2007 September From Dunkerque to Newhaven

Friday 21 September 2007

We were finally able to leave Dunkerque on Friday, and made our way through the canals to Calais. It took all day, and unfortunately we arrived at 8pm, just as the Calais lock-keeper was leaving for his dinner! Not wanting to intrude on his evening meal, we moored up by the canal-side on the wrong side of the lock at Les Attaques, and the lock-keeper promised us faithfully that he would be back by 8am to let us through.

Saturday 22nd September 2007

He was only a bit late.

So there we were on Saturday morning, eager to take advantage of our weather window - strong winds were forecast for Sunday, but Saturday was glorious. Blue skies, no wind, calm seas - perfect for three experienced boaters, but unpracticed bargers to begin our maiden voyage across open sea. We motored on to Calais Port. David got on the VHF and spoke to the cheery French harbourmasters, who said that we were clear to exit the port, and that we should follow the two ferries ahead of us. This experience was more than a little scary as the ferries were enormous and unpredictable. This seemed like a good time to enhance the fun by dropping the mast, and then rehoisting it when we decided that mast-up would be good for stability. The learning curve was as steep as the waves coming off the stern of the P and O ferry in front.

Being out at sea was wonderful. The day was calm and gentle, and the motion of the barge was soothing - at least it was for some of us - Alex became a little peaky. The sun was beaming down, and some crew members began to shirk on their chores.

Dover was only 20 miles away, and very quickly we caught sight of the white cliffs. We crossed the shipping lines (some of the busiest in Europe) without much ado, and imagined the Dover Coastguard watching us on his radar screen, as we turned at 90 degrees to the shipping highway, and scurried across it like a hedgehog.

Our destination was so close, and yet so far. Day turned to night, and suddenly, in contrast to our lazy sunny day, we began to worry about navigation lights and lobster pots. This was particularly pertinanent as we approached Eastbourne at 1am (to fill up with fuel, and catch a couple of hours shut-eye). The Harbourmaster told us thier facilities were 24h, and that we could moor up in the sealock for a while if we wanted, but look out for the lobster pots because there are a lot of them around the harbour approach and they're not lit. Neither, as it turned out, were some of the buoys. Motoring over a lobster pot, and hearing the propellor grind to a halt, and knowing that there was no way we'd be able to unravel the rope caught up in it, and realising that if this happened we'd be stranded floating in the blackness of the sea in the middle of the night with strong winds and high waves just around the corner - these were the unsaid worryings of the brave crew of Jacob. But despite a few close calls, and with a lot of Alex waving a torch about at the waves, we berthed safely at Royal Sovereign marina, refuelled, and went to sleep.

Sunday 23rd September 2007

Three hours later, all but the laziest member of the crew were up and about, and putting Jacob to sea once again for the final hop, skip and a jump down the coast to Newhaven. Kate got up at 6am, in time to see the sun come up over Beachy Head. We passed the Seven Sisters and counted eight, and arrived two hours early at the Port of Newhaven. The wind was beginning to get up, and the sea was getting choppier. We called the Harbourmaster on the VHF, and told him that we were a flat-bottomed boat, that the waves were getting bigger and knocking us around, and could we please enter the port, tie up temporarily and wait to be let through the bridge to our new mooring? He said no. The waves got bigger. We did it anyway.

There was a seagull perched on a rather delapidated sign, reading "Welcome to Newhaven". The Port Authority told us to moor alongside the jetty by the swing bridge, but the jetty sported a sign saying "Keep Clear - minimum distance 12m". It was suitably confusing, and we were tired, and cold, but eventually the bridge opened, and we officially arrived.

And a full English breakfast does wonders for the tired and cold.

2007 September First Journey - Workum (NL) to Dunkerque

Log of the journey between Workum, the Netherlands and Newhaven, the UK.We started this journey after taking over De Jonge Jacob from his previous owners. After finding this beautiful boat that was also ideal to live aboard, we now only had to move it to its new home the UK. One of the main worries we had about this journey was the limited amount of time we had: this was a new boat that we had never sailed before - what's more, none of us had any experience with flat-bottomed boats either. We did not want to cross the channel in bad weather because we didn't know how this boat would fare on the open sea - after all, it's an inland water boat. However, by the time we started the trip it was the 8th of September. The weather would slowly become more instable and we only had until the 25th to get across the channel. In the end we managed alright and pretty much everything went smoothly...

Saturday 8th of September 2007
We finally left Workum (or, more precisely, the Workumer Jachthaven, where De Jonge Jacob had been taken out of the water for a repainting of the hull), only to be delayed about 200 meters by a railway bridge - for 3/4 of an hour... We were taking it slowly that day, but found that the boat was handling fine. After about 6 hours of motoring we moored in Groote Brekken on a mooring station, in a force 5 wind. The night would prove to be quite rough, but definitely cozy. This first day we had traveled a phenomenal 28.8km! But at least we were starting to feel comfortable with our boat.

Sunday 9th of September 2007We set off at roughly 9:20 to go further south. Pretty much our first obstacle was our first lock - the Lemmer lock. Even though we were quite nervous we passed it without troubles. After this we proceeded further south, past Urk, through the Ketelbrug and the Rogebotsluis to Elburg, where we arrived at 17:30. Elburg was a pretty little town that has a potential free mooring if you leave early the next morning. Furthermore, Elburg was the hometown of the shipbroker that negotiated our purchase! We traveled 60.7km that day.

Monday 10th of September 2007
After leaving Elburg in gray weather at 8:20, we moved on to Hardewijk. Here, we moored in a small lagoon (with lots of mud kicked off the river floor as we went in, suggesting that it wasn't very deep!) , sheltering from the bad weather for a while. After a nice breakfast we moved on past the Nijkersluis at 14:30. After the wind increases to force 6 we decide to stop in Almere Jachthaven, where we add some water and fuel. Almere is a quiet and modern city that lacks character, but boasts a good Greek restaurant with Veggie options.


Tuesday 11th of September 2007
We get to Muiden early in the morning and take a break at 11:47 after passing through the Lock. Muiden has some amazing boats - including 3 masted tjalks and a caravel... In the afternoon we travel on to Vrouwenakker where we were unable to continue due to the bridge not opening. We moored up on the riverside after travelling 48km.


Wednesday 12th of September 2007
We tried leaving early (8:00), but alas! Destiny was not with us and we were stuck at the bridge 'til 9:10! We finally continued our journey and passed through two tiny bridge openings (not wanting to wait for the bridges to open) - they were roughly 2.5m high and 4.5m wide! Luckily our boat, with mast down, is only 2.35m high (we made veeeery sure we knew how high it was before going through these two...), and about 3.5m wide. In the end we traveled 77 km that day and moored up for the night in Streijensaas, past the Julianasluis en Dordrecht.

Thursday 13th of September 2007
Getting more and more used to the rhythm of boat life, we left Streijensas at 7:15 and travelled down to Vlissingen. Our hope was to get across the shipping lanes past Vlissingen to Breskens, but we weren't sure whether we'd make it. We arrived in Vlissingen at 20:00, after having to pass through 5 lifting bridges in short succession. We decided that Breskens would be better and erected the mast whilst approaching the sea lock (which shows how wonderfully constructed the boat is!). We crossed the shipping lanes in the dark, with strong tides pushing us inwards, and wash from big container boats shaking us up. It was quite a scary experience!
We finally arrived in Breskens at 21:00, where we changed our log to nautical miles. That day we traveled 98km, bringing us up to a total of 369km for the whole trip - that's 199nm.

Friday 14th of September 2007
We left Breskens at 10:34 after buying - now that we were going to travel along the coast as opposed to on rivers - a liferaft and some flares. Nonetheless, after travelling for an hour we found that the wind, blowing at force 4 into us with the help of some tide, was slowing us down to about 3k/h. We decided to go back to Breskens. At 12:30 we moored for that day - we traveled a grand total of 8nm (without making any distance for our journey...).

Saturday 15th of September 2007
Determined to make up for the time lost the previous day, we left at 7:05. The weather was looking a lot better that day, only blowing a force 3 in a clear sky. We traveled quickly for roughly 5 and a half hours after which we had to change our course slightly. We then traveled at 6.7k/h until the tide changed at 14:00. We approached Dunkerque doing 3.5k/h. Deciding that there was no point in going on to Calais against the tide we stopped in Dunkerque in the Port du Grand Large at 16:50. That day we traveled 63nm.

Sunday 16th of September
Our plan was to travel via the inland water canal to Calais in order to avoid the rough weather along the coast. We were also hoping to pick up a visitor along the way. An ambitious plan that proved to fail from the outset... After missing the lock opening leading into the inner harbors of Dunkerque at 10:20 (because of incorrect signposts and unhelpful people/malfunctioning VHF transmitters), we picked up our visitor...in our mooring at the Port du Grand Large. We finally moved beyond the lock at 15:15 and tied ended up just outside Dunkerque next to the ecluse de jeu de mail at about 17:00.

After traveling for 8 days non-stop and traveling over 250nm in total, we found ourselves stranded in Dunkerque for a week. One of the crew members had to return home for a week and travelled back with our visitor. Both Kate and me were sad at first about having to stop in Dunkerque, a stone-throw away from our destination, Newhaven (on the map at least). In the end we learned to love Dunkerque and appreciate its quirkiness (a kind of very industrialised quirkiness...).

We would travel on that Friday, the 21st of September, which will be documented in our next post.