Off we went, fairly uneventfully on the whole at first. Though the man's attempts at pronouncing the names of the bridges on the vhf provided a certain degree of astonishment and levity. The first bridge he called started speaking to us in English spontaneously. X clarified that we didn't speak Dutch, and they went on from there. After that bridge I lovingly pointed out that the lockmaster had already started speaking in English, likely recognizing that we weren't Dutch from the butchery of the bridges name....
On into Amsterdam, but not before tanking up on some diesel from a marina who maintained that he didn't have any water. (!!!?!?!?????!?!) We were very low on water and didn't really need the diesel, but whatever. He told us of another marina that had water but no diesel. Ok. Off we go. Just before the lock we have to go into we see a hose at the end of a dock at a marina/club/not sure. We stopped, I wander off in search of someone to consult re the water.... Not a soul. So we stole it. I'm sorry, but it was there, we needed it. You usually get charged 50cents for 100 litres, and there was no one to ask or pay.
We cut and ran into the lock. And on into Amsterdam proper. Out air height is 2m35cm. The lowest bridge was nominally 2.44, but we had found in our travels that water levels are not fixed (duh) so some 2.5 bridges were rather less. There were a lot of very very close bridges in Amsterdam, something like 15 of them, and for each and every one X had to go on deck and determine if we could get under it without ripping the mast off the deck. The closest one we cleared by 4cm. As an added joy we had a good stiff tail wind so stopping if he thought we couldn't make it would have been fun. We were relieved to be out unscathed at the end.
The Noordzeekanal was super busy and kind of rough, but fine. We've been through New Yrok City and Miami,, and the Kiel canal, well, we've done busy before but it was still a relief to get into the NordHolland Kanal which was much quieter. Except, the place marked on this years chart as a place to stop? Yeah, it wasn't. On we went to the next town. It had 7 official places to stop, the first had no signs and was a little decrepit. The next 2 didn't exist. The third was one boat length long, in front of a restaurant and beside a busy road. The fourth was filled with barges who shouldn't have been there. Through the lock and under some only just tall enough bridges (not in that order). The fifth was a paid slip, the sixth didn't exist and we're in the seventh which has some weird signs we cannot understand but no one's kicked us off and it feels like the town has removed all the listed free spots so you stay in one of their many paid slips. That feels like a scam and I don't like that feeling.
We're going on tomorrow. We'd thought we'd stay, but not on those terms. A Bronx cheer to you Pumerend.
Oh, but the best. As we're coming up to that last lock here in town, X has to radio for them to open the lock and he made the most awesome hash of the name. I swear to god, it sounded like he was having a stroke. Shloootshloos, shlootshloos, shootshloos, this is.... Etc. I'm sure the lock keeper could hear me laughing while he was on the radio. Maybe you had to be there, but we were staggering around laughing about it while we went through the very slow lock.
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