A freshwater duck
Given the winds forecast for the next few days, I was keen to avoid the open sea. To make progress, we would have to head inland instead, and take a trip along the Ems-Jade canal, which exits Wilhelmshaven quietly behind the back streets, bordered by run-down industry and equally run-down suburbs.
The problem with taking Teal through the canal was the bridges, many of which have only a couple of metres air draught. The masts would have to come down – easy enough with the mizzen, which could be unstepped by hand, but a trickier proposition with the main mast. However, it turned out that just ½ mile from where we were moored was another sailing club which had a little hand-operated crane that we could use to drop the mast. We wasted no time, taking advantage of the stiff wind to give the sails one last airing as we tacked up to moor again beneath the crane.
Once we had found someone to give us the key, and take the small fee, it was very little trouble to unstep the mast and lash it on deck. Being rather longer than Teals deck it was a little unwieldy, and stuck out quite a distance in front of the bowsprit.
We rowed Teal half a mile up the canal before tying up for the night, enjoying dinner and a couple of beers in the nearby pub before getting some rest.
When Knight had used the canals in Holland he never seemed to have much problem making progress. If a tug wasn’t passing that would take him in tow, there always seemed to be someone keen to pull him along with a horse for a small fee. Just occasionally he or the long-suffering Wright would have to get the sweep or quant out to move the boat a little way.
The towpath did still run alongside the canal here, but it must have been many years since it was last used in anger. In places it was worth one of us going ashore with a line and towing, and where we could it was certainly the best way to progress. A bit of a heave to get her moving, then she would follow at a slow walking pace with remarkably little expenditure of effort on the part of the "horse". The trouble was that although the towpath was well-maintained as a footway and cycle path, the bank was now very overgrown. Reeds were a nuisance, for they would often stretch for miles along the bank, and although the taut tow rope could be heaved through the bendy reeds for a while, they caused so much friction that it made it very hard work. In many places bushes - and even small trees - had grown up along the bank, and they were worse. If the tow rope couldn’t be passed round the trunk then it had to be taken in by whoever was left on board, coiled up while the momentum of the boat took Teal beyond the tree, and then thrown back to the bank again.
We did start off in the morning towing from the bank, but progress was frustrating. Along many sections we ended up rowing instead, though it was a slower means of progressing. I had expected rather more traffic in the canal, and given my experience in the Kiel canal and Eider river had thought that we would surely find a boat more than happy to take a little duckling under her wing if we tossed them a line and promised to help finish off their lunch off for them. Sadly not. All that day as we sweated along the bank or toiled at the oars, not a single boat overtook us travelling in our direction.
At the first lock, just a mile above our mooring, was a sign with a scrawled number to summon the lock-keeper. I got out my mobile phone. My German wasn’t really up to it, but I had learned ‘Sluis’ for lock and ‘Jacht’ for yacht, and he seemed to get the gist. We got through, not without some difficulty as a strong flow was coming from the lock. Martin fell in as we left. A few miles further on we found we needed the lock-keeper's services again, this time to open a swing bridge for us. He must have been expecting the call, as he turned up on his bike within a few minutes to open it for us.
By the time we had gone about 5 miles we were hungry and stopped for lunch. Here Martin realised his mobile phone was missing. It must have fallen as he changed after falling in at the last lock. Was it worth running back and seeing if he could find it on the bank? He decided it was – and fell in again as he got off the boat! Poor Martin – he wasn’t having a good day.
I decided I would try to progress a little way on my own. I rowed for a while, and when I tired of that I tried towing from the bank with two lines, one attached to the bows to pull if the boat was drifting too far from the bank, and another to the stern to pull her bows away. It worked well: when I got the tensions in the two lines right I could trudge along with Teal following like a docile elderly dog on a lead.
I reached another low bridge, with a different number to ring. This time an ancient hump-backed man in a rickety car drove up to insert an enormous handle - bigger than he was - into a socket set into the roadway, and wind the bridge round by hand. The mechanism was well-oiled and beautifully balanced, and once it was moving it swung slowly the rest of the way under its own momentum.
I was just leaving this bridge when Martin turned up, having successfully retrieved his phone. He had returned to the lock but not been able to find it. I had lent him my own phone so he could ring his and try to locate it by ear. He couldn't hear it ringing - but then a German lady answered. She had found it earlier, and taken it into her office in Wilhelmshaven. So Martin arranged a rendevous (tricky by phone, when neither of the parties spoke the others language), ran all the way into town, collected the phone, and then ran all the way back - but which time I was of course a mile or so further down the canal. It must have been a good half-marathon he’d just completed, but no sooner was he back on board than he offered to take the oars for a while. He was definitely the right crew-mate to have for this leg of the trip.
We struggled on all day along the overgrown banks, and in the evening reached another lock. We moored up for the night before passing through. We were near what appeared to be the maintenance depot for the canal, and several workboats were moored up on the opposite bank. In the morning, when we rowed the last couple of hundred yards up to the lock we found a mobile crane had just arrived and was about to lock down, and behind the crane an empty barge was waiting its turn. We locked up between them, and continued on our way.
We trudged along. Lots more towing and rowing. For one section of about a mile the towpath disappeared completely, and Martin rowed through alone while I walked along a track parallel to the canal. We were making progress though, for shortly afterwards we came to our third lock, which took us onto the summit level of the canal. Not far away was a junction with another canal, and as we approached a boat popped out from it and headed away from us. It was the first we had seen going in our direction – if we had been five minutes earlier there was every chance we would now be zipping along at 4 knots behind it. There had still been not a single boat overtaking us going in our direction.
The banks became even more awkward to tow along, and the weather began to turn against us too. The wind had been a headwind all the way - even if we had had the mast up we would have been unable to sail - and now it increased and a short but very heavy shower set in. We decided it was time to have a spot of lunch.
Not long after setting off again we ran aground on shallow mud a couple of metres out from the bank. I was towing from the shore and unable to do much about it, so Martin tried to shove Teal off with the oars. But lo! Ship ahoy! In the distance an elderly motor cruiser was meandering towards us. Might they be our saviours? As they approached we made hopeful signs with a ropes end. The man at the helm looked surly and scowled, but with much flustered manouvering he took the line and prepared to haul us off the bank. Martin quickly nipped ashore in the canoe to pick me up.
It turned out that the next section of three or four miles had no towpath. It would have been backbreaking work rowing through in the continuing headwind. Behind the cruiser life was much easier and in no time at all we were approaching the end of the summit level. Here we had to wait for a few minutes to lock down, but a change had come over the German couple, who were now all smiles and keen to help as much as possible. I hadn’t wanted to impose any further and ask them to keep towing us, but they offered to anyway so I was glad to accept. They were going as far as Aurich, they said – another 3 or 4 miles.
Just before Aurich another swing bridge crossed the river. With our mast down we could pass under, but the cruiser's superstructure was too high and they had to wait for the keeper to come. We paddled on, and as we moored up in Aurich they motored up and stopped near us. ‘Come for a beer’ they cried – at least that’s what we assumed they cried, for neither of us spoke more than the odd word of German – and that’s certainly what we did. We had a very happy half hour on board, and after a couple of bottles of Jever (a local brew, they indicated, with much gesticulating and pointing at charts) we seemed to understand each other very well. In fact, as with the other tows so far, they offered us dinner too, although as I wanted to keep going we declined.
Martin in any case had to leave me here. His flight was from Amsterdam early in the morning. He had been a great person to have on that leg, for not many people would be prepared to slog along a bank with a towrope for hours at a time, or row a yacht through a canal. Having invited him for a sailing holiday I did feel a little bad that he had mostly been used simply as a horse.
It looked like I might be on my own for a while. When I had been press-ganging crew earlier in the year spaces had filled up rapidly, and the coming ten days was the only period that didn’t have any names pencilled in by the time I had flown to Tallinn. I wasn’t worried, for I was sure I could persuade someone: there were several people that were sounding insterested, even if they couldn’t commit themselves definitely at that point.
However, for various reasons none of them could end up making it. Holly was still very keen, and was looking into flights to come out, but a couple of days later decided that she couldn’t afford it having just spent the last of her student loan on a long trip to Japan. Julian (still unemployed) was nearly persuaded, but having just spent a couple of weeks on a trip to Holland in Anna Crane, Andy Challis' boat, decided he'd done enough sailing for the moment.
So as Martin shouldered his bag and walked along to the bus station, I set off on my own. On the way out of town the banks were fairly obstacle-free and I perfected my technique of single-handed towing with two ropes. I reached the next lock just before the keeper left for the evening, and just below it met an enormous barge coming towards me. It was almost as wide as the canal, so I jumped off and pulled Teal right into the bank. There were only inches to spare; it took up so much of the canal that it pushed the water ahead of it, so that the level dropped several inches when it was past.
Here the banks were reedy again, so I alternated between rowing and towing for a while. I kept going for an hour or so after dark, by which time I was thoroughly knackered. For a while there had been thistles and nettles on the towpath, and my legs were tingling and my shoulders aching from the rowing.
In the morning I invented another means of progressing. My Swedish tree was too short to use to punt along the bottom of the canal, but if we stayed close enough to the edge I could pole along the bank with it. It took some fine adjustment of the steering to make this work, for I couldn't wield the pole and handle the tiller at the same time. With the tiller lashed slightly over to one side the push of the quant would bring her away from the bank a bit, and then the rudder would gently bring her back in - by which time I had to be ready on the foredeck to plant the pole in the reeds again and give her another shove.
I doubt if it was any more efficient than any other means of progressing, but at least it made a change, and slowly I made my way a few more miles down the canal. Then I struck lucky, for another cruiser passed and offered me a tow. They took me to outskirts of Emden, at the end of the canal I rowed the rest of the way in.
The last lock on the canal was a strange affair, for it was at the crossing of two canals that were kept at different levels. A large circular basin at the junction could be isolated and brought to the level of either canal. It was at the lower level when I arrived, and had to be filled to allow me through.
For some reason the water level in Emden must have been just below that of the section of canal above the lock, for when the gates were opened the water started streaming through. That made the last ½ mile very easy, as I let the stream sluice me down, taking an occasional leisurely stroke at the oars to maintain steerage way.
Emdem was not dissimilar to Wilhelmshaven. In both cases cavernous sea locks lead from a muddy tidal estuary into a big port complex of interconnected basins. However, Emden clearly had an longer history than her sister at the other end of the canal – the streets were winding rather than laid out in a grid, more old buildings had survived (or more likely been rebuilt after the war) and the older part of the port, where I tied up, had pretty stone quays and walls.
The harbour master came up and charged me all of 4 euros to stay in the port – and if that wasn't too much of a bargain, the receipt did double duty as a discount voucher for a nearby fish-burger stall. I’m not at all sure what it was I ate, but it was a lurid pink colour, and rather tasty served with gherkins and raw onion.
I asked where I might find a mast crane to put the mast back up, and the harbour master gave me directions to a sailing club in the outer harbour. After an hour or so looking round the town and relaxing I decided I might as well head round there, so I took to the oars and made my way under the next swing bridge and out into the outer basin. There was a following wind for the first time since entering the canal, so I stuck the mizzen mast back up so I could use at least one sail to help me.
Right in the far corner of the most distant basin, past the busy shipyard and a mile of derelict quay, I finally arrived at the little sailing club. There was a crane, but it wasn’t a little hand-operated one like the one in Wilhelmshaven. Besides, there was no-one there to help drive it, and as it was now late on Saturday it was unlikely that anyone would be there until Monday morning.
I tied up to a wrecked concrete jetty and had a think. I began to wonder if it might be possible to put the mast up without a crane. After all, we had managed it in Maldon, though that had been with three of us. The concrete jetty I was tied up to rose well above Teals deck so if I could lower the mast from there it would be at about 45 degrees, so at least partially up, and surely I could rig up some tackles and levers to get it the rest of the way...
Three hours later all was chaos. The mast – after much back-breaking labour, for it took all my strength merely to lift it – had been dragged onto the jetty and now stood at a precarious angle with the heel dangling above the mast step and the truck high in the air, supported part of the way along its length by a couple of props I had improvised from a nearby pile of abandoned wood. A cats cradle of shrouds, stays, halyards and temporary tackles festooned the boat, and I was now working by starlight and a few dim rays from distant streetlamps. I was sweaty, tired, and I had reached an impasse. If I could raise it just a little bit higher then all would become easy again, for then the shrouds on the starboard side could be tightened to prevent it falling. As it was the mast was only held up by the supports I had fashioned, and if I pushed them any further along the jetty they approached the balance point of the mast, and the whole set up became very wobbly indeed and threatened to crash about my ears – which would very likely have shattered the mast, and quite possibly my skull into the bargain.
The thought of dismantling it all again and waiting until Monday was very discouraging though. After some thought I found another sturdy length of wood and rigged it so that it stuck out from the the starboard side of the boat by a couple of feet. When I attached the jib halyard to the very end of it and led the fall down to one of the mast winches I found I would only need to raise the mast a couple more degrees to be able to take the strain on this support improvised. With my heart in my mouth I pushed the mast higher and moved the props just a bit further along, the spreaders and truck swaying alarmingly above me. Then I gingerly lowered myself back onto Teals deck and took up the strain on the halyard. Phew – it was enough to stop it falling. From that point it became far easier, although there was still a great deal of hard labour before the mast finally stood vertical. It was well after midnight that the shrouds and stays were all back in their proper places again and I deemed it safe to head below and get some sleep.
There was still a lot of re-rigging to do in the morning. I had to climb the mast to reattach the stays’l halyard, which I had taken off to use in some other capacity the night before; reattach boom and gaff, rereeve the luff lacing and make some sense of the tangle of ropes that remained from the previous night.
I set off about 11, and tacked through the basins to the sea lock. I hadn’t discovered if there was any particular time it opened, but I struck lucky, for just as I was getting the sails down by the sea lock, a little flotilla of yachts appeared from the inner harbour and made their way towards me. They were heading through too, and the lock gates were opening for them. It turned out to be hard work rowing into that headwind, but one of the yachts offered me a tow so I made the most of their kindness.
I was even more grateful for the tow they gave me out the lock, as the wind was blowing very freshly from the estuary, and a short sharp chop would have made it even harder to row out. They didn’t need to take me far from the lock gates though until it was wide enough to sail, so I cast off, waved my thanks and hoisted sail as fast as I could.
I had an interesting little journey ahead of me. Emden lies on the eastern side of the Ems estuary, which here marks the Dutch-German border. Delfzyl, on the western side, is about 15 miles away, rather nearer the sea. As with the Jade estuary, the tide runs strongly out in the channel, especially so in the narrow section that runs past Emden outer harbour. I knew I had only about an hour of the favourable ebb tide with me, and that once the tide turned I had no chance of beating against it in the narrow channel, although if I made it past the breakwater at the end I might just manage to make progress over the slacker tide that runs over the shallow tidal flats nearer Delfzl.
All the plastic yachts had made the same calculation, and motored out quickly to make the best of the remaining ebb. I followed as fast as I could, and was delighted to see just how fast the tide was pushing me along despite the contrary wind. However, it was slackening all the time. The buoys marking the edge of the channel were regularly spaced here, and to begin with I could be sure of passing a couple on each tack. Then I found I could barely pass one on each tack, and then it took me a couple of tacks to make the distance to the next one. Finally the buoys were no longer leaving a bubbling wake as the tide streamed past them, and with at the penultimate marker before the more open water beyond the breakwater the muddy bubbles were slowly beginning to flow inland again. Somehow we scraped past before the flood grew any stronger, and gained the slacker water beyond.
It was only 3 or 4 more miles to the Delfzyl harbour mouth, but it took several hours of slow beating over the flats to reach it. About ¼ mile from the entrance I noticed a couple of tan sails flying towards me, heading up the estuary and making the most of the wind and tide, as for them it was favourable. They reached the pierheads a few minutes before I did, where they would have to turn and start tacking up through the long harbour channel.
Now I could see them closer I could see that both boats were gaff rigged, about the same length as Teal, and both had identical black hulls. I recognized the type, for these fibreglass boats are based on a traditional Cornish design, and are fairly common around the UK.
As everyone knows, there is nothing naffer than a plastic gaffer, and Teal was determined so show these little upstarts how a real boat performed. She might be old enough to be their great aunt, but that was no reason to let them run rings round her.
They had their full rigs up, and we tacked back and forth for a while a few hundred yards behind them, gaining a little but not enough to overtake them. But Teal was carrying only her main and small jib, so I gave her the mizzen and stays’l to even things up. Soon my old lady crossed tacks just behind the boat that was lagging, and then just ahead. We closed on the leading yacht, lost ground when we were becalmed in the lee of a large factory, but gradually began to close again. Here the wind was flukey, blowing at an angle from the shore so that we could almost sail down the harbour on the port tack at times. Another calm patch for both boats, but Teal's momentum counted more and she closed in again. And then she had it – grand old lass, she was pointing a good 5 degrees higher than her little relation, and they were forced to put an extra tack in to avoid a beacon while we glided serenely by with a yard or two to spare. We were well ahead of them when we reached the marina at the innermost part of the harbour.