Lovely sunny weather all the way down the  River Lek and Amsterdam Ring Canal to Tiel and a lovely friendly marina for the night.

Just getting my horse fix - side of River Lek

Is this lock long enough for us?

Pendulum ferry - bizarre it just swings off the anchored boats.

5 ships and us in this lock.

The rivers are very high this year so no worries about depth but very strong flows.

Entrance to St Andries lock.

House boat refurb and then slid sideways back in.

   Next day into the fast flowing Waal which moved us along at a vast rate of knots and then spat us out into the St. Andries  canal.  Through another mega lock, during which a small German boat carrying their mast on deck, crunched the mast with a horrible noise.  They reversed out rapidly to check damage; we never saw them again.  I am so so glad we didn't try to bring our mast on deck - just asking for trouble with it hanging over; it's difficult enough at times with he flow and turbulence from having to moor so close to the big ship inside the locks.

I just love my ladders in the locks - I can work the rope  up or down as we rise/sink.

Felt weird being lifted to top of lock gate (Maas)

 Then a left turn into the Maas/Meuse (depending which country you are in).  Lovely river, a few large locks again and saw our first British boat going in the opposite direction.
   Moored for the night on some old moorings in a lake off the river, but by a pub, so all good.

lots of coots cootling about near our mooring

A baby coot being cute as babies are.

Carole's Interesting Facts

No 1:
  It's not a myth; Holland really really IS very, very, flat.

No 2:
   The river Vetch is classed as the prettiest River in Holland.

No. 3:
   The left bank of a river is always the left side when going down river.  So going up river the left bank is actually on your right.

No 4:
  In a battle between testicles and winches; the winches will win.  (ask Dave).

   More to come later.

Muiden to Vianen

A couple of contrasting days recently.  We motored up the Vetch river from Muiden in fabulous sunshine.  What a lovely river, winding past stunning riverside houses, river boats and quaint villages. We stopped at Loenen overnight.

Carrying on up the Vetch the next day nearly as far as Utrecht before joining the Amsterdam Ring Canal - huge ships and even bigger locks and wet and windy weather.  We stopped alongside a fuel ship at Utrecht to refuel. Seem to be using about 2.5LTS/hour which is pretty good.

After Utrecht we headed for the Princess Beatrix Lock - just enormous. Then off to Vianen for an early stop in the rain.  Off up the River Lek tomorrow, against the flow which will be a bit of a drudge  for a while.

Do we fit?

Just fit - heads down!

Nice des res - think Bob needs this one with ready boat for Jan

Loenen stop overnight - off on bike  for look round

Big

bigger

biggest!

This sluice gave Dave something to think about.

Through - phew!

Into the canals and then back out!

We set off from Stavoren on 1/7/16 on what should have been a day for a cracking sail, 20knts of wind on a reach across the Ijsselmeer , shame we had no mast, no sails and what is a good day for a sailing boat is a rubbish day for a motor boat - lesson 1!













 After a 'man overboard' practice for a blown off instrument cover we headed back into the canal system and headed north - wrong direction, to Sloten, the oldest town in Friesland, very quaint.














 The following day we headed nearly south to Lemmer - talk about a test of boat handling, it was chaos in the inner harbour. followed by a night in a German bar watching Germany beat Italy - followed by a sleepless night as the fans celebrated most of the night. Lesson 2 never try drinking with Germans - it ends badly.

The lovely Fresian horses

The Dutch have a tradition of swinging a clog out to your boat to collect a lock fee

Busy Lemmer

Old boats still used regularly

Note the people walking to the right of the sculpture for scale.

Sunday - Finally headed south for real and crossed Ijsselmeer and Markermeer to Muiden - another ancient town and also a landmark as tomorrow we enter the river and canal system for real.

30th June 2016

Wednesday 30/6/16

Arrived at boat yesterday after good nights stop in Amsterdam.  All jobs done (boat looking rather strange without its mast) and bills paid.  So off south tomorrow, planning to stop in Edam tomorrow night.  Boat stocked up after a visit, in the rain, to my favourite Co-op.

Final bill!

Mast down, wrapped and ready to be transported down to Port Napolean 

Very strange to have no mast

Umbrella needed. Tell me again why we're heading south!!

  

Fat Boat to the Med

The new boat. Half Moon, is now in Stavoren, Freisland, waiting for us to fly out on Tuesday, 28/6/16, to start our trip south to the Med. This new adventure will take us through the Netherlands, Belgium and France, then into the Med.

Half Moon is a Beneteau 36 CC, built for comfort, hence the fat in the title, and long term live-aboarding.


She's had her mast removed by the boat yard and hopefully a whole lot of other jobs have been done ready for us to jump on board and set off.

We shall see; plans and boats are not usually happy bedfellows, but whatever happens, it's the start of a new adventure for us.

The Route!

It's a bloody long way.

New York to Witherslack

How we felt - sad to see the end of the trip.

Have to admit that when we set off I couldn't see so far into the future to really get my head round the coming back bit - it seemed too far away.

But here we are getting on the plane at JFK heading back to the UK. Sadly there was no trauma, nothing out of the ordinary, everything worked and was on time.

Return to Oxenholme

Closing thoughts about our world trip, what earth shattering observations can I think of?

Well......

Melbourne has the best coffee in the world - they invented the flat white after all.
The best steaks and sushi are defintely in America.
The most exciting and interesting country to visit was, for us, Vietnam (and the cheapest by a long way!)
Of the cities we visited, if we had to live in one of them it would be Sydney, they've got the best combination of town, countryside and coast anywhere.
India - I don't think we saw the best of India, what we did see was tough, sometimes ugly, sometimes stunningly beutiful, but always interesting, well worth the effort (South of India next time?)
Singapore -  a shoppers paradise or hell depending on your point of view but fascinating and dedicated to taking money off you in the nicest of possible ways.
New Zealand is possibly the pleasantest, most "English" country we visited.
The Uk has the best beer (but some of the colonies(!) are catching up) and the BBC news program is  undoubtably the best in the world.

As far as the people; we really only ever met nice people; friendly, helpful, only too willing to show off their country, tell us good places to go and things to do.  We often went into bars, ordered whatever the local beer was and then chatted to the locals to find out where to go next.  This is not to say we didn't meet some really weird or dodgy people but none was a real probem.

It was great not to have fixed plans, our only deadlines were flight times, everything in between was flexible.  Can't recommend this approach enough.

We had planned to backpack around the world but the shoulder injury changed that as I struggle to carry a rucksack, consequently we became 4 star back packers (flashpackers?) with our heavy duty wheeled packs.  To be honest we had a better time and whilst it cost a bit more, the difference between OK and good accommodation was not usually that much. And we've obviously got soft in our old age!

As far as cost, it was more than I hoped but less than I feared, so can't complain. If anybody wants to go - try roundtheworldflights.com - they were cheap and really helpful. Best advice though is don't plan too much - it only increases stress.

The future holds an opeation for me and then the summer here sorting out our house and a list of jobs, together with us earning some money for the next trip!

We have got an invite to sail in a police competition in Hong Kong at the back end of the year so that's a trip worth looking forward to! Maybe we can squeeze in a few days in SE Asia  - as we're passing....

So far this blog has been viewed 1,959 times -this has amazed me but I hope you all enjoyed it.

Best Regards

Dave and Carole