The Large and the Little

We've had a varied week cruising some interesting waterways. It started last Thursday when we passed through the sea lock at Wintam onto the tidal river Schelde.  The timing was important as we needed the rising tide to carry us up 3 hours cruising to Dendermonde where we could join the River Dender to head south again.

The Schelde is an important shipping waterway, connecting the port of Antwerp with Brussels, Gent, and a whole lot of other places. So, we needed our wits about us.

The lock keeper asked us to wait and follow 4 ships into the lock.  It's going to be crowded then.  Ha, this is quite some lock.  For a start it's 25m (81') wide which is wider than most UK locks are long.  And it's an incredible 250m (812') long.  You could easily fit 72 Kennet & Avon locks into this one - and that's most of 'em!

It felt roomy even with 4 ships each weighing 134 times more than Taddy's 28 tonnes. (OK Rob, put the calculator down)

The drop was about 10 metres but the rope work was made easy with those nice floating bollards that follow you down.  It's all high tech but we had an odd moment when we were nearly down and an official leaned over the top to take down all our details and check on our licence.  Much shouting ensued.

Onto the river with our bowman up front to ensure there wasn't a ship coming as we crossed the channel.  Yup, 2 going down and another 2 going up.  The only thing to do is to go right and merge in whilst looking for a (large) gap to execute a U-turn and go up river.  Fortunately we were early on the tide which wasn't fast yet.

The next couple of hours were peaceful, wide and delightful as we headed up at around 15km/hour (9mph, 8knots) thanks to the building tide.  That keeps us up with the big boys.  As we approached Dendermonde where we were locking back off the tide, a large French boat was gaining on us.  I broadcast a message saying I was turning to port and he repeated it back to me so my French was obviously improving!

Dendermonde lock was a mere 168m x 16m but we had it all to ourselves.  And the lock keeper leaned out of his window to recommend the best mooring spot.  This summed up the change of pace in joining the River Dender which has few commercial boats and not many (moving) pleasure boats.

We found the mooring just up the river on a pontoon festooned with teenage girls who the idiot Retriever quickly made friends with.  They made off once they discovered the amount of slobber involved.  A lovely rural mooring (and free too!) with a pleasant walk into the pretty town of Dendermonde.

Comments

  1. Alan and Rosie26 April 2019 at 22:13

    Sounds as though it got a bit hairy at first, but thank goodness your fluent French got it sorted. It would seem that you are now in a quiet and pretty spot (and for free). Well done all of you!

    ReplyDelete

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