in six nights, or, 106, the price is still the same. If you consider the time, effort and diesel involved in going around the long way though, it’s probably worth the price.

So, we were off. We took our time and planned for one week on the Tröllhatte system and one week on the Göta system. Leaving Göteborg, we travelled up the river to the first lock. There was a two knot adverse current, thus, we could only make three knots over the ground. It was a long day. We got to the first lock just as the downpour started. We weren’t sure of the procedure. There was a waiting pontoon, but, the book said go right up to the lock and wait otherwise they aren’t sure that you want to go through. So we did and we waited, and waited. There was no white flashing acknowledgement light as there should have been. There were no other boats in sight. We started to wonder whether the lock was closed. We called on the VHF. Nobody answered. We called again. After forty-five minutes we weren’t sure what to do. We were in a very narrow channel right in front of the lock. We started to get nervous about maybe being in the wrong place and if a big ship (we had seen some fully loaded with logs earlier) came along we’d have a real problem. So, we thought we’d go back to the waiting pontoon. The rain was pouring down, I was on the helm and couldn’t see beyond my glasses. We went alongside the pontoon at the end. A fender decided to pop up horizontally at that moment and it got caught between two planks and jammed solid! The boat came to a screeching halt and the stanchion the fender was attached to just about came out of the boat and bent right over. Then, the lock bells start ringing and the white light back at the lock gates starts flashing, the gates were now going to open. We got the feeling the lockkeepers watching via camera were having some fun with us. We managed to get the fender off and rushed for the gates. We got through only to see that there was a very small pool on the other side with another waiting pontoon with a motor boat sitting right in the middle of it. We had already overshot the pontoon and needed to turn around. As we pulled alongside this second waiting pontoon we didn’t notice that there was a steel cable sitting about two inches below the surface of the water marking a no-go area at the end of the pontoon. We had to go near the end because the motorboat was taking up the whole middle of the dock. To make a long story short, G yelled in time and I was able to reverse off the cable, luckily. This wasn’t an auspicious start. This first lock took 2-1/2 hours to get through and we were drenched and exhausted, only 57 more to go, this was going to be ‘fun’.

The Tröllhatte locks are large and commercial and different from the Göta locks. They have bollards and ladders which are inset into the walls and you need to continually move your lines as you’re ascending. Going into the lock it’s important to position yourself correctly between a line of bollards and/or a ladder. The instructions all said to use both a bow and a stern line, which we tried to do. On our boat, though, with a canoe stern we have two ‘pointy ends’ and when the bow is against the wall the stern is away from the wall and vice-versa and you can’t work the lines. After one of our best and longest spring lines got jammed up in a ladder and had to be abandoned, it soon became apparent we needed a new technique. We found one line amidships was the best for us with the other person fending off bow and stern, as necessary, with the boat hook. After getting to the top of the series of locks we were in, we went back to try and retrieve our line and somebody had already taken it. We were beginning to wonder if we’d get to the other end with the boat still intact.

a view of the Göta canal

there were many bridges that needed to be opened, both large and small

As our experience and techniques improved, it did get better, but, I wouldn’t say ‘locking through’ is one my favourite activities. There are a lot of stressors, packing into the locks with other boats trying not to do any damage to your own boat or others, different lock configurations, constant steering, a lot of waiting for bridges/locks to open etc. We had a few other mishaps as well:

1) we went lightly aground three times trying to stay out of the way of other passenger boats

this photo was taken just before we went aground in front of the small dock in the picture while trying to stay out of the way of the passenger ship, Juno

2) we also went aground once after the lockkeeper told us we had to pass a passenger ship starboard-to-starboard, as they were coming out of a lock, so they could have the deeper water. This also entailed us having to ‘reverse’ down the canal a bit. Our full-keeled boat only does reverse on its own terms i.e. it goes whichever way it feels like at the moment and although we have tried to analyze it, there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason as to which way it chooses to go. This time, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to, so we had to do a 360 degree turn and go forward and then turn again. Our full-keeled boat has great attributes for ocean and coastal sailing, but, canal sailing and marina manoeuvring are another matter.

2) all our fender covers were ripped off and we ended up with a very long, deep, scratch on the hull on the port side, we still don’t know where or how we got that

3) we had our first experience of stern mooring to a buoy which sort of went ok and mooring from the boat to a very short pontoon which eventually went ok after three passes (it was pouring rain again and very windy)

4) approaching a lock we clipped some overhead branches, luckily, no damage except a few acorns on deck

5) we had a water leak develop on one of the engine hoses, luckily Glenn was able to shorten it a bit and reclamp

6) the day after the water leak, actually the very last day on the canal and just before the very last lock, our fan belt shredded. We were in a very narrow, buoyed part of the canal, so, drifted as far as we could, dropped a stern anchor and then the bow anchor. Glenn had the fan belt changed (we had spares) in twenty minutes flat and we were congratulating ourselves on a job well-done. We hadn’t seen any boats in the meantime. We pulled up the anchors, but, couldn’t get the stern anchor up as it was stuck fast. As we’re tugging away, we look up to see the largest of the passenger vessels, Symfoni, approaching us down the narrow channel. We got over as far as we could. When the ship got to us, I waved it ahead and they slowly crept past, with all the passengers giving us a good look and the captain and crew staring daggers. They must have thought, what idiots, these Canadians, to be anchored in the Canal, which is strictly forbidden except in emergency. Of course, they didn’t know the whole story and it was an emergency. We couldn’t get the anchor up and actually had to abandon it. Another sacrifice made to the ‘Gotcha’ Canal.

Söderköping was an interesting town to visit along the canal. This is a 500 year old bell tower

Söderköping was also home to this whimsical sculpture, it is called ‘River Crossing’ and there was actually another ½ to it, with bunnies diving off, on the other side of the canal.

We heaved a sigh of relief as we left Mem and got out into open water again. Stockholm was only about three days away, via the Södertälje Canal (another canal, but, only one lock). We had planned a two-week stay there so we could get mail sent, provision, buy charts etc. as well as do some sightseeing in a city I’d long wanted to visit.

The trip to Stockholm was uneventful and quite scenic as we wove our way through the archipelago. We anchored out for two nights and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I hadn’t purchased charts for this portion of the trip as I had read the Swedish charts are best and they are the ones that you should have. So, I thought I’d just buy them when we got here. Not so. We checked every chandlery between Götenberg and Mem. They all had a few odd charts, but, either didn’t carry, or, were sold-out of anything relevant that we needed. I was only able to purchase one chart for the middle of the trip. We weren’t going to be in any one place long enough to order charts, so, we kept going. When we got to Mem, we found ourselves without any paper charts to get to Stockholm. We had our electronic charts, of course. With a lot of effort, I had used these to plot the route on PC-Planner on our laptop and it was now in the chartplotter, but, particularly for the Stockholm entrance, I wasn’t sure I had us going through the right channel and under the right bridges. Against my better judgement and everything I’ve been taught, we had no choice but to proceed without paper charts. As we were going to be in the archipelago, at worst, if the electronics failed, we could just pull over and stop, it’s not like we’d be lost at sea or anything.

The trip went fine and now I’m sorely tempted to cut back a bit on the paper charts we carry, maybe just carry the essential small-scale charts for route planning and leave the large-scale details to the chartplotter. Supply isn’t the only issue, it’s cost as well. I hadn’t really factored in the cost of charts (and diesel) in our budget. For Norway alone, the chart cost was over $3,000. If you want to keep moving, you need more charts all the time and you only use them once. It’s a real dilemma and I don’t know what the answer is.

Arriving in Stockholm and seeing the classic view of Gamla Stan (Old Town) from the water was thrilling. We enjoyed Stockholm a lot, it is very beautiful with its water/island setting and many parks juxtaposed against the backdrop of the old, elegant buildings. However, it is a very large city (maybe as big as Toronto) and has the usual traffic and road construction issues although the bike lanes everywhere were fantastic. The number of tourists was also overwhelming in places, great groups of them all milling about. I guess we’re included in that description. The harbour is very busy with boats of all sizes, types and description plying the waters. We were amazed to see the number of ‘antique’ boats still in service here as ‘tripper’ boats and the number of steam vessels still operational. The pretty sidewalk cafes were very enticing and a visit to the Ostermalm Saluhall (I think this translates to ‘food hall’) was a lot of fun, eyeing all the gourmet delicacies on display (and sampling a few as well).

one of the many lovely cafes in Stockholm

this is the entry gate into Gamla Stan

We were disappointed in the Wasahamnen marina in Stockholm. There are only two marinas close to downtown and this was supposed to be the better of the two. It’s very expensive, the most we have ever paid anywhere, 300 SEK (about $48) a night. For that price we expected a lot, but, there is a very large swell, things are rundown, the electricity went off, the showers are mildewed and they informed us they’d be unable to accept any mail package arriving for us. This is a service that most marinas provide for international boats, but, not this one. The location however, was excellent for the most part and we could walk downtown in about ½ hour. It was adjacent to an amusement park as well, but, eventually you did get used to the constant screaming of kids on rides. We were also directly adjacent to the Vasa Museum, the highlight of our visit.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Vasa is a warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. The ship was commissioned by the King and it was decorated accordingly, it is an absolutely stunning piece of carving work. Similar to the English ‘Mary Rose’, the problem seems to have been the hull not being deep and wide enough to carry enough ballast and also the lower gun ports were too close to the water line. The Vasa only moved about 1500 metres before a slight gust of wind basically blew it over and down it went, with fifty-five people drowned. It was found and raised in 1961, almost entirely intact due to the brackish Baltic water which preserved the wood. We usually go through museums quickly, but, we spent over two hours in this one, it was amazing.

This is the stern view of a scale model of the Vasa and shows how it was painted when it was new.

This is the stern view of the real Vasa. Unfortunately, all my other pictures were too dark to see well.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be leaving Stockholm a little earlier than planned, but, this will give us time to make a few more stops in the Stockholm archipelago on the way out. We also plan to visit Gotland (a large island off the coast) before we leave Sweden. Next stop, Germany and the Kiel Canal (another Canal!).

Another whimsical creation, seen on the sidewalk in Stockholm, it’s called ‘Rag and Bone’

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