We learn to love waiting
Our position is 52:20.892N 04:38.454E Distance covered: 25.2Nm We allowed plenty of time to disentangle ourselves from our congested box and with careful warp handling and a bit of help from the neighbours, managed to extricate ourselves in plenty of time to arrive at the limited opening time pair of railway bridges with about 10 minutes to spare. There were plenty of boats waiting and at the appointed time the first bridge opened and the lights turned green. We were about in the middle of the pack and were just in the opening when the bridge master started shouting at everyone to turn back as the second bridge was broken and wouldn’t open. As can be imagined this caused a fair amount of chaos with boats going in all directions and the ones still coming through being met by those returning.
In the end we all made it back out and tied to the waiting pontoons, wondering what would happen next. In any case it would be 2 hours before there was another scheduled opening.
After a little while there was a radio message in Dutch, the only bit of which we understood was 1 hour. Living in hope that it was going to be 1 hour before it was fixed rather than 1 hour before another update, we relaxed in the sun. Sure enough there was great excitement when, after about 90 minutes, they appeared to be testing the second bridge as it opened and closed and the 12.27 time appeared on the information board for the next opening times. In the meantime Jan & Ian on Panthalassa (the Halberg Rassey from the day before) had joined us on the pontoon. They had opted to go into Gouda first and were always aiming for the later start – they definitely made the right choice! With great relief we were finally able to pass through at the promised time.
We were now in a convoy of 10 boats, which split up as the various different route options came and went, (through Leiden or the Brasselmeer and night convoy to Amsterdam or through Haarlem). We had chosen the Brasselmeer and Haarlem, partly because we knew we could get fuel at Kaag and didn’t fancy the night convoy.
We found the promised fuel pontoon in the nick of time before he closed for the night and then settled down to wait for the 18:38 opening of the Sassenheim railway bridge. This didn’t materialise and neither did the indicated one at 19:08. We tried radioing but got no response. Our timetable only indicated one other at 19:38 so it was a nervous wait and a high degree of relief that we saw the green light appear and the bridge opened. The delays meant we were not going to be able to reach Haarlem, our intended destination, so we agreed to go through the next 4 bridges (about an hour) and then stop for the night at a Jachthaven indicated on the chart immediately after the 4th one. However when we got there it was obviously for much smaller boats and unlikely to have sufficient depth so we pushed on through the next bridge to see if we would have better luck there. We would have to stop then as it was already past the last opening time for the following bridge and we thought there might be a waiting pontoon to tie to. It was still light when we got there and we could see there were no waiting pontoons, we attempted to investigate a little jachthaven down a small passage off the main canal but got cold feet about the depth before too long, so went back a short way to where we had seen some box moorings along the bank near to some floating cottages. They looked too narrow for us but the three boats that were still together managed to find empty ones that were big enough, and tie up successfully. A man came along and took €1.2/m from us all – he might have been official or just wise to opportunities – but we were just pleased to be able to get below, warm up, and have something to eat.
During the day there had been some pretty large barges in quite narrow canals –
And some more attractive gardens (I managed some pictures this time)
We saw interesting wildlife along the way as well
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