Next morning, I got on the bike and cycled off looking for a boat mechanic. The evening before, in a pub, a barman told me where to find one. Two hours later the throttle is fixed and, just as important, I understand how it works now.
We set off, heading east again, back to Woerden, where we turned north just before the town. We’re now crossing a very rural part of the country, with the occasional windmill to be seen. These things are truly everywhere in Holland. Some actually turning, possibly pumping water from the drainage systems into the canals, which are sometimes a couple of feet higher then than land around.
It’s a long way around to get to Utrecht and we started late, so we’re eating on the way. We reached a lock chamber at Kollenburg near the town of Woerdense Verlaat and had some difficulty entering as the entrance was awkward and there was a strong side wind. A lot of pushing back and forth on the throttle. When we finally got through, there was a very tight bend. The only way to stop a boat, is reverse thrust on the throttle.
Guess what?
Throttle gone again!!
No brakes.
Usually it’s the boat I’d be concerned about when hitting the bank, but in this case it was the bank. Peoples‘ garden fences were the canal bank! And their small boats moored outside!
Using poles and ropes we managed to manoeuvre into a safe position without breaking anything.
Tools out again, this time I know what’s wrong. There’s an electrical switch on the throttle which just wasn’t quite connecting properly. It just needed some more adjusting.
Anyway, off again, the day is getting on and we’ve aways to go to get to Utrecht. We could have stopped somewhere along the way, but wanted somewhere lively for the night.
The lifting bridges close at 8pm and we just about scrape through. Now it’s only 1km to the Rijnkanaal where we cross over directly to another link canal and into the river Vecht.
Crossing the Rijnkanaal is a bit like running across a busy road. Large cargo ships constantly going up and down. They also stir up the water as the wash flows heavily back and forth against the bank.
So off we dash. We can see the entrance on the far side. It looks a bit narrow, but we think we’ll make it and we’re now committed anyway. As we get closer, it really looks narrow, but we will fit. So we keep going trying to control the boat between the wind and the choppy water.
Well, it is a barge, so we barged our way in bashing off the stone walls as we did.
Once in we quickly realised this canal was very narrow and not too deep either. I managed to jump off to the bank with ropes to tie off to a tree, while we figure out what to do.
As I held the rope around a tree, I suddenly found the boat being pulled back towards the entrance to the canal, so tried to tie hard, but I had to let go some slack. Next thing the boat is being pushed the other way. The ships going past on the big waterway were sucking the water out of the channel and after they’d pass it would wash back in again, pushing the boat forward. We couldn’t go any further is as there was a bridge that was now closed.
A local man, who had been fishing with his small son as we came in, was watching all this. He approached us and kindly suggested, we were in the wrong place and probably should go back out, go south for 20 minutes to another entrance to the Vecht. Problem is, its now after 8.30. We have to manoeuvre back out of the narrow canal, onto, what could be described as a motorway with heavy traffic.
With the help of this good Samaritan, pulling ropes in different directions, trying to deal with the pressure of the water being sucked out of this small pretty channel by the passing ships, we somehow managed to reverse out. We’ve now only about 45minutes of daylight left. Any traffic on this canal already have their navigation lights on.
Ours are not working!!
20 minutes turned out to be 35 minutes. Fortunately when we reached the link canal we needed, there was no big traffic to block our turn in.