North Sea revisited
The standing mast route passes through Amsterdam, and continues right through to the south of Holland, and I was planning to keep to it as long as I was able before braving the North Sea again. It leaves the enormous Nord Zee canal at a little junction not far from the city centre, and immediately passes under the main railway line to Amsterdam central station. In order to minimise disruption to the rail traffic (and the road traffic on the other 13 opening bridges) a convoy system operates in the middle of the night, so the rail bridge only opens once a day at around 2 in the morning. I went to find the bridgekeeper to find out how it worked. 'Ya, ya' he told me, 'you can tie up here and wait, there are normally a few boats going through each day. So I spent a couple of hours looking round, then returned to Teal to bring her up to the bridge.
Amsterdam is not a place for small engineless boats. Ferries charge back and forth across the wide Nord Zee canal, dodging the huge barges that stream ceaselessly along it. Add the odd hydrofoil, a sprinkling of yachts and a seasoning of floating rubbish of all descriptions, and a journey through the centre takes on a perilous aspect. I had been lucky in getting a tow from the lock on the outskirts into the marina on the northern bank, but now I had to move a mile further up the canal, and more importantly cross to the other side to join the canal that leads south.
There was virtually no wind as I set off, and so I took to the oars. I did put the staysail and mizzen up to catch any breeze that might spring up, but they made little difference. I kept close to the northern edge to begin with, until I spotted a gap in the endless stream of barges, pushed the tiller over with my foot and picked up the pressure with the oars to get across as quickly as I could. It cannot have been more than 300 or 400 metres across, or have taken more than a couple of minutes, but they were still nerve racking as the barges don’t take long to appear round a corner. Having taking Teal so far it would be a shame to get mown down now.
Dusk was just falling as I tied up at the road bridge marking the entrance to the south-going canal, and I was glad I hadn’t left the trip across any later. The bridge keeper I had spoken to earlier came down to meet me though, looking worried.
“We can’t let you go through without an engine – you’ll hold everyone else up”.This was probably true. “There is one yacht tied up by the next bridge, the railway bridge -you’ll have to ask them if they’ll give you a tow”. Well, that wasn’t too bad – I hadn’t planned on rowing through anyway really, I was sure that another boat going south would be prepared to help me through and I intended to use the trusty hitching sign that had been so effective at the entrance to the Kiel canal. I never liked imposing myself on anyone though, so I was slightly nervous as I walked down to the yacht that was waiting by the next bridge, and introduced myself to the skipper, who was sitting in the cockpit.
I asked as nicely as I know how... but sadly this chap was a yachting rarity, someone who wasn’t interested in helping his fellow cruiser. It wasn’t the end of the world though – I had been told that typically around 10 boats go through each day, and so there was a good chance that someone else would turn up and help. He thought so too. “Perhaps another boat will help you” he said, and that was the end of our chat.
I hung around until it was well and truly dark, but no other yachts turned up. There was nothing for it but wait and hope for better luck the following night, so I retired to bed.
It turned out that I was the only one to get much sleep that night. At 2am when the railway bridge was due to open, the operator discovered a fault, and my friends on the northern side and the four yachts who were coming up from the south were told they would have to wait a few hours. They woke bleary eyed again at 5, but then were told it would take a day to repair the fault, and they would have to wait until the following night.
I, however, was well rested. I spent a lazy day wandering around the city again, and in the evening took the canoe for a tour of the small canals that criss-cross the centre. Around mid-afternoon another yacht turned up at the road bridge where I was moored, and the cheerful couple on board happily agreed to tow me through that night. Alas, it was not to be, for when I went to tell the bridge keeper that I now had a tow, he glumly said that the bridge wasn’t yet fixed, and there was a chance it might still remain shut that night. An hour later I checked with him again, and discovered they were now estimating another 5 days before it would open.
There were only two options left to me now; to take the wide, busy Nord Zee shipping canal to the coast and take a coasting voyage from there, or to just go 5 miles along it and then head south via a different canal, but by a rather longer route, and one with a large number of lifting bridges on it. That would now take too much time, I realised, so I resolved to head to Ijmuiden on the coast. I would no longer be alone from here anyway - another friend, Emma, was flying out to Amsterdam to meet me in the morning.
I met Emma at Amsterdam central train station about noon. It took a while for us to find each other – not least because she had initially got off one station too early – but soon we were both on board and ready to go.
I was rather nervous about heading along the canal. Designed with big ships in mind, yachts are not permitted to sail along it ‘without a supporting engine ready’ as the regulations say, and although I kept my oars to hand I’m not sure the authorities would count them as a supporting engine. And irrespective of the legality of what I was doing, there really is a lot of traffic on it, and the barges and ships do go at a fair lick. While the wind was fair I reckoned I’d be OK, but I’d be lucky if I could reach every stretch of the canal with the wind that was forecast.
Rueing being denied a charming voyage through the narrow canals by the broken bridge, we set off. The first leg lead slightly north of west, and we could sail along it close-hauled. It was good at any rate to be beyond the city centre, where you have to deal with the ferries crossing the canal in addition to the traffic going up and down it. Then the canal turned a corner, and things didn’t look so rosy. At times we could just creep along the right hand bank, but at others we were increasingly headed and we had to put the occasional tack in, carefully timing them between the barges streaming past. It started getting a bit silly when three came along at once, overtaking each other with us in the middle of them wondering which way to turn- knowing the only sensible way being to point the same way they were but unable to do that as it was straight into the wind. We dropped sails then, and tried to row, but the wind was too strong and we made virtually no progress.
We were considering turning back and waiting for better conditions, but just then a little aluminium boat with an outboard came by, and seeing our struggles offered to try to tow us. It wasn’t really up to the job though - it was powerful enough, but the tension of the tow-rope tied to their quarter made them unable to steer properly. The chap driving it hollered in Dutch to a passing yacht, and asked them to take us instead, which they kindly did. But they weren’t keen to take us all the way to Ijmuiden, as they seemed to be in rather a hurry, and so we slipped the tow a couple of miles further along, near a boatyard we could stop at if necessary. However, the wind had backed a bit while we were being towed, and we were glad to discover we could sail safely along the canal again without tacking. We were soon approaching the lock, as it is not terribly far to the coast from Amsterdam. Here the wind began to die a little, and as we crossed back over to the southern bank to find somewhere to moor for the night we dropped the sails and rowed the last mile to the lock entrance.
I say lock entrance – there are in fact 3 sea locks at the entrance to the Nord Zee canal, and we were by the smallest. The others are for full-sized sea-going leviathans, so our sleep wasn’t broken by the wash of too many big ships, just the odd small inland waterways craft that came by.
I looked up the tides in the evening and found that the south-going tide started around 10 am, so there was little point in an early start. We were about to get going, and I was unsuccessfully trying to call the lockeepers on the handheld radio, when a couple of Dutch chaps came down and started chatting to Emma.
'Hey Andy, do we want another crew for the leg back to England?' she called to me. I gave up on the lock, who weren't responding. Certainly three was easier for a long crossing than two, but who was this stranger wandering around trying to hitch a lift, and did he really want to come on a tiny old boat without an engine across some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world?
We soon wheedled his life story from him, or at least the most recent part. Jurgen had just completed his degree, although it had taken him six years as he couldn’t quite decide what he wanted to do. First he tried astronomy, but after a year realised it wasn’t his cup of tea. He changed to philosophy, and managed two years before binning it. So he started again, and three years later came away with a degree in artificial intelligence. But what next? He had no idea what he wanted to do until a week before we met him he went to a party and met an English girl, who he fell madly in love with. Suddenly a path was opened - he would sell all his possessions (he left just four boxes at his parents house), hitch to England to meet the girl and see what happened. And if it didn’t go as planned* (footnote: I spoke to him later – it didn’t), heck, at least he’d tried, and something else would turn up instead. So here he was, bags under his eyes after having slept in a park the previous night, asking any boat that went past if they could give him a lift to England.
Our plan was to sail a 25-mile leg down the coast to Schevenigen that day, so I agreed to take him that far, and take it from there. But who was this other chap with him, with a microphone at the ready?
He caught me looking quizically at him. “I’m from a Dutch radio station. Every morning we try to find someone who is travelling, and get their story from them – we just chat to them for a couple of minutes on air.” This mornings victim was Jurgen, whom the reporter had spotted waking up from his slumbers in the park. And the slot was just coming up, so did we mind awfully if they broadcast from Teal's deck? I supposed I didn’t mind awfully, so they did. I was even asked to say a few words myself, of an instantly forgettable nature. I couldn't imagine anyone would be listening.
“Thanks” said the reporter as he packed his microphone away. “We normally get an audience of about 400 000 for the morning show”.
While all this was going on another couple of yachts had turned up, and the lock was just opening for them. I grabbed a row to tow us in along the bank along with them. As I did so a little police launch drew up behind us.
“Hi – you are not meant to come in this canal without an engine!” They shouted. Our momentum was taking us into the lock, and although I tried to hastily explain that I hadn’t intended to come along their nasty busy canal, I doubt they heard a word above the sound of their huge throbbing outboards. They must have realised that chasing us was pretty pointless, as we had already come through the canal and by far their easiest course of action was just to let us leave in peace, for they shrugged their shoulders and zoomed off again.
One of the other yachts entering the lock with us was British, and offered us a tow out the other side. I accepted gratefully, as there was a stiff wind blowing straight into the lock it would have been hard to sail or row out. We slipped the line as soon as there was space to get up sail and start tacking in the outer harbour, and wished them a safe voyage – they were heading across to Grimsby, a slightly longer crossing than ours would be. We nearly lost Jurgen to them when he heard that Grimsby was further north, and nearer where his girl lived.
A tack west to get an offing, and then on the starboard tack we slowly closed the land again as we headed south down a low coast, past sandy beaches interspersed with resort towns every few miles against a backdrop of sand dunes. It was a little lumpy, and poor Jurgen was soon looking very green. We taught him which side to be sick over when the wind was blowing, and then sent him below with a bucket for company in case of any second helpings.
Gradually the wind died as we made our way down the coast. The friendly south-going tide helped and the miles of sandy beach slowly slipped past. But tides ebb as well as flow, and just a couple of miles from the Scheveningen harbour entrance we found we were approaching the town pier more and more slowly... and then we weren’t moving at all... and then we were sliding back away from it. In the faint zephyrs that remained of the mornings breeze we made our way in towards the shore and anchored. Teal's echosounder, a bit temperamental since we had left Tallinn, had now given up the ghost entirely, so I improvised a lead line from Stephane's old fishing line and a redundant bottlescrew so we could tell what depth we were anchoring in.
The sandy beach was crawling with holidaymakers, and loud music blared out towards us. Time for dinner, and Emma knocked some pasta up while we waited for enough wind to be able to move again. It wasn’t so long in coming; not much, but just enough of a lift to let us creep in over the tide. It was another couple of hours before we made it into the harbour.
We tied up in the first available berth, but soon discovered that the office and facilities were the other side of the basin – a half mile walk across sandy wasteland, through a lorry park and along the far quay. There was no-one there anyway when we got there, so we walked back again. Jurgen knew the town and took us to a bar not far from the boat. It was an odd place – anyone getting there (other than by boat) had to traverse the less than salubrious environs of the lorry park and the patch of wasteland. It was surprising to find a clientele at all, but in fact there were quite a number of strangely dressed people drinking organic beer.
In the morning we made the long walk round the basin again, paid our dues and picked up a detailed weather forecast from the marina office. The weather looked good for the next couple of days - light easterlies - but it would then deteriorate. Best to make hay while the sun shines. We hung around no longer, but grabbed a few odds and ends of food from the nearest supermarket and set off back to Britain while we could.
The tide was with us again from the late morning, and with the easterlies we had a fair wind. It was far from strong, but at least we had steerage way. It wasn’t long until we could make out ships crossing our path in the haze ahead, and a long low breakwater appeared stretching out into the sea from the low coast. This was the entrance to Europort and the enormous Rotterdam harbour complex - one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. I had been slightly nervous about crossing this, but we coincided with a small gap in the steady stream of shipping and didn’t have to get out the way of anything. I was mightily relieved to have it behind us.
Towards evening the wind died further and for a while we were entirely becalmed. I got the oars out briefly, more out of boredom than anything else – but soon decided trying to row the North Sea was a fools game. We sat and waited instead. From our port beam come a sudden exhalation, then another - a couple of curious pilot whales. We heard them blow a couple more times over the next few minutes, then they were gone.
The wind was very light all night. That was fine by me - I was much happier to go slowly and safely than fight our way across. The memories of the previous year's crossing were still vivid.
On our starboard side we saw first the loom then the flash of the Goeree light – a light vessel in the days of Knight and John Seymour, but now an enormous structure with a big helicopter platform that the pilot service use. Knight had taken a pilot here (though he was clearly ashamed to have done so).
Apart from one flashing buoy in the distance we didn’t see any other navigation markers all night. The winds remained very light in the morning, and the Walker log is not accurate at low speeds – at anything less than a knot the spinner sinks and no longer turns - so I was fairly convinced our logged distance was now under-reading by a few miles. By mid-morning, as we should have been approaching the shipping lanes that run parallel to the Dutch coast and then head down channel for Biscay and the Atlantic, I was slightly unsure of where we were.
Not to worry – the shipping lanes themselves weren’t hard to spot. In the distance we began to see the odd ship appear on the port bow, churn past and disappear into the starboard horizon. Then we were among them, and soon they were streaming the other way past us as we reached the south-going lane. As we neared the far side we spotted one of the buoys marking the edge of the lanes. This was a relief, as it was now not far to the outermost sandbanks off the British coast, and it was good to know where we were.
By evening the tide was sweeping north, so although we steered straight for the Galloper sandbank we were swept north of the lonely flashing buoy marking its extremity. We had a choice of two channels to take into Harwich from here, but as the tide was about to turn again we opted to let it push us south again and take the southern approach.
The wind had gradually picked up since we had crossed the shipping lanes, and was slowly drawing ahead. As we cleared the southern end of the Shipwash sandbank we found we had to tack north into the last of the flood to clear another set of shoals. We reached Harwich shortly after the ebb had set in, but there was enough wind to slowly tack in over the current, past the Beach End buoy, made famous by its close encounter with the Goblin in Ransome's 'We didn't mean to go to sea'. Funnily enough, on the Goblin's return from Holland they had made this same landfall, and “Coming out beyond the Cork was one of the last of the old sailing ships, a four-masted barque, being towed out clear of the shoals before setting sail for the Baltic... ...they watched the barque, with the sailors out on the yards of her, ready to loose her white sails. They read her name through the glasses... “Pommern.” They listened to Daddy telling them of the island harbour of Mariehamn in the Baltic to which the barque belonged.” Alas, there were no square riggers to greet us as we arrived, and the container ships that did stream by were more likely to be bound for Taipei than the beautiful islands where Pommern had ended her voyaging.
It was pouring with rain in the cold grey dawn as we finally dropped anchor off Shotley spit. We were back. It was good to see the familiar sights of Harwich harbour. Harwich itself has barely changed since Knight Across the water, at Shotley, three shapely red hulls were another sight that hadn't changed for generations. '“See those vessels?” said Jim', as the Goblin passed through. “The red ones, with lanterns half-way up the mast, lightships in for repairs.” But having livened up the harbour for a century or more they won't be there much longer, for the few that remain are being decommisioned and sold off to be turned into pubs, restaurants and outdoor centres.
Nearby, an abandoned rusty old schooner also lay on a mooring. She had been lying there the first time I had sailed up the Orwell twelve years earlier, and I don’t think had ever moved – now she was rust streaked and the sails still furled on the stays were blowing in ribbons in the wind. The forest of masts showing the marina on Shotley spit would have been unfamiliar to our old friends, but brought back happy memories of working on Peter's Quay Punt, Juanita, when he had kept her there.
The final part of the tripartite harbour, Felixstowe, has changed immeasurably since Goblins skipped, Jim, ran ashore to get petrol and ended up in hospital after trying to capsize a bus. The little town is still there, so I'm told, but is entirely dwarfed by the enormous container port that has sprawled along the riverbank.
We put the canoe ashore, and paddled over in the rain to Harwich to drop Jurgen off - he was keen to hitch north as soon as possible. After a couple of hours rest Emma and I sailed up the Orwell to the Pin Mill. What could be a more fitting way to end the trip than over a beer in the Butt and Oyster, looking over the muddy hard still used by sprits'l barges, watching the masts of the yachts swinging as the tide turns? I didn't make the most of it though. Like Jim, who falls asleep over his porridge in next-door Alma Cottage at the very beginning of 'We didn't mean to go to sea', I was nodding off after a long sea passage and a couple of nights of very little sleep. I dreamt, perhaps, of the shades of Ransomes characters still frequenting the hard, hoping they would be looking over the water at Teal gently snubbing at her mooring buoy, and feeling the same respect for her as they had for the Goblin, and would for Racundra, Falcon, Willynilly, Dulcibella, Dusmarie and Moonraker.