Durgerdam, near Amsterdam.
It has been a few months since we purchased ‘Drifter’ in the pretty town of Hindeloopen, Friesland. Our first few weeks were spent in the ‘Skipshelling Blom’ boatyard that built the barge in 1976. The Blom family are still running things today as they have for nearly 3 generations. They made us very welcome and took great interest in our plans to bring the barge to the UK.
We both felt we were in the perfect place to do some work. The first job was to haul out the barge to repaint the bottom with antifoul and add some sacrificial anodes which help to protect the steel from corrosion in the salty sea water of her new sailing grounds. Sailing in the Netherlands is typically done in fresh or brackish waters, so boats do not need them as much. We also needed to make some changes to the layout for charter use including moving some winches and installing a railing. Like many boat projects, the work took far longer than expected, as there were a few surprises and delays.
We were working hard at the yard and at the same time imagining sailing home to the UK in the perfect weather we were experiencing at the time. We hoped that it would still be as good when we were ready to leave so we could make a swift passage.
Eventually at the beginning of July we started our journey out of the Netherlands through its network of inland waterways. The first short hop was with the mast lowered to travel under a few low bridges along a small canal from Hindeloopen ; then we raised the mast on a mooring by the edge of a lake. We stayed a couple of days to relax and to absorb the pleasant views, and to make our navigation plan.
There is a designated ‘mast up’ route which can take sailing yachts from the North to South of the Netherlands which we intended to follow. From where we were, this would take in The Ijsselmeer, Amsterdam, Harlem, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and out into the North Sea at Vlissingen. We had already visited most of the towns around the Ijsselmeer over the last 12 months while we were working as crew onboard a luxury barge, so we headed straight across this remarkable huge engineered lake towards Amsterdam, where we stopped at the picturesque village of Durgerdam. Here we had to stay for a while due to wind and rain, which we did not mind as the place is very tranquil. It was also the case that the great sailing weather that was around when we were in the yard had gone, and now was so unsettled that even 24 hour forecasts were unreliable.
We then cruised past Amsterdam and through Haarlem and stopped for a night at Lisse, close to the famous Keukenhof gardens. With the many lifting bridges along the ‘mast up’ route the bridge keepers are keen to keep the inconvenience to traffic at a minimum, by creating convoys of yachts. This meant some waiting at the first few bridges, but things seemed to go faster as the day went on and the convoy slowly grew to an acceptable size. The lifting bridges are quite amazing, small footpaths to entire motorways and railway lines could be opened for the waterway traffic. The longest delay was for the A44 motorway and parallel mainline railway which opens only a few times a day, to a fixed schedule and then open only for a maximum of 5 minutes resulting in everybody waiting making a frenzied dash to get through when the light went green.
Nature moorings are quite common throughout the Netherlands. De Kaag.
We then made our way past Gouda and spent one night in the Rotterdam area before the next part of the journey, which required careful planning due to now being on a tidal waterway and there being two major lifting road and rail bridges that opened only at certain times. On this leg, we passed the beautiful waterfront of Dordrecht, passed the Biesbosch nature reserve and finished the day at the historic small walled town of Willemstad. Mooring up in the tiny inner harbour went well and we strolled the town and walls and had dinner in a restaurant overlooking Drifter just a few yards away.
The next day we traveled into Zeeland and onto the beautiful Veerse Meer, (Lake Veere) . On arriving at the first sluice, (lock) there were many yachts waiting to enter, and with the lock entry light going green we all moved forward and started to funnel into the lock. It was quite a sight to see so many boats squeezing in, jostling so as not be left out. Some of the yachts took advantage of our slower movements and dashed around us, in the end we did not make it in so took the next sluice opening. We learnt from this and moved into the crush much more determined at this and the next sluices.
The Veerse Meer is another lake reclaimed from the sea by building a huge dyke across its coastal entrance. There are many simple ‘nature’ moorings around its shores and islands and due to still unsettled weather in the North Sea we decided to spend a few days cruising here, including a trip into the city of Middleburg on the 20th July for Neil’s 50th birthday. For this occasion we had hoped to be home in the UK, but we had a fine time at a restaurant near to the barge and strolled around the historic streets. There was also a good chandlers, so we bought a few presents for the barge including an alcohol stove to use instead of the gas system.
With our eye on the weather, we eventually moved along the ‘Kanal Dor’ to Vlissingen, the exit from the southern end of the ‘mast up’ route and onto the North Sea. Although the weather was unsettled we stood by here for only a couple of days before we went through our final dutch sluice and onto the tidal Scheldt.
It was August 1st and we were now at sea, next planned stop Dunkerque!
For more information about Drifter see our website
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