Adventure Before Dementia: Adventure at last.

Anna, superb navigator and
master mariner extraordinaire.

At last we have broken free of the marina and felt our wings as we did what this lovely boat was designed to do.

For more than six weeks we have zig zagged between frantic work on the boat and retreating from the foul weather Holland has been dishing out day after day.

Everyone here keeps saying that this is the worst spring in living memory and believe me, that is no consolation to us, although we have actually enjoyed the whole process, even with the frustrations of bad weather.

The mad captain at the wheel.
He is happy, but with background anxiety!

We are finally motoring down the canal from our marina in Oostvoorne towards the river Maas with our hearts in our mouths, the lock at the end of the canal, huge, concrete, did we get the lights wrong? The lock keeper didn’t growl at us so we must be OK!

And then out into the Maas river, a huge commercial seaway with ships and gigantic barges (four barges rafted together being pushed by a tsunami creating machine that would make make wave world look like a duck pond) and lifting bridges the size of Auckland harbour bridge but the whole centre section lifts up to let huge ships pass underneath, and us!

See how this bridge on the Maas river lifts
to let ships through.
The Dutch are brilliant engineers.

We are constantly forced out to the side of the channel by the massive steamers thundering past and we wonder if there is enough water for us to motor through, but there is and we make it, time and time again, getting out of the way of these behemoths.

We pass factories, towns, windmills, nudists, holiday parks and couples kissing and old people sitting under beach umbrellas on the side of the river.

The river is 200 metres or more wide and the current is 2 or 3 knots against us but the sturdy ship Anasofia keeps chugging along heading south.

We have to go through that tiny gap once the
harbour master has raised the bridge.
Don't know if we'll fit but Anna says, "give it a go."

When we finally arrive at Dordrecht, our first night stop, and contact the marina here, the harbour master opens the old cast iron road bridge and lets us in to the most beautiful old town basin sitting right under the cathedral with it’s bells chiming jaunty tunes that we can’t quite recognise.

We walk through the old town with classic barges and steam powered tugs lining the quays and five story brick buildings with shuttered windows and pullys for lifting cargo from the quays.

The local residents are sitting out in the sun wherever they can. There is even one woman on her roof on a settee enjoying the sun at last.

You can see her on a couch up on the roof.
Good on you lady.

The temperature difference here, inland in Holland is remarkably different to Rotterdam and its north sea coastline. It is very similar to Wellington in the way that the wind just can’t stop blowing.

Anna has definitely got the job of navigator on this trip, she is fantastic with the charts and the bouyage system.
Good thing too, because I am colour blind and a red sign against a green background looks completely invisible to me.

Unfortunately most of the signs are red against green, so I am tough out of luck but she has a handle on every bouy and channel marker and is cross referencing them all back to our text book on the European canal system.

The boat has been a dream come true.
She seems to handle everything in her stride.

At one point Anna and I looked at each other and we both knew what we were thinking, that nobody else in the world had any idea what we were feeling at that moment.
A very private and special connection for only us to share. We were steaming down the Maars river in Holland alongside huge ships and barges in our own boat that we have worked so hard on, heading for the south of Holland and ultimately for France.

This is making dreams come true.

Get out there now and have the adventure. Don’t wait.

Get right out of your comfort zone and you may surprise yourself.

We certainly did today.