Coast hopping Holland to Boulogne

[tedp]

During the past month my wife and I took our SO32 Manokwari from our home base in the IJsselmeer fresh water basin in the north of the Netherlands to Boulogne-sur-Mer and back. The weather has been very unsettled during the trip, which started with a falling barometer on June 28th. This announced the first of a string of depressions that would keep plaguing us:



This is us in Enkhuizen, only two hours from our home base, when the next rainy period struck:



Enkhuizen is an ancient seaport, now on a freshwater basin, but the ancient glory is still evident from the neat houses behind the harbour:



On the way to Amsterdam we were overtaken by this 1938-built motor yacht, the Piet Hein which was built as a present for the royal wedding which took place in that year.



The dirty weather is evident in this rain cloud coming up over the small marina at Durgerdam, on the eastern outskirts of Amsterdam:



More later.

[tedp]

With the wind stuck in the southwest and more filthy weather coming up, we decided to take the inside route through the canals to the south. This added two days to the trip, and caused endless waiting for bridges and locks. However, you're assured of a quiet passage without having to fight adverse conditions at sea.

Passing through Amsterdam and the ship canal as far as a side canal into Haarlem takes most of the day, and eventually we motored through the canal which circles a large 1840s polder. The 'Haarlemmermeer' was a huge expanse of water southwest of Amsterdam, which could only be pumped out using steam power as opposed to the windmills used previously. They built a string of pump houses along the canal, one of which, named Cruquius after a 17th Century canal engineer and cartographer, survives. A large central cylinder drives oscillating beams to pump cylinders outside the building. It is a museum now which I should visit soon:



On through the canal to my home town of Leiden - note the low-lying land to the right which is another polder. The canal effectively runs between two dykes - the water level is higher than the land to either side. In addition it is a secondary waterway:



This funny cottage carries the legend 'one side' and 'the other side':



After a night's rest in the rain in a quiet spot on a lake, we carried on to the provincial town of Gouda, passing numerous lifting bridges until we came to the huge railway bridge carrying the Utrecht-Rotterdam and Utrecht - The Hague main railway lines. The swing bridge on the right carries the branch to Alphen - the bridges are operated together, and only a few times each day:





Gouda is an ancient town with an historic centre. It lies on the northern extremity of tidal waters which was where we wanted to go. Here is an ornate relief on a gatehouse:



On the canal system is this old tower mill, built this tall to catch the wind above the town roofs:



The next day we passed into the tidal waters of the river delta between Dordrecht and Rotterdam.

[tedp]

At Krimpen, one of the riverside towns, this interpretation of Noah's Ark is moored - it was built by a businessman who welded together a few floating pontoons and built a wooden superstructure on to it. The things some people do...



The river bridge at Alblasserdam, just north of Dordrecht, has a fixed span set at a height suitable for most barge traffic, and a big lifting span to enable taller vessels and yachts to pass through:



There is a side channel of the Noord river near Zwijndrecht, which is famous for its breakers yards along the banks. A dozen years ago it was more interesting with a host of historic wrecks lying along the narrow fairway, but today it is less cluttered:



We paused for a few minutes at Dordrecht, to wait for the railway bridge to open. We tied up at a pontoon under the historic church tower:



At the end of the day we came into Willemstad, a fortified town on the junction of two former estuaries, which even in WW2 was used as a coastal defence fortress by the German forces. They built a few huge concrete gun emplacements to cover the approaches to the river system, which at the time was still open to the sea, but now has been dammed off. The town itself was badly damaged during the war, but much of it has been rebuilt into its former 17th Century state:



Willemstad still is a gateway to the estuaries, and next we locked through to the Oosterschelde (eastern Scheldt), which would take us out to sea.

Here we are motoring against the last of the flood outside the Oosterschelde barrier dam, in fine weather at last:



Then a northerly wind sprang up and I set the spinnaker which as usual was a struggle - it has a pull-down sock with attendant lines so it can be doused in a hurry, and there was a tiny swell which threw us about, putting all the lines in a tangle. But eventually:



The container vessel ahead is in the main fairway to Flushing and Antwerp. I had been planning to keep the 'spi' up during the crossing as I could just evade two ships in the fairway by altering to starboard, but I hadn't reckoned with the idiot skipper of a suction dredger who had been emptying his hoppers on the sandbank a mile away to starboard and insisted on bearing down on me on a collision course. So the sail had to come down in a hurry, leaving me in a huff. Anyway we carried on to Ostend under engine, and here we are in the packed yacht club basin:



The next afternoon on the tide, we departed to Dunkirk, in the face of uncertain weather. There were some thunderstorms out at sea, but their track on the rain radar suggested they would stay offshore:



However, there was one nasty thunder cell ahead that kept developing and came right across us as we were off Middelkerke. No photos, but we had lightning strikes about 1000 yards off ahead and behind us. I had removed the sails against sudden gusts and motored placidly into the rain until we came out in bright sunlight. An hour on, there was Nieuwpoort and following that, the Passe de Zuydcoote, which is on the Belgian-French border.

This is a zig-zag channel through the sands marked by buoys. This one had a crew:



Finally, Dunkirk came up with its industrial seafront and a dilapidated eastern mole:







We tied up at the yacht club, and just in time, because in a minute the foulest looking sky I ever saw bore down upon us. You can see our forehatch open, and before I could close it, up came a hot 30-knot gust that blew a cloud of grey sand from the shore all over and into the boat.



Moments later pelting rain came down.



Later that evening my laptop and all its electronic chart systems crashed, so I proved to be down to basic navigation again just like in the old days. After the rain had gone, we walked into town and saw the Duchesse Anne tied up (formerly the Großherzogin Elisabeth).



We took a days' rest after all the upheaval, during which I managed to download electronic charts to my iphone, which served me as a navigation reference for the rest of the journey.

[tedp]

After Dunkirk we continued to Gravelines, a short distance along the coast. Here you need to arrive an hour before high water because the entrance channel dries to a trickle. We have been there before, 30 years ago in our first plywood boat, a matchbox of 5.60 metres long. We found the place much changed - last time it was pretty primitive compared to now.

Here is the lifeboat shed and launching ramp at Grand Fort Philippe, in the approach channel to Gravelines:



The harbour is a tidal dock of which the lock doors close automatically at a certain state of the tide, about 2 hours after high water:





Gravelines is an old fortified town with walls and ramparts made in the 17th Century - there is a system of curtain walls and embankments to defeat flat trajectory artillery fire, and the walls are arranged in such a way that an attacker will come under fire if he wants to scale any place on the walls:



The walls are a good place to walk, and in certain areas we made surprising discoveries:



Across the basin two old fishing smacks were tied up:



Two days later we left Gravelines for Boulogne, on the top of the tide, passing the lighthouse and quay at Petit Fort Philippe (the town opposite Grand Fort Philippe):



There was beautiful weather and little wind once we passed Cap Blanc Nez, as the tide cancelled what little wind there was on our quarter. Here is Cap Blanc Nez (Blankenesse in Flemish), with the Les Quénocs buoy warning of the shoal behind:



A few miles down the coast is Cap Gris Nez, a very different aspect from the chalk cliffs of Blanc Nez:



Once round this promontory, evading the fish traps and their buoyed lines, Boulogne came in view.

[tedp]

The ancient city of Boulogne is built on the site of the Roman army camp built to support the invasion of Britain by Claudius in 43 AD. The inner city is laid out on the ground plan of a Roman stronghold - rectangular with two main thoroughfares cutting it into four districts. Here is the (I suspect) 12th or 13th Century gate - the relief of the ship shows a vessel from that era:



The castle erected in one corner of the city is probably 13th Century or later, with countless changes to adapt to the introduction of guns in the 15th Century. On the outside, the foundations were protected from gunfire by embankments
(not shown):





The courtyard shows evidence of 18th Century changes:



From the moat, the extremely ugly early 19th Century cathedral can be seen, which corresponds to no known architectural style.



Inside however, I found this:



The old Mairie is typical of a French town hall:



Finally, this house is of interest, with its inscription - it is a former veterans' home:



Back to the harbour, the yacht basin was packed with boats due to the inclement weather, most of them waiting to go south. Ours is the third one from the left behind the jetty:



The tidal difference is more than 4 metres, shown in these two photos, one with the tide out, the other with the tide in:





On the concrete platform elsewhere in the harbour area was a construction and repair yard for fishing boats. The mobile lift in the background can handle 350 tons:



Finally some views of the cavernous area under the concrete platform adjoining the yacht basin, at low tide:






More of Boulogne to follow, including a few photos of the beautiful Nausicaá sea aquarium, which includes a complete tropical coral reef.

[mikebz]

Great reports/pics Ted!  We visited Gravelines in June and really enjoyed it.

[tedp]

Thanks, Mike. By the way, I read your home port is Brightlingsea. We went there five years ago!

Boulogne has a most interesting sea aquarium, appropriately named Nausicaá, named after the mythological princess who finds Odysseus after he is washed up, half-drowned, on the shore of the isle of Scheria.

The aquarium is well worth a visit, although ours was at a very busy time with throngs of people and children inside. They have basins and tanks full of ocean life from temperate and tropical seas, including a huge coral reef basin and mangrove shallows.











We stayed in the tidal yacht basin. There is a dock basin at the other side of the Boulogne yacht club building, but the down side of that is the need to enter or leave a few hours either side of high water. Here is the yacht basin at low tide, showing the expanse of timber piles revealed as the tide is out.



And this is us, just before starting our return trip:



From there we went to Calais, of which the next instalment will tell more.

[tedp]

The next leg of the trip took us back along the coast to Calais and Nieuwpoort. From Boulogne we had a weak northwesterly wind across a strong tide setting into the Strait, which made excellent sailing conditions in relatively flat water, although there was a lazy swell which made me avoid the route in shallow water inside the Quénocs which would have taken us right under Cap Blanc Nez. Near Calais we hugged the coast to avoid the ferries, then contacted the port to be allowed inside. You have to tie up to a mooring buoy to await the bridge opening into the Bassin de l'Ouest. This is opposite a characteristic row of pantiled houses:



Later that evening we walked into town as the water was out, exposing the bottom of the fishermen's basin:



The next day, on a rising tide, we departed from Calais and crossed the Ridens de la Rade, a shoal stretching out in front of the harbour. Once clear of that, we set sail and turned east to Nieuwpoort:



Nieuwpoort is mainly a yachting and racing centre, but there is a fishing harbour which I don't think sees much use anymore. Here it is with most of the water out, a rather ugly industrial scene with a drainage channel in front. This contains the remains of an old sea lock suitable only for small craft, now nothing but a sluice carrying off excess water to the sea. It seems the Belgian army tried to use this to flood the low-lying land against the German advance in the early days of WW1 - the battle of the IJzer in the autumn of 1914.



Nieuwpoort was hard hit in WW1 - it was in the stationary IJzer front line between the German forces and the Belgians for a long time, and landmarks such as the belfry were first blown up by the Belgian army to rob the Germans of artillery reconaissance points, then the town was repeatedly shelled until this remained:



In the 1920s the town was largely rebuilt, but with modern materials - the rebuilt buildings look too sterile to the eye, although at first sight they are mediaeval. Here is the reconstructed main square:



The modern brickwork is painfully evident in the next image:



The belfry at Nieuwpoort was only rebuilt in the 1950s, to a very different design compared to the original one destroyed in 1914. This is a town which will forever bear the legacy of four terrible years.

[tedp]

Time now to conclude this short series.

From Nieuwpoort we continued to Blankenberge. The westerly wind was on the increase that day, and it brought a persistent five-foot swell that grew taller with each mile we made along the coast. I called the Zeebrugge traffic centre to inquire about conditions in the fairway at Blankenberge, which was reported to be silting up - not nice to enter in moderately rough conditions. They referred me to the dredgers at work in the fairway, shown below on the following day which brought fair weather for a change:



The dredger, contacted on Ch. 10, reported there was enough water in the channel even with this kind of a sea, provided I came in from the east, following the line of tiny green buoys seen in the distance. The entry channel was about 30 yards wide though, and we had to pass between the dredging apparatus with a vicious 5-foot cross sea. I just gunned the engine and hung on to the tiller to keep us on course, and after a few hairy moments we were inside.

The next day was sunny and quiet, enabling us to explore the town which is a typical seaside resort.



From Blankenberge we went on to Flushing, which has a cramped yacht basin. Here we were met with a nasty surprise. All round the yacht basin was a huge fairground with attendant flashing lights, loud music and screaming revellers:



The next morning we fled and locked into the canal to Middelburg and Veere. I regretfully had to drop off my other half near the railway station, because she had to go back to work, and I continued on my own. The canal is a short one, but you need to join a convoy which starts only a few times each day to pass all the bridges. Late in the afternoon I came to the small town of Veere, a former seaport with connections to the Scottish east coast - they imported wool and the ships returned with red pantiles as ballast. Now you know where the red pantiles of Scotland came from!



Veere is cramped, crowded and none to my taste, so I continued down the narrow waterway which formerly was part of the Oosterschelde estuary, but now is a salt water lake and very busy with pleasure craft. I looked for a place to spend the night at a marina called Oranjeplaat, when suddenly my engine locked up as I went slowly astern. There was something in the propeller, and in the end they pulled me into a berth using lines I threw to the jetty. I had expected the need for the boat to be lifted out, until a family arrived on the boat next to me. Their 14-year-old son proved to be an enthusiastic swimmer, who went under the stern armed with goggles and a sharp knife. This came out, piece by piece as he cut the tangle from the propeller and the rudder:



The young man did an excellent job, for which I gave him a handsome contribution to the new telephone he was saving up for. So the next day I could continue as planned, to Zierikzee on the Oosterschelde estuary, to await developments in the weather.

At Zierikzee I spent an extra day due to very inclement weather. As I came in, the wind was already hauling through into a force 6 and I had the devil of a job to get the sail off her as I was waiting for the lifting span in the miles-long road bridge across the estuary. I spent a night in a sheltered spot behind the tall sea wall, then another wild day ensued before I could carry on to Scheveningen and IJmuiden. You can just see the squat church tower peep over the edge, but note the filthy sky!



Of the days spent coast-hopping north I only have some video (shown in the video pages of the forum), and at IJmuiden I decided to call in my chips and lock into the ship canal taking me to Amsterdam harbour and beyond, to the placid little village of Durgerdam, exactly four weeks after I had been there last. The sky in the next photos says it all - nothing but turbulence up there. Here is a bulk carrier tied up in one of the Amsterdam docks:



Drilling rigs in for repairs at a dockyard:



On a formerly busy warehouse quay stands this war memorial for all the sailors of the once-mighty Nederland Line, who gave their lives during WW2, on the convoys or in the far East. The memorial now regrettably stands in no mans land, hemmed in by building fences, and the warehouses have been replaced by apartment buildings. Sic transit gloria...



In Durgerdam I spent a quiet day mainly reading, sheltered from a succession of showers relentlessly marching in from the southwest:



Finally, the next day I set sail for the last leg of the trip, into the teeth of a northwesterly 6-7, reefed down to bring me to Enkhuizen and beyond. There is some video from which this still was taken:



It was rather a rough ride, but somehow I managed to trim the boat so the autopilot could take care of most of the steering. I sheltered under the hood most of the way!

Thus ended our coastal cruise to Boulogne.

[rene460]

Hi Tedp,

Thank you for taking the trouble to post your wonderful pictures.  I assume that for you they are normal and in your back yard, but from here they show wonderful exotic places that we will never be fortunate enough to sail, at best we may experience a short tour after a long air trip.

Amazing buildings and amazing vessels you see on your cruise and your beautiful pictures are much appreciated.  Thank you

rene460

[tedp]

Aug 5, 2017 12:02:29 GMT rene460 said:

Hi Tedp,

Thank you for taking the trouble to post your wonderful pictures.  I assume that for you they are normal and in your back yard, but from here they show wonderful exotic places that we will never be fortunate enough to sail, at best we may experience a short tour after a long air trip.

Amazing buildings and amazing vessels you see on your cruise and your beautiful pictures are much appreciated.  Thank you

rene460

Glad you like the report - I see you're based in Victoria, Australia, I suppose I could say the same of your home waters! I remember the Bass Strait from a crossing in a cargo ship forty years ago, on a trip to Newcastle. The Melbourne area and nearby coast must be a wonderful cruising ground.

[iancymru]

Cheers Ted for your photos and tales, gives inspiration to go exploring further afield.

[rene460]

Hi Tedp,

Unfortunately the Victorian coast line is not so friendly and you probably remember that the Bass straight waters can be quite unfriendly.  The Victorian coast is mostly either rocky cliffs, the shipwreck coast, or wild ocean beaches.  Certainly the Bass straight Islands and Tasmania have some wonderful cool water cruising grounds.  Port Phillip Bay is great for racing around the cans, as hoppy is finding, but rather limited cruising destinations.

We are on the Gippsland Lakes, a wonderful safe cruising estuary system for small boats.  We normally day sail with plenty of delightful beaches to pull up at or jetty so to moor at for overnight, but a bar at the entrance, it's well dredged these days, but nothing else between refuge cove and Eden, some 200 miles each side of our entrance.

But if you ever find yourself down this way again, please yell out, you will be made most welcome.  And of course further north we have the wonderful Great Barrier Reef,  which is surely a great cruising ground.

rene460

[MalcolmP]

Ted



Many thanks indeed for this log and wonderful photos. I have not had good wifi for days, so great to catch up and travel with you down memory lane. We were based on the UK east coast for many years so our typical summer cruising ground was the west coast of the north sea. Spent a lot of happy days in the Ijsselmeer and the Delta



very best Malcolm

[tedp]

Thanks for your replies - I will be off again for the weekend, sailing a 15 metre barge with friends.

Malcolm - I suppose you know Dutch waters very well, so the photos may have been familiar to you.

Regarding the Bass Strait, I only saw it at night, from the wheelhouse of a 40,000 ton bulk carrier, in winter. But I remember at the time it was rough and there were strong tides. Even now as I write this the wave height forecast is 4 metres, with 6 out in the ocean, and just the inshore waters and the wind shade of the islands offering some shelter. Not funny in a yacht. However I suppose in summer it must be better.

The Gippsland Lakes look very nice though - I have seen a few photos. I'd love to sail my boat there, but it would take me years to get there

[rene460]

Hi Ted,

Its a long way to sail, and as you know a bigger boat might be more suitable for the journey.

However, it you take the silver bird, it's less than 24 hours, and we will take you sailing on the lakes.  Please give me some warning as it is 5000 km at the moment, and communication here is little better than two tin cans and a piece of string.

Autumn is the best time of year, (March, April, May)

rene460