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Customers at a local restaurant were
given Ducks to take home if they would
agree to email a picture from its new home |
July 18 - The landscape is beginning to change from low lying flat lands to tree covered hills. A stop in Hafen Oberwinter allowed us to do the 4 loads of laundry that had piled up and shoot through the grocery store that was conveniently directly across from the marina. The laundry was in high demand when we arrived so we patiently waited our turn. When the load before us was finished and no one came to claim it, I carefully placed it on top of the dryer and began our wash. Using washing machines when you can't read the instructions is always a challenge. This time it appeared that the wash would go on for 2.5 hours! Gez...at that rate we would need to seek citizenship just to get the laundry completed. As we were attempting to figure out what to do, the owner of the laundry on top of the dryer appeared....carrying more laundry. She was not pleased and let us know this in perfect German along with lots of pointing to the printed instructions taped to the wall, underlining the words with her fingers and then pointing to the 2.5 hours blazing at us on the machine....as if that would make us understand. OK. I screwed up. Fix? "Nien"! Profuse apologies were delivered along with offers of Euros to compensate her for her inability to add things to her wash for only a Euro....or at least that's what we gathered from her pantomime. She declined and finally smiled. All was right again with the world....or at least in the Oberwinter Haven. After she left, I spun the dials a bit and somehow reduced the wash time to a reasonable 60 minutes.....and she said it couldn't be done! HA! For once my "button pushing", that makes King crazy, paid off! We soon had laundry flying from all of the life-lines around Ostinato.
July 19 - The meeting of the Mosel and the Rhine in Koblenz is quite spectacular. A larger than life statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I riding a horse meets you at the corner of Mosel and Rhine. Here we crossed to the left bank and slipped into a small cove to tie up to a tiny yacht club that we would call home for the next few days. The charge...€1 per meter (length of boat), €2 for power per day. All on the honor system. Just put your money in an envelope before you depart. The marina was within a short stroll to the ferry which takes you across the river to Koblenz. After exploring Koblenz, it was decided that since we would not be going down the Mosel, we could rent a car. Oh goody, a car trip. At least we will be driving on the right side!
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| The view of Koblenz at night from Ostinato |
July 22 - Trier was our first destination to see the Porta Nigra. The blackened stone 2nd century city gate is one of Germany's
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| 12th Century Berg Eltz castle right out of Disney |
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| vineyards straight up the mt side |
many UNESCO World Heritage designated sights. All went well on the drive...a few u-turns but who's counting. We were entertained by the breath taking scenery of a gazillion grapevines covering the vertical mountainside. One could only dream of all the wine it would make. Parking was like finding hen's teeth but we were finally able to locate a parking garage close by. Brilliant! And after an afternoon of wandering around Trier, it was time to find our hotel. Back to rescue the car from the garage. Of course, it was 1700, that's 5 p.m. for non cruisers. The place was packed and a long line of cars snaked their way down the ramp. King butted his way into the line. We arrived at the exit and oops....no one to take our money. As with the laundry a few days ago there was lots of pointing and talking and shaking of heads. A nice lady, walking by on her way to her car, came to the rescue and after saying the obligatory "parking is not free", graciously walked Frank around the corner and up a flight of steps to pay. The amazing thing is that not one horn honked the entire time. The rest of the side trip was thankfully non eventful as we visited lovely little towns and a fairy tale castle that would be at home in Orlando.
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| Lighted signs tell when ships are coming near the Lorelei |
The following day Ostinato and Amusant cast off their lines at 0700. The good news was the river had dropped a foot and traffic was light. To put it mildly, the current was still wicked. A family of swans attempted to travel along with us as we arrived at the St. Goar, "Fun Marina", entrance. They labored hard to make headway up stream till mama finally gave up. As soon as they turned around they quickly shot down river and out of sight in seconds. We slid into the marina and gratefully took the only berth that we would fit in which was at the fuel docks. A great spot for the wide girl except the dock master's office roof had a bit of an overhang....which Ostinato's mast gave a little tap and left a small dimple as testimony to our visit. Once that was sorted out, the dock cleat that was to hold the bow took a nose dive into the water. No problem, the dock master quickly found another and screwed it in. We spent the next two days at St. Goar visiting the castle which over looked the marina and talking to the dock master who provided excellent information on the next leg. While there was a great feeling of relief once we arrived at St. Gore one look at our spread sheet, provided by friends who did this same passage in 2012, showed and I quote "the beginning of the worst". Yikes!
The legend of Lorelei Rock, where beautiful mermaid type beings lure you onto the rocks by singing their lovely songs, had me on edge. Not that I thought Pat or I would succumb to that but who knows about King and Frank. This is the narrowest part of the river we will transverse. Strong currents and underwater rocks add to the excitement. We decided to head up river by bus to see what all the excitement was about. From the top you have a great view of the Rhine traffic. This is the only part of the river that we have seen that actually has traffic lights to indicate where ships are in each part of the narrow passage. More excitement. Just what I needed. We spent a good hour watching ships come and go and matching it to the traffic lights. At least we know what we are getting into.
July 27 - St. Gore to Bingen - The Rhine Gorge is beautiful, full of castle and vineyards. There is no worry about missing anything because you are going so slow that you can take a shower and the view is almost the same when you’re done. We had delayed our departure for this trip thinking the spring floods would be over. We had not planned for the summer rains which put the Rhine 1 foot below Flood Stage 1! Our all time low speed was 0.4 knots. Even barges were getting tugs to pull them through this particular section so considering that the Rhine is still flooding, making the passage on our own was an accomplishment. My SV Angel Louise spreadsheet says "the worst is over". YEA!
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| Even big ships need a tow sometimes on the Rhine |
July 28 - 31 Wiesbaden, Stienheim, Mittenberg, Neustadt-Erlach....Ostinato's progress is greatly improved. We entered the Main on the 29th and passed through a total of 5 schleuses (locks) that day. While there is still current against us it is much lighter compared to the Rhine. To gain entrance into the schleuse we learned quickly that your best bet was to travel in
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| One of the smaller locks |
tandem with a large barge. Amusant and Ostinato could both fit in perfectly in most schleuses with 2 barges. Despite this strategy our longest wait for entrance was 5 hours - a combination bad timing and "technical" problems with the schleuse.
By the end of the first day we had fine tuned our process on snagging the bollards. King would drive Ostinato into the schleuse. I would snag the first bollard at the mid cleat. As water filled the lock and Ostinato rose, Frank would nab the next bollard and then I would do the next ...and on until we reached the top. Pat made sure the boat pole was always ready. Toward the end of the day, Frank was even beginning to get fancy with lassoing the top bollard without the assistance of the boat pole. Most of the time the water lowered or rose gently but some of the bigger schleuses tossed you around pretty good. We also did our best to stay as far back from the big ships as possible so we didn't get bounced around as they moved out of the schleuse. We spent our first night at anchor in a pretty little cove when we found we didn't fit in the marina. The next few nights we tied up to town quays, anchored or got permission to stay overnight at the lock. We have really enjoyed getting out of the marinas.
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| 3 man team on the locks |
August 8 – Wurzburg (Km252) 49.50N 10.12 E. After a bit of confusion on where we should tie up (we were actually being fought over by 2 harbour masters...a first!) We landed at the town quay instead of the yacht club. Much more convenient and the harbour master worked hard to accommodate us. We are a bit strange looking and, of course, not too many sailboats from the US
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| Paying homage to St. John of Nepomuk, patron saint of bridges |
come this way so we become an instant tourist destination. We need fuel but because of the 5 hour delay at the schleuse we will need to spend the weekend. No fuel after noon on Friday or the weekend so we will stay to Monday. Wurzburg is a beautiful city that was restored after being bombed in WWII. A must stop on the Viking River Cruises. King and I stopped in a wine shop to browse. The salesperson spoke perfect English with an accent that felt familiar. After chatting a bit, we commented on her excellent English. She shared she had gone to school in the US. Where....FSU....where her parents still live.
We are getting low on both water and fuel. The Mother Ship (Amusant) gave us water from her tanks but it won't last us long. Dirty laundry is threatening to take over the boat. The town quay is really meant for cruise ships so water is not easily available but when the Harbour Master said he would help us "take a drink" at the big boy faucet we couldn’t refuse. The force was so great that we may have gotten a quarter of a tank before it started overflowing from the back pressure. Still more than we had. We learn that the fuel barge that we planned to get fuel from only sells to the big ships so we must move on to find diesel. The next fuel was found at a tiny yacht club about an hour down river from Wurzburg. It was one of those, "I can't believe we are going in there" experiences. Pat, Frank and I were stationed at each corner of Ostinato calling off how many feet she had before there would be a collision. To add to the excitement, we began plowing mud while we were still 10 feet from the fuel dock. Amusant wisely remained in the river until we somehow finally floated close enough that I could leap off the boat and tie on to something. The next challenge was
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| Wuzburg has been beautifully restored after being leveled during WWII |
finding someone to give us fuel. The place was deserted, however, I had seen a head pop out as we were crawling in so off to make new friends. Boaters are always ready to help and these were no different. The fuel people were called and we were told they would arrive in a few hours. 15 minutes later there they were, ready to fill us up. The Mother Ship slid in next and in no time we were off again, completing 6 locks, even with the delayed start. Our stopping place would be a pretty little pond off the river. King hit a rock just off the entrance; this is when we learned that the Mother Ship uses water depth, not under the keel depth. Always a good thing to know. As we were cooking dinner, when an angry German fisherman knocked on the boat to tell us the anchorage was private and that we must leave…..now. While it is questionable that the area was private, and if it was his, we decided that staying was not in our best interest. We hauled anchor and moved Ostinato to a place wide enough to stay overnight in the river. Amusant was not asked to leave. The only thing we can figure is it was our American flag as Amusant has a Marshall Islands flag. As disturbing as the incident was, I must say that it was not the norm. We have been treated exceptionally well everywhere we have visited.
We are no longer seeing marinas that can accommodate anything but very small boats so the next few
nights we anchored, tied up with Amusant rafted to us, to an “at your own risk” dock and overnighted at Kriegenbrunn schleuse with the big boy barges. Remarkably, there was never a concern that we wouldn’t find a place. We are making 5-6 locks a day averaging 4-5 knots. The all time high of 7 schleuses in one day was accomplished by following barge Denise all day. Denise’s captain was kind enough to get the schleuse master’s OK for us to spend the night at Kriegenbrunn schleuse with them.
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| When there is only room for one, we raft |
At Bamberg (Km 384) we moved into the Main-Donau-Kanal, starting the Km count at 0 again. Here we began our assent to almost 1300ft above sea level. This included 11 locks going up, some as deep as 24.70 meters and a total of 5 locks, mercifully, going down, to Kelheim, the end of the man-made canal. At Schleuse Eiback (Km 73), we begin to see our first floating bollards. These have been heaven sent but just to make sure we don’t get too relaxed, most are on our port side. Ostinato’s steering is on starboard so not our favored side to enter the locks.
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| No floating bollards |
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| A hard days work going through these scheluses |
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| Location of the Nuremburg Trials |
August 7 Nuremburg Km 65.2 - Arrived early morning, tying up at MYC Nuremburg. Washing machines, showers, public transportation within walking distance. Everyone can finally get some clean clothes and take a nice long shower! We spent 2 days exploring the city that is famous for the trials of Nazi war criminals that came at the end of WWII, a sobering experience. The night before we were to depart, the bilge pump began running continuously. I was snug in my bunk when the noise woke me. Upon turning on the light, I discovered water was seeping up through the floor boards. Not a good thing. KIIIING! The next hour was spent working on the bilge pumps and mopping up the floor. We are sitting much lower in the water now (even lower than normal!) due to being in fresh vs salt water so we originally thought our intake valve was below water. We emptied some of the water from our tanks that we had added earlier in the evening to reduce our weight so when the water stopped pouring in we decided that we were ok till morning when a better assessment could be made. That lasted till 0300 when the bilge pumps started cranking again. Water was again back flowing into the boat. King pulled out the check valve he had just purchased in Lelystad and had it installed in 30 minutes. All quiet once again. Mop up the floor. Back to bed. King, note to self: order more check valves…..
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| Beching was a beautiful and off the beaten track |
We spent the next night on the town wall at Beching. No davits to tie onto, no problem, the town had a nice metal fence that worked quite well and, fortunately, no one seemed to mind. Towns like this are my favorite part of the trip. Tying on and taking a walk to discover what lies behind the ancient stone wall that encloses its inhabitants. Beching was a particularly nice stop; a walled city, with restaurants and music, without the millions of tourists that typically haunt these lovely places. Because Ostinato looks a bit strange, she attracts the curious. That gives us an opportunity to talk to locals a bit. Of course, King’s favorite part is they had great coffee ice cream.
Aug 10 – Saal 48.54 N 11.55 E. Today we arrived at the end of the Main-Donau Kanal and the end
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Joker kept us entertained on many nights.
The guys did a LOT of table talk! |
of time with our great crew Pat and Frank Hankins. We had perfect timing for all of the schleuse today. The longest wait was 15 minutes, most were ready for us as we arrived. The landscape is beginning to change again. The castles are back on the hillside. It’s been an adventure getting here. Tonight we have time for one last game of Joker. I have to admit the guys have had more than their share of wins.....but not all. Tomorrow we give Ostinato a scrub top to bottom, defrost the fridge and dig out the clean linens for new crew. But before Bill arrives, we have planned a little side trip to Prague for a few days. See you when we get back!
