Ladybird speed

You can almost see the ladybird circling around
preparing to land.

Traveling at the speed of a ladybird, which can land on you, take off, fly around then return to land again.

Overtaken by cyclists and joggers, this is the slow and mostly peaceful way to see Holland.

Misty early morning start on the canal.

Caught in the rear view mirror of life.
The tunnel of trees and Anna.

Long drawn out periods of slow contemplation punctuated by intense periods of activity when you reach a Sluis (or lock).

Driving in slow motion through a tunnel of green with a blue roof and silvery blue bottom.

The canopy of trees either side of the canal is usually a mix of oak and silver birch, backlit  yellow at the top, leading to dark green at the shaded part down on the raised river bank where yellow iris splash colour onto the waters edge.

There is very little noise in the canals other than birdsong. 

You can often see cars and trucks on roads, even motorways, in the distance hurtling towards their next destination, but you cannot hear them. 

It’s like watching a silent movie with quadraphonic, surround sound, birdsong.

In a tiny lock it is no problem to smile
while you are holding the ropes.

But this is what a large lock looks like on the way in,
and you are not smiling at this moment.

The locks can be a bit overwhelming especially the really large ones with tall slimy black walls and you are six or more metres down at the bottom with your lines around a small bollard set into the lock wall and the water comes racing in and you have to hold on tight to stop your boat slewing around and hitting the boats in front and behind you. 

And all of a sudden your rope is about to go under water unless you take it off the bollard and move it up a metre to the next one, without letting the boat go.

This is very tricky and I dropped my rope off the next bollard and the boat slewed out into the lock so I grabbed our cheap and nasty boathook and managed to hold on until I could get another line on.

We were jammed into a really large lock with two other launches and a huge barge whose prop wash was like the outflow from a power dam. 

And then there was the “mad Dutchman,” wearing what Americans call a “beater,” a white sleeveless vest, who came to take our bow line when we came into a small stopover place for the night.

The maneuvering was very tight for our long boat and for some crazy reason he tied our bow line to a pole at the entrance to where I needed to go.

Well you ain’t goin nowhere, when the front of your boat is tied to a post.

Fortunately, I had recently finished off a lovely cold bottle of Grolsch lager, it was 7.30, so I was pretty chilled and just let him rant away in Dutch until Anna could get off the boat and take the line to the end of the berth so we could move in.

He went back onto his boat but kept making huge hand gestures about something and panicked every time a barge went by and the surge from it’s wash came into the layby. 

We ended up with a small scrape in the paint on our bow.

All good challenging stuff and Anna said that as a result of this learning experience, she feels “empowered”.

So do I. 

Tied to a little wharf in the middle of nowhere for the night.
Very liberating.

It is important to put ourselves into challenging and rewarding situations otherwise we just go quietly stale, like a good head of garlic that gets forgotten in the corner of the pantry.

All that potential, wasted. 

So here we are, arrived at last in Roermond, south Holland, just a days easy sailing to Maastricht and the Belgium border and we have hauled out of the water after just 15 days, which must be something of a record for Holland.

Kiwis can fly.
But after only 15 days in the water
they thought we were crazy
to be hauling out again.

Today started in a solitary kind of way. We were the only boat on the Kanaal Wessem Nederweert between Nederweert, where we spent the night and Wessem where we re-joined the Maas river, until we reached the gigantic lock at Panheel.

We saw a barge called Emmanual, with an Australian flag and gave them a yell, they had just been through the lock and gave us an insight as to how scary it would be.

The lock dropped us about 15 metres and we only had one attachment point to rope on to as it descended.

We had to think really fast once we were in the lock and instead of our normal technique of Anna on the bow line up front and me on the stern line, we both converged simultaneously to the centre of the boat and worked both our lines from the same point.

This was brilliant and that is how we will approach locks from now on. Good way to learn, on the fly!

About to run down a bunch of geese,
which started loudly honking at us.

The beauty and tranquility of the Dutch countryside
is breathtaking.

We eventually made it to Roermond and found the marina that the boat will spend the next  12 months in and motored into the lift-out area.

The people here are very friendly and easy going, it feels like home to us already.

Anasofia was lifted out of the water and set into a cradle on the hardstand and that part of our adventure came to an end.

The sun setting over Roermond,
but not over our adventure.

Sitting on our aft deck with a glass of
French champagne at ten o'clock at night and it is
still light enough to read by.

But the next part is ready and waiting........... Through Belgium and down into France.

Can we do it?

You bet!