Four months after buying our Dutch motor cruiser, and just a month before we have to put her to bed for the season, we’re finally enjoying the lifestyle I hoped for when we talked about cruising the Dutch waterways.

We’ve climbed most of our major hurdles now. We understand enough waterway rules and signs to keep ourselves out of trouble. We know where to find moorings, how much they’re likely to cost, and which moorings we can stay on for free. We understand all the costs involved, which has allowed us to budget for realistic expenditure next season. We realise the limitations imposed by our pretty little Dutch cruiser, and the likely cost of buying a boat more suitable for coastal waters and large inland lakes and rivers. Most of all, we understand how much we underestimated the Dutch network.

A brick and thatch houseboat on a Flevoland canal

As far as I’m concerned, the Waterkaarten app we use for navigation is an essential onboard tool. Finding your way around the English canal network is easy. You can travel for days on the same canal. Making a turn onto another canal is a milestone, something to be noted and enjoyed. Getting lost is difficult.

A misty morning cruise in Flavoland

The Dutch network is very different.

An uncountable number of dead end arms branch off hundreds of canals flowing through a bewildering number of connected lakes. Ask a boater in England how to get from London to Birmingham and he’ll tell you to either simply follow the Grand Union canal, or follow the Thames to the South Oxford canal and then turn left where the South Oxford joins the Grand Union. If you ask Dutch boater how to get from Amsterdam to Maastricht, a similar distance to London to Birmingham, you’ll need to settle down for a lengthy discussion about about possible route options, water depth and bridge height.

We’ve clocked up 600km so far, but all of our cruising has been done no more than 50km from our home base at Leiden. We’ve passed through a dozen large lakes as we’ve cruised, each with its own collection of islands, many of which are free to stay on. Facilities range from simple box moorings on a bush covered spit of land to privately owned islands where, for a fee, you can enjoy manicured lawns, smart shower and toilet blocks, and moorings protected from the wind which often scours these vast expanses of open water.

We’ve raced back to Leiden over the last three or four days, which has been frustrating because we’ve been delayed by a broken lock, a broken bridge, and my inability to absorb the mass of information available on my Waterkaarten app.

I planned our route back carefully, paying particular attention to forecast wind strength to avoid another bumpy and rather worrying passage on the Ijmeer. We couldn’t resist staying a night at Jachthaven Stichting which nestles beneath Muiden castle. The marina is a wonderful but expensive place to stay for a day or two. We bobbed on the water under a cloudless sky, watching a steady stream of boats passing to and from Muiden’s tandem locks.

A beautiful evening in Almere Haven

While Cynthia did important womanly things on the boat, I did the manly work, trudging to the washing machines at a nearby marina, and then sitting with a coffee in the sun watching boats go by. It’s a hard life.

The view from our Muiden mooring

Dutch locks, which frightened us so much a few weeks ago, are a breeze now that we know how they work, and now that we have developed a system for entering them without damaging Julisa or the boats around us.

Julisa has five cylindrical fenders, three on the port side, and two to starboard. We need one more, and we need a pair of larger teardrop shaped fenders for the bow. These are essential for keeping the sloping bow away from lock walls or canalside moorings. Unfortunately, the missing white paint on the otherwise pristine bow is testament to our inexperience when entering the first few locks of our current cruise.

No shortage of moorings on our cruise south

I knew that we would need a pair of bow fenders before we passed through our first lock, but the only ones available at chandleries on our route have been for sale at prices that make me want to cry. The blue rubber 18” rubber spheres cost at least £70 each. We’ll be passing a low cost chandler next week, so we’ll buy a pair there, and some paint to repair the damage done by not having adequate protection.

Our lock entry system didn’t work quite right in Muiden. Cynthia steered and I stood on deck ready to grab a passing lock bollard to pull us against the side. I cocked up, so the bow swung into an immaculate and ridiculously expensive Dutch day boat. These open boats often cost in excess of £100,000. Fortunately, they’re protected by thick rope fenders running continuously around the hull top so our awkward lock entry didn’t actually do any damage to anything other than to my pride.

Once through the lock, we cruised serenely down the river Vecht. The river is very similar to affluent sections of the Thames with vast mansions surrounded by manicured lawns descending gently to the riverbanks lined with day boats costing as much as a small house.

We stopped for the night at the Spiegelplas, a 700 acre nature reserve only accessible by dropping down a lock from the Vecht. “The Spiegelplas is the most beautiful lake in all of Holland!” the lock keeper assured us as he minced around the lock closely followed by his Filipino boyfriend.

He may well have been right, but it was a pig to moor on.

We cruised for an hour around the lake, visiting each of the nine designated mooring spots indicated on our Waterkaarten app. All were full, and as the lock wasn’t scheduled to open again until the following morning, they were all likely to stay full.

We spotted our first Dutch waterways narrowboat on the Spiegelplas. The ten metre cruiser stern boat was anchored in shallow water next to a willow covered island. After an hour’s fruitless mooring search we weren’t in the mood for stopping and chatting so we left the owner sunbathing on his back deck before continuing on our lake circuit.

We manage to secure the last remaining space at a lakeside yacht club where we enjoyed an alfresco meal at a waterside picnic bench before a good night’s sleep on a peaceful mooring.

Rested and raring to go, we were at the lock landing by 10am waiting for the lock to open. We had a long wait. The low bridge adjacent to the lock was broken. “We had the same problem last week,” the owner of the boat moored in front told us. “That time, the bridge took twenty four hours to fix” We were lucky. After two hours basking in the sun, we were on our way again, cruising south on the Vecht for a couple of hours to another lock and another lake.

The €5 lock fee came as a bit of a shock, especially as we only wanted to stay the night.

The Loosdrechtse Plassen is a beautiful expanse of water dotted with small islands, many of which have free moorings. Unfortunately, many of them are box moorings. Box moorings require boaters to climb on and off their boats from either bow or stern. Bow or stern entry isn’t easy for us, and is impossible for the dogs, so we need to moor alongside a pier.

After an hour searching for a suitable place to stop for the night, we found Meent island. We had a jetty, and most of the five hundred metre long island to ourselves. Most of the island’s five acres were mown lawn dotted with shady trees. A small kiosk sold fast food and ice creams to cater for what I assume are throngs of boaters visiting the island to use the small sandy beach and sheltered swimming area.

We were woken in the morning by the bin and poo boats. In addition to the fast food joint, the island has a small toilet block which stores waste in a septic tank. A large flat decked barge nosed into the bank behind us, then used a mechanical arm to swap full for empty wheelie bins. Another barge equipped with a powerful pump connected to a large holding tank moored close to the facilities block to prepare the island’s toilets for the weekend visitors.

Towing a broken boat to safety

We began the next day on a good note. A small cruiser crewed by two inexperienced young Dutch couples was moored in a small bay on the opposite side of the island to us. Their engine wouldn’t start, so we towed them across the lake to a jetty close to their parked cars.

After reluctantly parting with another €5 at the lock to escape the lake network, we continued south on the delightful and gentle river Vecht before a rude awakening when we joined the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal.

Commercial canals are not a pleasant experience on our little boat.

The canal is a through route for BIG barges, many of them a hundred metres long, weighing more than three thousand tonnes. We’ve passed fairly close to these monsters on open water over the last three months. Providing we don’t allow ourselves to be hit broadside by their bow waves, we don’t suffer too much. The experience is very different on a canal, especially when there’s a steady procession of these boats passing in both directions.

The water displaced by boats of this size, often blunt bowed, cruising at ten to twelve knots, has nowhere to go. Waves radiate out from the barges, crash into the canal’s steep sided banks and bounce back towards the centre.

Julisa didn’t like it at all.

We corkscrewed, pitched and rolled. Each violent movement was accompanied by terrified squeaks from Cynthia. We couldn’t move about the boat for fear of falling. Cynthia had to sit in the cockpit, braced against the boat’s pitching. I had to stand wide legged at the wheel to stop myself being thrown about the cockpit. Both of us were terrified.

A grand house on the Thames like river Vecht

We watched as the Waterkaarten app tracked our progress agonizingly slowly towards our westward turn onto the Oude Rijn. Eventually we reached our goal, but the exit from the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal was almost as frightening as dealing with the wash from enormous barges.

Another property on the Vet

Shortly before we made the turn, an ear splitting horn blared behind us. Two towering barges, one overtaking the other, raced towards us from behind. Another equally large barge ploughed through the choppy water towards us. The slower of the two boats approaching from behind had to move over to allow the overtaking barge to squeeze between it and the approaching boat. The slower boat, still moving much faster than us, was the one sounding its horn. It was on a collision course with us, and we had nowhere to go.

We reached the turning onto the Oude Rijn just in time. As we skidded around the turn onto the relatively calm water of the smaller canal, the two giant barges raced by. We’d narrowly missed being swamped by six thousand tonnes of racing steel, but we weren’t quite out of the woods yet.

A narrow permanently open lock spanned the entrance to the Oude Rijn. A 2.5m high bridge arched over the far end. On calm water, a 4m wide lock and a low bridge wouldn’t be a problem, but with the violent wash from the two passing giants, we were being pushed up and down and swinging erratically from side to side. With just a 10cm gap between the bridges steel girders and our boat’s canvas and wood top, and 30cm high waves, I had to race through the lock and under the bridge between swells.

We passed the bridge without scraping the canvas top off our cockpit, and then cruised slowly onto an entirely different waterway.

After the turbulent water of the one hundred metre wide Amsterdam Rijnkanaal, the ten metre wide Oude Rijn felt claustrophobic. It appeared to be too small for even a modest boat like ours. The feeling was reinforced when our bow tipped towards the sky and then dived towards the canal as we slid over a high mud bank in the shallow water.

Checking lock dimensions and opening hours is an important prelude to Dutch waterway cruising, as is also checking bridge height and status and, if the bridge is moveable, bridge opening hours.

I had checked the bridges on the eastern section of the Oude Rijn the previous evening. I knew that some of them would be tight but, as the alternative was a much longer route via Gouda, I thought the additional stress of creeping under stone or steel bridges a cigarette paper’s width above our delicate canvas top would be worthwhile.

Of course I made that decision from the security of our tranquil mooring on an expansive lake. I didn’t feel quite the same way creeping under an arched stone bridge that was barely high enough to allow us to pass at its centre. The bridge’s arch dropped perilously close to the varnished cockpit surround as we squeezed underneath.

After another handful of equally low bridges, we reached one which we knew we couldn’t pass under. It was just one metre high. Fortunately, it was a lift bridge. Unfortunately it closed at 4.30pm. We reached it at 4.36pm.

With no way of turning on the narrow canal close to the bridge, we moored on a nearby wooden pier. Our nighttime sleeping spot was far from ideal. We were in a busy town centre. A continuous stream of heavy traffic crossed the bridge in front of us and along the two roads which ran either side of the canal. The traffic was noisy, but not as noisy as the people.

The short pier we were moored on was very popular with the locals. A mother brought her two small children to fish in the canal. When one five year old couldn’t cast into the canal because of our boat, he started to climb onto our back deck to reach the water. His mother eventually dissuaded him. A teenaged couple chatted animatedly less than a metre from where we sat in our cockpit. Their noise was bearable, but the din created by two drunk and very vocal cocktail drinking teenage girls who sat on the pier next to our stern was not.

We realised that we were in for a noisy night before we could escape when the bridge opened at 9am the following day, and then we realised that there was no point in waiting for the bridge at all.

I checked the route ahead more thoroughly. Our boat’s air draught is listed as 2.5 metres. However, we have squeezed under some bridges slightly lower. I traced my finger along the map. A series of 2.5 metre bridges, then one at 2.45. That would be tight. The next was 2.4, which was worrying. Two point four metres didn’t seem too bad at all when I spotted a bridge further along the route. At 2.15 metres, there was no chance of passing it.

We were stuck.

Google Map’s satellite view saved the day. I used the measuring tool to check the canal width. At our cocktail party mooring, the canal was just eight metres wide. Julisa is about eleven metres long including the dinghy. Three hundred metres behind us the waterway widened to fourteen metres. We could turn there providing that we didn’t ground on the edges of the already dangerously shallow waterway.

The two cocktail drinkers were so drunk that they didn’t understand that I was trying to untie Julisa’s stern line from the wooden pole they were slumped against. After failing to get a response several times when I asked them to move, I had to lift one of them out of the way. She didn’t seem to notice.

As darkness fell, we reversed apprehensively along the boat lined canal to the wide section. Thank God for the bow thruster. It made the normally frustratingly difficult job of reversing a boat in a straight line a breeze, and then allowed us to quickly spin the boat in her own length.

Being able to turn around was a mixed blessing. We were able to escape from the too low bridges of the Oude Rijn, but now we were faced with a further 6km joyride along the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal.

Our second brush with the big barges was far less frightening. The canal was quieter and the water far less agitated at 7am the following day. We didn’t once fear for our lives, but we did feel slightly sea sick.

We needed to pass through a lock to escape the big canal. We arrived on the lock landing at 8am. The lock didn’t open until 9am. We had an hour to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, providing the boat stayed still long enough to let go of our dining table.

I took this short video as Cynthia prepared our morning meal. Even though we were a hundred metres away from the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal, we were still constantly buffeted by their wash as we tried to eat. As I complained while prodding a fork full of food for the third time into my ear instead of my mouth, Cynthia quoted one of her favourite sayings, “Remember, this isn’t a third world problem!” She was right. We weren’t starving, although if we stayed on the lock landing for a few days, I think we would have been very hungry.

By mid afternoon, after six hours of pleasant cruising on the mainly rural Hollandse Ijssel, our plans were thwarted at Haastrecht by the usually faultless Dutch bridge automation.

Most bridge opening is automatic. A single red light indicates that the bridge is operational but you should wait. However, some are frustratingly awkward self service. Somewhere close to the bridge, only accessible from the water, there will be a small button which has to be pressed to close the bridge’s road barriers and either lift or swing the bridge.

A floating bar with an outboard motor

On a cruiser even as small as ours, pressing the button means nosing the boat almost within touching distance of the bridge, and then laying on the deck and reaching down to press the button. We only learned about this self service bridge type after waiting patiently for half an hour at one bridge for it to open. Eventually, a Dutch day boat sped past us. The owner skidded expertly to a stop inches from the bridge, leaned casually over his bow, pressed the button and then reversed just as casually backwards to wait a minute or two for the bridge to open.

After that, we checked each bridge carefully for hidden buttons.

The bridge at Haastrecht had one. Our bridge management skill was a joy to watch. Cynthia expertly maneuvered the bow close to the bridge. I hung off the bow like a monkey to press the button. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and then reversed a little to wait for the bridge to open.

It didn’t.

We should have noticed the bridge’s two red lights, which meant that the bridge was out of service. And then we noticed a line of moored boats filled with boaters enjoying the spectacle.

One told us that the bridge was broken. An engineer was on his way, but the bridge probably wouldn’t be operational until the following day. We found a space among the waiting boats, and then watched the engineer work on the bridge until 10pm. A cheer heralded the bridge raising once again. Two boats slipped through before the engineer left for the night. We laughed. What was the point? The next bridge, closed for the night, was just half a mile away.

We weren’t laughing later on that night. The bridge developed a mind of its own. The road barriers dropped on their own, the bridge raised briefly and then dropped again. Much to the frustration of local bikers and car owners, the road barriers stayed down until the following day.

A further three hours work the following morning by the same engineer finally cured the fault. The bridge raised, horns tooted, and a dozen boats raced through the open bridge before anything else went wrong.

We cruised 38km yesterday, through Gouda, north to Alphen aan den Rijn, and back onto familiar ground. We spent the night at a marina near Aalsmeer where we knew we could empty our toilet cassette for the first time in a week. We can now make our 21l holding tank last a long time with a little care and late night hedge watering.

Making way for a tour boat on the cruise back to Leiden

After a two hour cruise this morning, we’re back at our Leiden base. We have jobs to do which require the Hymer. Cynthia has another appointment at her Eindhoven clinic, we need to get passports for both Tasha and Abbie in preparation for our forthcoming brief return to the UK, and we need to search for a low cost chandler with affordable fenders for our bow.

Cynthia’s out shopping on her little folding bike at the moment. When she returns, we’re going for lunch at a canalside restaurant in the heart of Leiden. We’ll watch the boats pass slowly by and wonder, once again, which way to go. Do we keep our summer boat and winter motorhome, or do we sell both to buy a more comfortable and capable boat for full time living and cruising on the European network? As Cynthia would say, it’s not a third world problem, but it’s the only problem we have, so we’ll continue to focus on it.

Isn’t life wonderful?

Cynthia Says……Trial by Fire

When we first made an appearance at Jos van Galen’s boat yard, we had to guide Julisa down a very narrow canal just barely missing the houseboats lined up along the way.  Just trying not to run into anything was a major accomplishment!  Then in order to moor up properly we had to go past the boat yard and turn around in a small space then backtrack.  I remember those first few times how much in awe I was watching Paul manoeuvre the boat around.  The first time or so was a little tense, then it became routine.

Paul has asked me a number of times if I wanted to be in charge of turning Julisa around in this tiny space and I always declined—-until today, at the end of our 3 week journey where we discovered a decent range of the waterways network.  A couple of days ago I told him I wanted to do this “home port turnaround.”

As we approached the canal I was gagging my nervous level and surprisingly found myself to be quite calm, even though in part of my mind I knew I could easily screw it up.
In all truth it turned out to be far easier than I had imagined, and with just a few timely words from Paul, before I knew it I had turned her around and was headed to the mooring spot!  I was SO happy to end this journey on a positive note.

I haven’t done a lot of the helmsmanship while cruising, not because I don’t care to do so, but because I usually find myself involved in cooking, cleaning, watching our progress on the chart or other (seemingly) important tasks.

What I DO do the majority of the time is bring the boat in for mooring, whether it be along side a canal or lake or in a lock.  At first I was nervous about doing this, but thanks to Paul’s excellent directions it has become quite easy.  I’ve developed a system when docking on the starboard side that works well for me.  I have the window in the main saloon to look through in order to gauge my distances.  Without this, it is difficult to see very well to the right since the wheel is on the left (port) side.

During these past three weeks on the waterways I’ve had the opportunity to watch many boats mooring up and have come to the conclusion that nearly 100% of the time, the man steers the boat while the woman handles the lines (or ropes as they are called depending on the country you are from).

The reason I don’t handle the lines–which usually involves jumping or taking long steps from boat to dock–is because of the injury to my right groin that I sustained a couple of years ago.  It unfortunately has limited some of my movements, though I am working at improving this.

These past three weeks really put my skills to the test, as every lock or docking situation is different depending on weather conditions, the wind, how many boats are in the lock with us, etc.  I really find that I am up to the challenge (a good part of this is because I have such an excellent mentor!), and I will continue to welcome the challenges as they present themselves.

It’s been a great three weeks and we have been blessed with wonderful weather, kind people and lots of exciting experiences and personal interchanges with our fellow boaters.

I just wish the summer wouldn’t end!

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We’re back again after a hectic, exhausting and ultimately successful three weeks.

I flew to Philadelphia last week to collect our new basset hound, Abbie, named Agnes by someone with a dubious sense of humour for the first two years of her life.

My morning walk to Leiden rail station

The operation didn’t start well. Cynthia and I can fly on all American Airlines flights at very low cost, providing that there are empty seats on the flight. All current and ex AA employees enjoy this privilege, as do nominated friends and family. There are often twenty or more AA standby passengers hoping to board a flight, so actually flying on the day you want is often difficult.

The process is simple. You book a standby slot for a flight, go through all the usual airport hassle of checking in two to three hours before takeoff, enduring security screening involving the inevitable pat down by an over enthusiastic uniformed guard, and then settling down for a tedious wait at the departure gate. At least the paying passengers know that they’re going to get on the flight after twiddling their thumbs for an hour or more at the gate. Those on standby have to wait until everyone with a ticket has boarded the flight, all the time selfishly hoping that a few of them won’t , and then wait for their name to be called to fill any free spaces.

After four hours at Schiphol, I missed the flight by one seat. I spent the night at Schiphol’s quirky Citizen M hotel where everything in the room is controlled by an iPad, and the glass enclosed toilet and shower are actually in the bedroom. I’m quite pleased I didn’t share the room with anyone, especially as the hotel offers a free porn channel. Just kidding Cynthia!

I made the flight the following day, was collected from Philadelphia airport by Cynthia’s generous friend Brigitte, wined and dined at her home, and then driven three hours the next day to Abbie’s kennel home in State College.

Abbie – Our new boating companion

I hoped to fly back the day after I collected her, but the high temperature meant that the airline would have refused to fly Abbie. Saturday was much cooler, so I knew I wouldn’t be refused because of the temperature, but I had something else to worry about.

Dogs need a raft of paperwork in order to fly, including a health certificate which is good for ten days from the examination date. Because I was delayed a day going over there, and another day coming back, Saturday was day eleven. Abbie couldn’t legally enter the Netherlands on the paperwork I had with me.

As you can imagine, this caused a little panic. I called approved vets in the area to see if Abbie could have another health check done before she flew. None of them could accommodate her. Our contact at the kennel spoke to the vet who examined Abbie. He suggested that I might be able to slip through the US checks at Philadelphia, but offered some worrying advice about the Netherlands. “The Dutch are great rule followers. The paperwork will be examined in detail. If there are any errors, Abbie many be placed in quarantine, and you’ll incur additional costs and maybe a fine.”

In the meantime, Cynthia spoke to our vet in the Netherlands. “Don’t do it,” she warned, “The checks will be thorough. You’ll be caught and fined!”

The sensible advice of course was to follow the advice given by both vets. I’m not terribly sensible, so I didn’t. I reasoned that if I managed to board the flight, and we were stopped at Schiphol, at least Abbie would be in the Netherlands a little closer to her new home.

My plan at the AA check in desk was to turn on the charm to distract the middle aged lady processing my paperwork. I leaned on the counter and gave her my best smile. She stepped back from the counter and turned to her supervisor for help. I gave up, and let Abbie use her undeniable charm instead.

She did a marvellous job. While the check in supervisor held Abbie’s lead, the paperwork was given a cursory check, and she was booked on to the flight.

At Schiphol,I waited for an hour for Abbie to be delivered to the oversized baggage area. I had to keep her in her travel crate until she was processed by border control. A large and stern faced officer directed me into a booth, held out a hand for Abbie’s paperwork, and then slowly and methodically examined each of the twenty pages. I tried to look calm and relaxed. I suspect that I failed miserably.

He cut the security tags of Abbie’s crate, scanned her microchip, and then returned to the bundle of papers lying on his desk. He paused again at the health certificate. “I’m afraid that you are going to have a problem,” he told me, pointing at the certificate. I held my breath, waiting for the bad news. Maybe trying to sneak her into the Netherlands wasn’t such a good idea. How much would we be fined? What would the quarantine costs be? Would the authorities insist, could they insist, that Abbie was returned to Philadelphia?

“You won’t be able to take your dog to England unless you have her wormed within five days of crossing the border. You’re fine for the Netherlands though!”

Minutes later I was skipping through the terminal on my way back to the boat. Honesty isn’t always the best policy.

Dutch canalside dining

Wonderful cafes to relax in after a stressful flight

With our fearless, four-footed friend on board, we’ve been able to focus on widening our Dutch boating experience. Much as we have loved cruising the now familiar and extensive waterways between Leiden and Amsterdam, we have a month left to explore as much of the network as we can before we put the boat to bed in September. The extent of our exploration will depend largely on the weather.

Sunset over our Amsterdam mooring

We’ve had a few rather windy days in the Netherlands over the last week or two, which isn’t surprising when you consider how few hills there are in the country to deflect a breeze.

Windy days on the UK waterways were always a challenge for me. A flat bottomed, high sided narrowboat is ill equipped for cruising in blustery weather. When I worked as an instructor on the Calcutt Boats hire fleet, I knew that taking novice hirers out on wind rippled water was always going to be an interesting experience.

Escaping the sheltered wharf where the company’s twelve boat hire fleet moored was easy enough. Buildings, a lock, and a tree lined towpath kept most of the wind at bay. The first stage of the helmsmanship instruction as we ascended a double lock was easy enough, as was the short stretch of protected canal which followed. The tricky bit was a wide open stretch passing forty acre Napton reservoir.

As the confused helmsmen and women zig zagged up the canal trying to come to terms with pointing the tiller in the opposite direction to the way they wanted the boat to go, on windy days I always watched an approaching patch of agitated water close to the reservoir with apprehension.

“When we reach that point,” I would say, pointing to the area where the canal’s glassy surface was replaced by small waves marching across our path, “the boat is going to slew sideways. Don’t worry, it’s quite normal. Just steer into the wind”. As I offered my words of wisdom, I would be quietly thankful that I wasn’t cruising in my own boat on such a windy day.

After many years of nervous anticipation when forecast wind speeds exceeded 15 mph, I slowly learned to relax in similar weather conditions on our new boat. The combination of a keel, less wind resistance above the waterline, a much more powerful engine, and a decent bow thruster means that mooring, turning, reversing and cruising are a piece of cake… unless we are on a large lake.

The Westeinderplassen is a very large lake by UK standards. It has a similar area to Windermere in the lake district, but, at less than three metres, is only a fraction of the depth. Because it is relatively shallow, windy days quickly create large waves, which aren’t a problem in a small cruiser like ours if you have the wind behind you.

We left the shelter of Kempers marina at the lake’s southernmost point and watched, slightly concerned, as the wave height increased quickly as we cruised north. The few other motor cruisers on the lake kept close to the sheltered waters of the string of islands to the west of us. In hindsight, they obviously knew what they were doing.

After forty minutes on what felt like a fairly benign roller coaster, we reached a point where we needed to turn broadside to the wind to pass through a channel between two islands to reach the sheltered waters of an Aalsmeer yacht club.

A dozen dinghies from a children’s sailing school bobbed erratically over the white capped waves ahead of us, many capsizing in the strengthening wind. Concerned adults in inflatable dinghies with powerful outboard engines raced between the upturned boats, encouraging the young sailors and shielding them from passing boats.

As we turned broadside to the wind, we slowed to avoid two tiny tots clinging to upturned boats. As Julisa wallowed in increasingly high troughs, and Cynthia and I were deafened by the sound of pots and pans crashing to the galley floor, I remembered advice we were given a few weeks earlier.

“You have a good boat there, but be careful where you take her in the Netherlands. She’s a category D boat, fine for sheltered canals and rivers, and most of the lakes in calm conditions. Beware lakes on windy days though. Julisa doesn’t have any protective rails fitted on the cabin shelving. If you’re caught broadside to a heavy swell, you’ll be eating your dinner off the galley floor”

Fortunately, the only damage we suffered was a few pot dents, and the imprints of Cynthia’s fingernails as she held my forearm in a vice like grip until we reached sheltered water.

Between windy sailing days, we’ve cruised gently through tranquil lake networks and bustling small towns, enjoyed watching a steady procession of gently turning windmills, and all the time worrying about cruising into the unknown.

We’ve been back in the Netherlands since the beginning of April. Our first cruise was on Dutch canals was nearly four months ago. Since then we’ve cruised 393 km, but in all that distance, until two days ago, we hadn’t passed through a single lock.

Locks appear to scare novice boaters on England’s inland waterways more than anything else. Their concern is understandable. English locks can be dangerous. There are different lock configurations to understand, different paddle gear and procedures, and very different water levels and rate of flow at each lock. Tens of thousands of gallons of murky canal water racing through underground sluices, or gates within gates, all controlled by the novice boater himself, can create a boat smashing surge of dirty brown water. Boaters are hurt, boats are sunk, and locks are damaged if the correct procedure isn’t followed to the letter.

English locks are no place for the careless.

Scary as they are, most English canal locks are relatively small. Just one narrowboat will fit in a single lock, two in a double. River locks, often but not always keeper controlled, can be much larger, but are often relatively benign. Even then, the intrepid boater has to be on his guard.

On a beautiful summer’s day a few years ago, I stood contentedly by the side of my boat in a rising self service Thames lock, absently allowing the centre line, loosely wrapped around a lockside bollard, to slip through my fingers. As I waited for the lock to fill, I watched a steady stream of hikers and bikers pass on the nearby towpath. Many turned to stare. It’s a proud moment, thinking that bystanders are looking at your beloved boat with admiration.

I wasn’t quite so happy when a cyclist pointed over my shoulder with a look of horror on his face. “Why is your boat doing that?” he exclaimed.

Because I wasn’t paying attention, I hadn’t noticed that my centre line was trapped on the bollard, effectively holding the boat’s side down while the water continued to rise. The boat was already leaning dangerously towards the water. The lock was still only half filled so, with every passing second, the angle increased alarmingly. I had just a couple of minutes before the boat reached the point of no return and flipped on its roof.

By the time I sprinted to the head of the lock to stop the rising water, the boat was at almost forty five degrees. I could hear plates and glasses smashing as they fell from cupboards and racks. I didn’t mind the glasses so much, but I hoped that my collection of a dozen bottles of red wine hadn’t gone with them.

I was lucky. I lost a little crockery, no wine, and a little paint where the cabin top rubbed against a lockside oak post as it tipped. I could easily have sunk the boat.

I knew nothing about the locks on the Dutch waterways, other than that they are big, and that leisure boaters sometimes have to share with monster commercial barges filled with aggregate. The thought of several hundred tonnes of sand filled steel bouncing around a turbulent lock with little Julisa frightened me to death.

Friday was a frightening day of firsts; first trip through a Dutch lock, first cruise through Amsterdam’s harbour dodging blunt bowed, towering water taxis, first hesitant cruise on what amounts to an inland sea, first time getting lost trying to follow perplexing channel markings, and first time trying to work out what to do in the middle of an ocean with an overheating engine.

It was a very stressful day.

The first first, the lock, was a real anticlimax. We hovered near a motorway bridge spanning what we thought was the lock entrance, waiting for inspiration, then followed the skipper of a sea going cruiser who seemed to know what he was doing. He pulled into a channel with rope hand rails fitted to the three metre high walls to the left and the right of us. He held onto a rope. So did I. He calmly watched as an electric lock gate slid shut behind us. I jumped. He calmly watched as his thick pear shaped rubber bow fender protected his boat’s chrome as the lock water rose over moss covered brick. I winced as the same moss covered brick scraped off the paint where my bow fender should have been. I made a mental note to replace the one I lost weeks earlier on a choppy lake.

Other than that, the lock was a breeze. The front gate slid open and half a dozen cruisers surged forward towards Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is a busy city. Busy roads regularly cross the canal network. Every minute or two we had to negotiate another bridge, ever thankful that we decided to buy a sub 2.5m cruiser. Boats lower than 2.5m can fit under the majority of bridges on the main waterways. Sometimes we only make it by a cat’s whisker but, thanks to a clever device installed by Julisa’s previous owner, we always know whether the boat is going to fit. A spring mounted varnished wooden pole topped by a small wooden sphere is mounted on the boat’s pulpit rail. As we creep towards any suspiciously low bridges, we watch the wooden sphere with baited breath. It’s millimetres higher than the boat’s cockpit. If the sphere clears the bridge so will the boat.

The problem is that, from the cockpit, we’re looking upwards towards the sphere. We can have half a metre clearance, but still look as though we’re too high. During our first week or two on the waterways, we would edge painfully slowly towards each new bridge, ready to reverse quickly if the measuring device struck the bridge. Fortunately it didn’t. Eventually, for half a dozen bridges, I sat on the bow with my head level with the wooden assembly risking decapitation to check how much clearance we actually had.

An Amsterdam Mosque

On our passage through Amsterdam we were relatively confident, at least as far as the bridges were concerned. Our confidence plummeted when the canal spat us unceremoniously into Amsterdam harbour.

“Do we have to go this way!” Cynthia exclaimed, adding new half moon nail indentations to my already punctured forearm. I was thinking the same thing. Everything was so big. The harbour was enormous. So were many of the boats in it. Water taxis carrying a hundred or more passengers raced through the harbour pushing bow waves in front of them which threatened to swamp us. Heavily laden barges the length of a football pitch ploughed through the main channel, oblivious to the tiny leisure craft surrounding them. And cruise ships towered like skyscrapers from their waterside berths.

A cruise ship towers above us

This is thirteen deck, eighty nine thousand tonne Crystal Serenity, built in 2003 at a cost of $350 million. The red line you can see down the ship’s starboard side is a row of lifeboats. Each one was as big as Julisa. We felt very small.

We cruised through the harbour area as quickly as we could, trying to time stages so that we didn’t meet one of the dozens of huge water taxis which appeared to completely ignore anything in their way. One bore down on us so quickly from a blind spot on our starboard side that Cynthia, rather than telling me about it, simply lurched across the cockpit and pushed our Morse control against its stops. The taxi passed so close that I was sure I could smell the skipper’s breath.

Eventually we left the harbour behind and had half an hour to take a series of deep breaths to prepare ourselves for our next challenge; not one lock, but four of them side by side. All we had to do was work out which one to use.

The workings of this particular set of locks had already been explained to us, but in our emotionally drained and slightly stressed state – actually, I don’t know about Cynthia, but I certainly felt stressed – we couldn’t work out where to go or what to do. As usual, I opted for the mature approach, swore a bit, and suggested that Cynthia took over if she didn’t like what I was doing. Oddly enough, that didn’t seem to solve the problem.

After twiddling our thumbs for a while, performing a number of neatly executed but pointless circles, and bickering a little more, we followed a penis extension of a power boat down a channel marked ‘Sports’. This was obviously the channel for leisure craft. I don’t know why Cynthia didn’t think of it. She did actually, but I wouldn’t listen to her.

We breathed a deep sigh of relief when we exited yet another gentle lock, which was a bit early because the worst part of our journey was ahead of us.

We were on the vast Ijmeer, which merged after a few miles with the even more vast Markermeer, and then the really forbidding Ijsselmeer. The Ijsselmeer is half the size of Warwickshire in England, and nearly ten times the size of Liechtenstein. It’s a BIG body of water for a little boat.

The longer we cruised, the less we appeared to move and the more we realized just how much out of our depth we were, especially when I noticed a worrying dashboard trend.

After six years of dealing with my forty year old Mercedes raw water cooled engine on my narrowboat, I knew a thing or two about overheating engines. If I had a pound for every time I had to stop on the towpath to let the engine cool down before continuing I would have been able to buy myself a nice new reliable Beta Marine engine.

Pulling over on a forty feet wide placid canal is one thing. Trying to stop to let your engine cool down on an open body of water with the nearest smudge on the horizon is a completely different kettle of fish.

I was all for sticking my head firmly in the sand and carrying on regardless, despite the headwind combined with a current which was slowing our normal ten kilometres per hour cruising speed down to just under six.

“Why don’t we make for that island there?” asked Cynthia, pointing to a grass covered hump topped by what appeared to be a large concrete structure.

“Because it’s probably private. We can’t just stop on the first island we see!”

“I thought you said that those little red symbols indicate public moorings?” she asked pointing to a clearly visible red mark on the map in front of me. Cynthia’s better at map reading and directions than me. I’m beginning to suspect that she’s not really a woman.

She was right. The moorings were public, and there was plenty of space for us. Which was just as well as the thermometer was beginning to creep upwards again, as was the wave height.

We found shelter just in time, although the shelter wasn’t quite as sheltered as we would have liked it to be. We spent two nights on the island. The first was very interesting. The pier we were moored against only deflected some of the force of the waves which marched towards us all evening. On several occasions during the night, we were woken by the boat’s violent corkscrewing as we were almost flung from our tiny double bed.

Our tranquil haven from the storm

Tranquil until we were joined by a sailing school

The waves were just as forbidding the following day, so we stayed in the island harbour’s relative safety, watching a steady stream of yachts and coastal cruisers plough through the choppy water without a care in the world. We spent much of the day working out how far short we’d fall if we were to upgrade to a small category C coastal cruiser. Do you know anyone with a spare £80,000?

More rain moving towards our island mooring

Today was much calmer. We cruised for two hours through gentle swells to our current mooring at Almere Haven on Flevoland, an area of land reclaimed eighty years ago when the Zuiderzee, an inland sea within the Netherlands, was enclosed and reclaimed.

We’ve done nothing today other than eat and rest. Come to think of it, that’s a fairly typical day for us. Today’s eating was done in the harbour’s ‘Pancake Ship’, an ex second world war Red Cross hospital ship.

I think that we’re going to stay here tomorrow as well. Cynthia’s brother, Jeff, is over here on a three week holiday. She plans to see him before he flies back across the Atlantic. While she’s with him, I’m going to practice staying calm in stressful situations. This boating lark isn’t any good for my heart!

Cynthia Says…

And Now We Are Four…

The sky may be cloudy with the rain falling gently as I write this, but I can’t help feel the gods are shining down upon us this week.