As I write this, we are tied up to the side of the canal in a tiny village named Aldeboarn. The fact that we got here was an interesting international story, actually. (Let the adventure begin.)
Let’s start back a week ago when we first heard of the “Turf Route“…
We have a book about 50 great cruising routes in the Netherlands, but the Turf Route is not on it. If you search for the Turf Route, what you discover is this:
A network of waterways was under construction in the 16th century where turf skippers transported cargo to the west part of the country.
The Turf Route travels over these ancient waterways.
It goes through 4 national parks.
The route’s name refers to the past of men of position, turf bosses and poor turf diggers. The turf trade made some of the major Frisian families quite rich. Their legacy, country estates with beautiful gardens and parks, can be seen at places like Bakkeveen, Oldeberkoop, Beetsterzwaag and Oranjewoud.
The Turf Route is recommended for “experienced” cruisers (I suspect they mean people who know how to stop their boat, tie up to the waiting area, and not hit things).
We left Grou this morning and went through Akkrum (which has small canals going through raising bridges). After the 2nd bridge, as I was taking a picture of a cute wooden skiff on the side of the canal, there was a “clunk clunk” noise, and David said, “the prop just fell off, we don’t have any forward or reverse.” We were in the middle of a crossing without any propulsion other than the bow thruster. David was able to thrust us (and we drifted) over to a private dock, at which point we realized we could push the boat up towards the waiting area and grab one of the bollards from the bow. Once we were one line on, we walked the boat forward down the bollards until we were tied onto the waiting area, then turned the engine off and had to think about what to do.
The view from where we were stuck was great. This is the intersection where the clunk happened.
The bridgekeeper was talking to us across the canal, at which point we explained the situation, and he gave us his personal phone number and said to call in 3 minutes. The second time I called him, it was to inquire about a diver, because by then we assumed the prop had fallen off and was in the middle of the canal, and we were going to be rescued by our boat yard owner sometime later today or tomorrow morning. That was when he told me that he’d met us before 5 years ago when he was the harbormaster in Grou (that was obviously not us)… and then he told the neighbors across the canal from us what was going on, and the neighbors on our side (Klaus and Linda) and the 2 guys on the other side (Andres and Jan) decided they must come to our rescue. And rescue they did!
5 Star Review for the People of Akkrum (or at least our 4 friends)
Klaus and Andres rowed over to our boat. They determined the prop was absolutely on there, and then heads down into the engine and saw bolts and nuts laying down around the shaft. The guy that installed the engine had not installed the bolts/nuts with nylocks, washers, or anything to lock them onto there, so they vibrated off, and ultimately our shaft and clutch were disengaged from each other. For 45 minutes, the three guys worked on the engine and voila – they pieced it back together. After a beer, and an exchange of a card, we bid our new Dutch friends farewell and continued on to Aldeboarn.
Linda, Klaus, Andres and Jan to the rescue.David, Klaus and Andres working on the engine
The church in Aldeboarn
Not as High as Tzum
Aldeboarn is a tiny little village, population less than 2000 people. It was first mentioned in 1243 as “jn Bornde” (“Boorne” is a river name here, “Alde” is old). Aldeboarn developed in the 11th or 12th century along the Boorne river. It was a long terp (artificial living mound) village, surrounded by water at one point. It was a trading place, and a regional center. It hasn’t grown much.
Back when they built the church tower (quite a few hundred years ago), the builders wanted it to be the tallest tower in Friesland. At the time, the church at Tzum was the tallest tower. So, 2 guys visited Tzum, climbed to the top of the church tower, and measured the height with a rope. That evening, while they were sleeping in the inn, the keeper (who knew what they were up to) cut a bunch of feet off the rope. The tower still isn’t taller than the one in Tzum.
Climate Change
It is hotter than hell here today. High 80’s, 80% humidity, and it’s been hot for a few days now. It’s not supposed to be this hot here, and even though there’s water everywhere surrounded by land, the land is now dry and yellow. This is not the way it’s supposed to be here. Tomorrow it should be cooler, and we are going to get a few days of rain in the coming week. I do worry that this heat and the dry land is fodder for Netherlands catching fire like America’s west and east coast has.
Tacos and Margarita Flavored Margaritas
Every afternoon I get to have the same conversation with my girlfriends over Signal that I have every morning when we all wake up on west coast time. We’re regularly in touch, short of a few hours where we don’t overlap. I am also carrying on business the same way I always have, and having Zoom meetings with clients (some don’t even know we’re over here). But, the one thing I miss most of all is street tacos. I miss Masa in Point Richmond and their street tacos. Leeuwarden does have a street taco shop, so when we go up there (first stop after Turf Route), that may be my first stop in Leeuwarden.
Adios amigos!
Aldeboarn Local Knowledge
Best place to moor: left side of canal in the middle of town, just past the 2nd of 2 bridges
There is a green board with a button on it to call the bridgekeeper on the left side just before the 1st bridge. Don’t miss it. If you are coming the other way, it’s the same situation.
There is a toilet, but no showers. Electricity appears to have been free.
Since Kim and Mike left, we’ve gotten into a bit of a groove (yeah I know it’s been a week, but when there’s not much to do and the pace of life is slow, you get a lot more done). I wake up before David, usually around 6-630a, and start working. I work until 9-10 in the mornings, then we go wander around, or move the boat to somewhere new, or just hang out. David does his online stretch class at 4p, at which point I’ll work another 3-4 hours (I generally have meetings from 4-7p).
I was in a meeting yesterday when a bunch of paddleboarders playing loud techno music went paddling by… had to mute myself.
As for connectivity…
I am typing this while sitting in the marina in Grou (again) and there is wifi at the restaurant next door. I did buy a “burner” unlocked Android phone before we left that is just loaded up with eSIMs for different parts of the world. I generally use that, and it works really well (I just wait until I’m on wifi to do any large file transfers).
Afternoon working, gearing up to have meetings on the downtown canal in Sneek.
Seems we go to the grocery store every other day, but that’s not unusual as we do that in the Bay Area also. We are eating lunch on board (sometimes no breakfast), and most dinners. Yogurt in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, and most evenings salad for dinner. (No I have not lost any weight.) The food here, especially the bread, doesn’t seem to have as much sugar in it as we are used to in America. It also doesn’t seem to last as long – don’t know if that’s preservatives or what. The wine doesn’t have all the garbage we put into it either, and it’s cheap. You can get a good bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy for under 8 euro.
Food is really inexpensive here!!! And really good – they don’t call it organic, they just call it food.
Speaking of food, if you didn’t know already, eggs are stored on the shelf in the center of the store and not in the fridge. You can buy blue Smurf ice cream at the shop in Grou. And, the Cheetos Goals are gross (I tried them, that was no go, but the ducks will love them).
Eggs on a shelfYuck
While we were in Sneek the last couple of days, we organized, cleaned, removed some unused items from the boat, and made it more “homey”. David met a mid-50’s antique store owner there who had been to Alameda when he was 6 years old, and remembered visiting an antique junk store there (David says the store is still there). We were able to get a framed triple Delft tile hanging from him… it was marked 35 euro “but since you are from California, I’ll give it to you for 25.”
Our framed tiles… they are hanging where a TV bracket used to hang with no TV. As I’ve always said, “you can’t get away from it all if you take it with you.” Yes, those are 2 clocks above the doorway… one local time, one California time.
We have a back porch.
In the evenings that seem to last forever, we sometimes hang out on our back porch and watch other boats dock (ooh wee let me tell you, so many people have a real special way of docking). We talk with each other, listen to music and read. We watch people walking dogs (and have a special affinity for people with Westies or Kooikerhonds). We try to translate Dutch signs. And finally, the sun might go down near 11p, and we hit the sack.
Sunset over Grou, around 11pm.
I knew about the standing mast route throughout Europe, and when I was in my 30s and just starting to talk about cruising in a sailboat, I thought it would be fun to sail across the Atlantic, drop the mast, and cruise the canals of Europe. But, I will say the motorboating has me hooked… sailing is a lot of work compared to this type of cruising (you have to put all your moveable stuff away when you go sailing, and sailing requires paying attention.) This is so much easier, relaxing, and requires a lot less attention.
I just finished a book about Dutch culture, and in there I discovered that in 1945 (the end of WW2), close to 80% of the bicycles from The Netherlands were stolen by the Nazis. If you’ve been to The Netherlands, you know that they love their bikes here. There are way more bikes than cars, and it makes a lot of sense (even in the winter). It’s easy to get around by bike, it’s a healthy way to get around, and it’s certainly cheaper (and if you don’t believe me, add up the monthly car payment, gas, insurance and tell me how many bikes you could buy every month). Our boat came with bikes, and we’ve used them quite a bit (which is saying something, because we do not have bikes in the US).
when the Dutch have played Germany in World Cup, many of the Dutch fans show up in the stands with shirts and large signs that have a variation of “return our bikes” on it. It’s become a snide joke between cultures too, when a German asks a Dutch person for help and the Dutch person comes back with, “have you returned our bikes yet?”
Anyway, last week we hopped on a train from Grou and went to Berlin. It took 80 euro each (round trip first class) and 6.5 hours to get there:
Leave Grou around noon.
Arrive in Zwolle an hour later. Run through the semi-large station from one side to the other in 5 minutes to get the train to Almelo (about 40 minutes).
Get on another train in Almelo, and just over the German border, sit on the train for 20 minutes while they switch the engines from Dutch to German.
Spend another 3 hours thinking you are going to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, but in reality get ejected in a train station nowhere near where we are going. Thankfully we discover we are on the U-Bahn line (Berlin’s metro) which zooms us straight across Berlin and stops at the Rosenthaler Platz, about 10 meters from our hotel.
We did something similar getting back, but Germany apparently does track maintenance starting the 2nd week of June. I’m just glad we played strategy games as kids, because figuring out how to get back to Grou using alternate routes was incredibly important the day of our return. (If you are taking trains around Europe, remember this… Germans are NOT always on time and are NOT always precise, despite their reputation.)
Working from the train.
VW HQ in Hanover
Berlin in Three Days
I went to Berlin not expecting anything. I’d never really wanted to go to Berlin actually, but Kim mentioned it so we decided to take advantage of the ability to go. Turns out, Berlin is super cool. There’s a lot of 20 somethings there, it’s not expensive, there are a lot of museums, there’s an incredible amount of recent history to explore, and East Berlin (the area we were staying in) is safe, gritty, neat, and walkable. I’m really glad I’ve seen Berlin, and I’d go back.
The crossroad at Rosenthaler Platz. We stayed in the Ibis Styles in the left side of the image for $50/night!Rosenthaler Platz U stationAlexanderplatz Station is enormous, and the crossroads for all metro lines in Berlin.Riding the U-Bahn in Berlin. It’s clean, no garbage, no crazy people, nothing to make you puke.
The Rosenthaler Platz U-Bahn station was built in 1930, and the orange tiles are made of Uranium. From 1961 to 1989, it was one of the ghost stations, and served as a temporary border crossing after the wall fell in 1989.
In no particular order, here’s where we went (which required walking 20k steps every day):
They had many basset horns hundreds of years old. This is the instrument that Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto for.This beautiful instrument was owned by JS Bach.
Memorials and Monuments
All over Berlin are memorials to the victims of the Nazis, and the victims are always referred to as murdered. Murdered Jews, murdered Romani.
Brandenburg Gate. Very very busy.Looking up out of the top of the Reichstag dome.Memorial to the Murdered Jews. Concrete boxes in the shape of coffins.The Reichstag domeEach slate represents a politician that was murdered after Hitler took power for the 2nd time.
Art Museums
We saw lots and lots and lots of art.
Gerhard Richter show at Neue NationalgalerieGerhard Richter show at Neue NationalgalerieHall of Adolph Menzel at the Alte NationalgalerieThe front of the Alte Nationalgalerie
Walking and Walking and Walking
We saw a lot of stuff just walking around.
Ampelmännchen
I love this little guy. He and his red counterpart are the symbols shown on the pedestrian signs on the street crosswalks. Prior to German reunification in 1990, the two Germanies had different forms for the Ampelmännchen, with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally “male” figure wearing a hat in the East.
He was created by a psychologist who determined that having a yellow (“get ready to walk”) was too vague for most people to understand. Also, the standard red, yellow and green was not good for the color blind.
The green man is super cute, kind of happy, jolly, etc… propaganda even on the street signs.
Mercedes Building in BerlinIt appears that computer operating systems are the latest graffiti fad.The “Space Needle” in East Berlin.Pretty much says it all, not to mention we were just a couple small countries away from a war.
East Side Gallery
I thought I had seen all of the Berlin Wall I was going to see down near Checkpoint Charlie, but it turns out that that there is a 4,318ft remnant that still stands as a permanent open-air gallery. Painted in 1999, there are 105 artists represented from all over the world. This is truly the part of Berlin I was hoping to see and didn’t even realize it existed.
Underground Jazz Club
We had been given multiple recommendations of going to an underground jazz club while in Berlin. We found one that had open mic night on Wednesday, and for 2 euro, we were able to spend an hour listening to some decent jazz.
Berlin was fabulous. My feet hurt a lot, my back was sort by the time we were on the train to come back to Grou, but I’m so glad we went. We’re already talking about where we are going to go next year!
I was downloading the photos from the previous 2 weeks so I could start writing this post, and was amazed at how much has happened in the last 2 weeks. We arrived in Grou to pick up the boat on June 4, and frantically spent 2 days cleaning, grocery shopping, and getting the boat ready for our first guests Kim and Mike. They arrived on June 6, and we spent 6 days here on the boat doing some cruising down to Sneek, and wandering back up a thin canal to Grou that required waiting for multiple bridges to raise as well as one bridge that was low enough we had to lower the windows and the mast to get under it. We delivered Compagnon back to the boatyard for a few other fixes while the 4 of us took advantage of being in Europe and we took a train to Berlin (well, it was more like multiple trains).
On June 6, Kim and Mike arrived in the afternoon quite tired after their long trip overseas. So, we hung out around the boat and on Tuesday, Mike (who is an engineer and can’t help himself) dove right into the electronics on the boat. David and Mike discovered that our batteries were dead (we were unaware of this, as we spend most of our time connected to a dock or the side of a canal). They went in search of batteries while Kim and I worked on our clients and the new company we’re building.
Once David returned, he also worked – ALWAYS doing his morning “Coffee and Stretch” at 4p (7a PST) (we call it “Wine and Stretch” from here).
We finally left for one of our favorite Frisian towns, Sneek, on Wednesday (see previous blog). It’s a short hop down the canal, and we were able to tie up in “downtown” Sneek, right next to the road. After a couple of lovely days there (and an incredibly delicious dinner at Mezzaluna), we decided to come back to Grou a different way and stay the night in Akkrum. Upon arriving in Akkrum, we discovered that it’s sort of like Tracy … full of RVs, full of people, lots of beer drinking and well… we thought we might be better off coming back to Grou (I’ll leave it at that).
The trip to Grou from Akkrum was awesome. We had to go under 4 bridges and one of them was 3.3m high (the boat is 5.1m with the windows and the mast up.
4 sailors on board, what do we do?
Drop the mast, drop the windows, motor under the bridge. That’s what you do.
We arrived back to Grou just in time to sit on the back deck of the boat and watch people dock
One of the pleasures of being here in Grou is sitting on the back deck of the boat watching boats motor by, or even better try to dock. This is better than Angel Island at high season. A lot of boat owners here simply do not know how to drive boats, and there are a lot of boats that are quite large. At 10.6m (about 36′), we’re on the “smaller” end for some of these, and it’s kind of hilarious watching people try to squeeze boats that are 2 times too big into some of these spots. Kim and I sat on the back deck and directed traffic because it was a super busy evening, and everyone was vying for a spot. We often saw full boats of people coming into a dock, and nobody had a line in their hand yet there were 4 cleats (“frogs” over here) to tie the boat to the dock.
We call this photo “Fender Bender”. This guy had 10 fenders on both sides.
Leeuwarden – The Provincial Capital of Friesland
On Saturday June 10 we took the 15 minute train ride to Leeuwarden, just to get out of the small town of Grou for the day. Leeuwarden is a 10th century town, and is the economic hub of Friesland. We can go by boat (David and I will likely go there next as of this writing), but we chose train this time since our boat was going back to the boatyard for a couple tweaks while we go to Berlin.
I like Leeuwarden. There’s a lot of things to do and good restaurants. Like a lot of Friesland, a lot of places here don’t take credit cards either… which makes it super important to always have a couple hundred Euro handy.
Grou Train StationOne of the 11 fountains in Friesland, this one is called “Love”A boat navigating through a bridge opening
About the fountains… the eleven fountains correspond to the 11 cities on the Elfstedentocht (the ice skating race here when the canals are frozen). Each city has a fountain that was built by an internationally known artist.
Finally, after a hearty boat breakfast on Sunday, we packed and started to make our way towards Berlin.
As I type this, we are sitting tied to the side of the canal in “downtown” Sneek in the Netherlands. Sneek (“Snits” in Frisian) has about 35k population, was founded in the 10th century, and is one of the 11 Frisian cities (also known as one of the cities of the Elfstedentocht). Sneek is also known for having the largest sailing regatta in Europe every summer, where 100k people invade the town. We won’t be here for that.
We’ve been on Compagnon for the last 10 days, and things are finally settling down. I’m getting up early and working a chunk of hours (this is a good thing as I’m keeping on top of Wicked Code as well as launching a new business with KimS). Compagnon is a really comfortable boat, even with another couple on it. We arrived to the boat yard to pick her up on Saturday, and immediately drove her to Grou, not knowing what we didn’t know at that point. Kim Stuart and Mike Maloney showed up on Monday afternoon in Grou, and we sat around for another couple of days in Grou until they were acclimated.
As it turns out, Mike is an engineer and David and he started in on some of the wiring and issues on the boat. We discovered on day #2 that the batteries were dead (they were over 5 years old). Thankfully, the chandlery in Grou had the batteries we needed, and they delivered them and took the old ones away. So glad that Europe returns the VAT you pay before you leave the continent.
The diesel heat works though we won’t need that the rest of the summer… the weather is better than California. Beautiful, dry, mid 70’s to 80’s, and sunny. No fires over here (sorry for New York). The boat is fueled (250L) and ready for cruising this summer, and we have a lot of water (300L) on board.
Today, we will head to Akkrum (tiny tiny town) for one more night before cruising back to Grou (best laundry and showers in the area). And on Monday, we take a train to Berlin for a few days with Mike and Kim, then they will go back to the US and we will be cruising north of Grou on our own for 3 weeks until Vince and Debby arrive.
Not much to report other than we actually have started cruising… always thought we would be sailing down the coast and around the world or something! But, I can definitely say that this lifestyle, at least for 3 months a year, suits us. Taking the “digital nomad” thing to a whole other level!
I did have an interesting thing happen earlier when I discovered that our main credit card has disabled our cards as of tomorrow and sent us new ones. We have a virtual mailbox in Seattle, so I’ve had the new cards FedEx’d to the Grou Marina. Small blip, but one more thing we had to figure out. It feels like it’s been a constant learning curve since we got here, and we are writing things down (especially if it has to do with the boat) so we don’t have to relearn everything over and over.
Found in the “liquor cabinet” on the boatFriesland pompeblêden (lilypads) are everywhere… a symbol of Friesland.The Waterpoort in Sneek. Regatta in the Pikmar last weekend.Not sure what this store is in Sneek, but we liked the front of it.
So I go fill the port tank, and after a couple minutes I button everything back up and go back downstairs to turn the pump on to see if the water is working again. It’s not working the way I expect, so I go back outside to put more water in only to realize that I have put 2 minutes of water into the diesel tank.
Oops.
I immediately call David and he reminds me to turn off the diesel heater. I’m freaking out that I have caused a major problem because water and diesel is NO BUENO.
But I have to wash dishes!! So, I put another minute of water into the port tank (this time the correct hole), and the water fills up and flows onto the deck. I can’t imagine how this is the case, otherwise the water would have been working in the boat.
I come back downstairs after putting the hose away for the 2nd time, and open the port tank gasket. Sure enough the tank is full, and water blows up all over the place – on me and the floor.
I turn the water pump on and still… Not working. I look at the valves, and David has the port tank off and starboard tank on. I think to myself, “WHY did he ask me to fill the port tank when the starboard tank was obviously the one to fill?”
I get back off the boat, unravel the hose for the 6th time, and proceed to fill the starboard tank. I come back down to turn the pump back on, but I’m so annoyed now that I forget to run the faucet to get the air out of the system.
I decide to stop and call my friend Kim, but first I pour myself a full glass of red wine. I need to chill out. On my way into the cockpit, I set the wine down and it topples over, spilling an entire glass of red wine into the cockpit.
Now I’m pissed. And I have to grab the hose again for the 23rd time tonight to hose down the cabernet cockpit.
Finally, Kim convinced me that I should just abandon ship and go get a hotel room for the evening. I quickly check the Claremont, and am able to secure a cheap yet elegant luxury room there. David calls home and I tell him to go check into the Claremont and I’ll meet him there.
I arrive 20 minutes later, meet him in the bar, and he’s already got a full glass of Alexander Valley Pinot ready for me. And it’s not all over the place. We enjoy a nice sized bed, beautiful shower (inside the bedroom even), heat and running water.
The next day the issues were resolved fairly quickly. Within 10 minutes of getting on the boat, I remember to run the water faucets to empty the air in the system, and voila… we have running water again.
The fuel is a bigger issue. However, David McGuyvered a water pump together, and we’ve gotten all the water out of the fuel tank. We have diesel heat again.
And the moral of the story is…
Don’t put something in a hole when it doesn’t belong in there… and whatever you do, save the wine.
For those of you interested in the McGuyver pump and getting the water out of the fuel tank:
We bought a drill powered pump from Harbor Freight for $14.95, and attached a clear hose to the outgoing port and a PVC pipe to the incoming port. Then, he opened the top of the tank where the sending unit is connected, and put the pipe all the way to the bottom of the tank. I held the clear hose into a 5 gallon bucket and David ran the pump using a drill.
The water goes to the bottom of the tank under diesel, so what you get when you are pumping out is water first then light pink then solid red showing through the clear hose (this is the point of the clear hose).
We filled 4 buckets (or 3 minutes worth if you are counting in minutes)!
After that, we poured some treatment into the tank to emulsify the water.
We ran the diesel heat first as it was the one running when I put water in there. We had some steam, but then it proceeded beautifully with no problems. By the time we started the engine the next day and let it run for a while, all the water had either been through the diesel heater filter or emulsified.
The photo at the top of the page is the McGuyver pump system. We will probably be “donating” it to the yacht club, as it’s a very good water pump and could be used to quickly empty someone’s bilge also.
(And as usual, Sabre build is so amazing it’s super easy to get into the fuel tank and get the sending unit off… not like Pru 1, where the fuel tank was under the cockpit and the builders assumed nobody would ever need to get into there.)
Anyone that knows David and me knows that we enjoy spending time in Europe. There are many reasons for this I don’t need to go into here, but if you know us, you probably already know why. We’ve always thought we’d eventually own a canal boat over there, but figured it was years off. There’s just so much upheaval a life can handle, right? HAHA. When the opportunity bites you in the ankle…
August 2018, first time seeing Compagnon
We visited with our friends Robin and Mike on their canal boat “Compagnon” in 2018 and 2019. We spent our time in Friesland, which is a province located in the northern part of the Netherlands. This province has about 700,000 people in a 2200 square mile area, so there’s not a lot of people. I think there are 2 cows to every person there. Friesland is a beautiful area, with a rich history. The people there speak Frisian (most also speak Dutch and English). The Frisian language is most closely related to the various dialects of Old English. Much of Friesland was Roman occupied (like the rest of Europe), so it has a very rich history.
When we first canal boated in 2018, I remember telling David I was concerned that I would get bored, it’s so slow, what are we going to do, etc etc (typical Kim worrying). Turns out, it’s amazingly calming, beautiful, and not boring to be slow. Much of Europe is covered in canals and rivers, so you can just go to the next town, grab a bollard and tie up, and hop off the boat and wander around the town you are in. It’s a beautiful way to see Europe, especially smaller towns you would probably never go visit by car (and especially as an American, you probably would never visit by car). Friesland is also a very boaty culture, with a vast history of maritime ventures. The boats are completely different than anything we have here in America, and we gawk regularly at boats we see.
Over the last few years, since 2018, David and I would occasionally joke with Robin and Mike about “selling us half interest” in the boat or “when you go to sell her we want her.” She’s a great boat… she’s got a cabin forward with a closing door, a cabin aft with a closing door, a raised salon over the engine, a small galley (big enough to cook in), and a huge head with a shower. She’s a 1974 Marek Dutch steel boat, and let me tell you the Dutch know how to build indestructible boats. I heard a few times from other canal cruisers that you “buy a boat in Netherlands and cruise it to France and sell it.” Apparently the French love Dutch boats!
Fast forward to end of May 2022, and we have already scheduled a trip around a wedding on Cape Cod. We were planning on flying into Boston, and driving to Vermont to see Sabrina, up into Montreal, over to Quebec, down to Gloucester to see Mike and Amanda, and then to the wedding. We were taking advantage of all the Fairmont retirement benefits we could, including staying in the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. One early morning, we get a message from the Netherlands… it’s Robin, and she’s letting us know that they’ve decided to sell the boat, and if they list it with a broker it will be $10k higher than if they just sell it outright. “Do you know anyone that wants the boat?” HAHAHA seriously, that’s what she asked us! We knew that they’d just replaced the engine with a 2021 Nanni Diesel, and they’d barely broken the engine in (~50 hours). There we were, laying in bed, talking about buying Compagnon. It took us about 10 minutes of discussion, and we messaged back that we would buy her.
I just want to remind you that we intended to do this all along, but not this soon. We always thought we’d have a boat in Europe, but it was “not now”.
Within a week, we’d changed all our plans in New England, bought our plane tickets to go to Amsterdam and we started the process of buying this boat (which David is fond of saying, “it’s less than the cost of a new Toyota Camry!”).
Looking out the starboard window at Bert’s yard.
We flew an overnight flight from Boston to Amsterdam (only 6.5 hours versus 10.5 from SFO). I made a friend with one of the flight attendants, and we are still in touch to this day! We arrived in Amsterdam Schiphol at 9am. The boat is in Grou in Friesland, which requires us to get train tickets to Zwolle, switch to a smaller train, and get off in Grou. To get to the boat, we either have to walk a couple miles (we are exhausted), or somehow get in touch with the lone taxi driver in Grou. I take a shot in the dark and add him to my WhatsApp and text him… and he texts me back. He says he will meet us, thankfully, and just like clockwork, Atiq picks us up and takes us to Technische Scheepsservice Bert de Jong (this is a fancy name for Bert de Jong’s boatyard, and just like that we are moving onto our new European boat.
After a quick nap, we realize that Bert’s shipyard is not close to town (about 25 minute walk), so we walk to town and grab dinner… that first day is a killer when you travel to Europe. You have to stay up until 9p to adjust quickly, so you drink a glass of wine then a cup of coffee… then a glass of wine then a cup of coffee… then a glass of wine… you get the point.
This is where things get a little squirrely. First off, Compagnon has been stored outside during the winters for the last couple of Covid winters, and the tarp blew off of her last winter due to some big winds. Bert tells us the next day we can’t store her at his yard anymore and that he doesn’t have room. Ummmmm…. well, here we are in a place we don’t speak the language with a boat we thought would be staying at Bert’s, and ummm… now what? Also, she needs a little bit more cosmetic work since the last time we saw her due to her being stored outside. That’s totally OK, it’s the nature of the beast, and it’s only cosmetic. Plus, we got this boat for bargain as far as we are concerned.
The next day, we decide to finally take her off the dock and go into the lake outside of Grou and get to “feel” her. Our plan was to go to Grou’s marina that afternoon, which meant we had to take her into a slip. David unties us from the dock, and I’m on the upper steering station. She feels mushy, not like I would expect a motor boat to feel. The wheel doesn’t stop when you go all the way over, it just keeps going around and around and around. The rudder angle indicator is not connected, so we can’t even tell where the rudder is. I hand the wheel over to David, and he realizes it doesn’t feel right either. We call Bert, and he has no idea. So, we decide to take her back to the end tie at Bert’s and sort out what we are going to do. Thankfully she has a new bow thruster, which helped us get her back onto the dock without hitting anything, but it was nerve-wracking there for a couple minutes.
It’s all about the hydraulic steering on the upper station.
We don’t know that at the time though. We were totally bummed out. Bert, who knows nothing about us, tells us that perhaps we should come back and charter next year and figure out if we really want to do this. But, it had nothing to do with knowing whether or not we wanted to do this, we weren’t sure what to do with what we had, and how we were going to get it fixed in a different country that spoke a different language than we do. Bert calls a broker in town, and recommends to us we sell her. So, we talk to the broker and list her with him, and decide to stay on her another 5 days until we figure out our next steps. I’m certainly not going to let our European vacation go to waste, so we start planning on a trip to Utrecht (this will be another blog post).
Lookit that 2021 Nanni Diesel! Right off the showroom floor!
In the meantime, both of us continue to feel a nagging feeling in the back of our minds…
“But the engine only has 54 hours on it, we’ll never have to replace it.”
“The bow thruster is in excellent shape, almost new even, and we don’t have to do anything with it.”
“Cosmetics, not a big deal, we can deal with that.”
And the big one was finally when we walked the docks in Grou and ran into another American couple who’d been cruising there for 25 years, and we “toured” their boat. Their guest area was the couch folding down into a slightly larger “bed”. We both spend time looking at YachtFocus.com (their version of YachtWorld), and realize that we have a very unique boat with the forward and aft cabin arrangement. We know we have a ton of family and friends who we want to come do this with us. And finally, the ENGINE… every single boat we looked at was going to need a new engine, and I knew what Robin and Mike had paid for this engine.
Compagnon has good bones, and a great heart. Finally, we took her off of Bert’s dock again using the lower steering station, and she did exactly what we expected her to do. It was a simple hydraulic problem, and not very difficult or expensive to fix.
So we delisted her and decided to keep her.
Myrna and Jim in Grou
Everything went great after that. We left Bert’s, and motored over to the Grou Marina. We pulled her into a slip. Unfortunately, we were running out of time, so we just sat put. And the storage issue as well as the question of who was going to work on her was also resolved in that time we were sitting put. We met our new friends Myrna and Jim, who are Americans who have also been cruising in Europe for many years. They originally knew our friends Sylvia and Michael (Dustin’s parents) from cruising in Mexico on a sailboat. Myrna had told us about Jan Smid in Jirnsum (the tiny town over), and they had been storing (“winterstalling”) there for many years. They just pull the boat up to the dock, grab their stuff, tell Jan what needs to be worked on, and he winterizes the boat and stores it inside for a couple hundred more than she was stored for at Bert’s. Extra added bonus is that we don’t have to do any of the winterizing, other than laundry and that kind of thing.
All in all, it was a bit of a crazy vacation, and we flip-flopped twice on a boat we both really love. But, we are both very happy with the way it all turned out and can’t wait to go back to Netherlands next year for THREE WHOLE MONTHS. We both can work from there part-time (instead of “Coffee and Stretch” at 7aPST, David does “Wine and Stretch” at 4p), and I can run my business from anywhere. Most of all, we are thrilled that we achieved a goal we had, albeit a little earlier than we intended, and we are super excited to be able to host our friends and family in a place that (I’m betting) they’ve never been before. With the list we’ve given Jan, she’s going to look like a different boat when we see her again… and we cannot wait. I’ve already started looking for flights!
Finally, what we’re doing is not hard. We just decided to do it.
We’ve made a few life decisions to live cheaply.
We live on a beautiful 40′ sailboat, we both drive used (and owned) cars and have for a long time, and we bought a boat in Europe for less than the price of a Toyota Camry.
The experiences David and I are having together are priceless though, and I feel richer than rich that we are partners and this is the way we have chosen to live our lives.
Not to get philosophical here, but you just have no idea how long you are going to live, so if you can live your dream now, it’s time to get on the road and get it done. Now. You could be dead tomorrow.
In the time we stayed in Grou, we biked everywhere, including to the train station to travel 100km away. We visited the Tall Ship Races in Harlingen, and saw more tall ships than I knew existed in the entire world. The sun didn’t go down until close to 11p (we are at 53 latitude there). So we’d pop open a bottle of 4 Euro wine, play chess and stream the jazz radio station from Seattle.The Dutch have some very funny signs. This one says, “Fast without poop? Put it in the trash can!”This is one of the town Skutsjes out practicing in the “lake” in front of Grou. This is a MASSIVE sailboat. David doing his stretch class, and me working. Prettiest little street in Grou. By the time we left Grou, we knew most of the 3,000 residents of the town. (OK, maybe not 3,000, but we knew a lot of people.)Compagnon at Bert’s dock.The galley… 2 burner stove, oven, and a fridge. Big enough to cook a dinner for 4!Inside the salon looking towards the aft cabin. Excellent mattresses in there!Pretty Compagnon.
A few weeks back, when we were holed up at our friend Elisa’s place (between when the boat would be ready and when we had to leave the condo for the last time), David and I were interviewed for a Latitude 38 podcast. Neither of us knew what to expect, but what it ended up being was FUN! The end result can be found here:
My friend Moe Roddy interviewed us on Zoom, and the audio department at Latitude 38 did a great job piecing it together. I really feel honored to have been included in this elite group of people that have been interviewed before and after us.
Thanks Moe! And THANK YOU Latitude 38 for this cool opportunity!
I haven’t written a blog post since December 2021, which is crazy because a lot has happened since then. I’ve been thinking about another post for the last few days, but I’m struggling with where to start.
But first, we are now living on the boat full-time at Richmond Yacht Club. Through some divine intervention, we did get legal liveaboard status early this year, much sooner than we thought we would. We were in the middle of boat projects when it happened, and there was no way we could move onto the boat at that point.
To recount the last 8 months in quick bullet order:
We had a living situation set up in Berkeley hills that allowed us to housesit for a friend and work on the boat. That situation didn’t work out as planned in January.
Around the same time that wasn’t working out, the owners of the condo we used to own asked if we wanted to live in the condo 3 weeks a month and move onto the boat 1 week a month (they were not living in California but traveling here for business, so this arrangement worked out fine for a few months). When we moved into the condo, Ernie wandered around like he owned the place, and settled right in. It was a bit weird, because it did feel like we owned the condo still – we’d sold our couch to the buyers, and a few other things, so some of the furniture was previously ours.
In February, we obtained liveaboard status. This was the point where my anxiety over our “vagabond” living situation chilled out, because no matter what happened, we now had a real legal place we could live.
In March, we traveled to Mexico and raced in Mexorc. Originally, I was not going to race, but the combination of being with friends and it being a “bucket list” race for racers as well as stupendous sailing in Banderas Bay, I basically started up racing with this regatta.
At the end of April, I went to Los Angeles and spent the weekend with other girlfriends to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was a blast – we visited the Getty Museum (and ate lunch there), and wandered around downtown LA. I have a new appreciation for LA. I also came back from there with Covid, so spent 2 weeks living with another girlfriend who was there who may or may not have also gotten Covid. What happened in Covid Club stayed in Covid Club.
David and I started racing the San Francisco ocean racing series on Adrenalin, a Santa Cruz 50, which took us out into the ocean. It was more experience for me than David, as David has been doing these races for many years on different boats.
We finally moved aboard full time on June 27, 2022, amidst the end of a battery upgrade project and 5 days before we departed for Europe to our new-to-us boat in The Netherlands (another post to come on that).
As of this writing, we’ve been aboard for 2 weeks now and heading into the 3rd week. I have been asked if I’m good with this lifestyle, and I am… it’s simple, quiet, pleasant. I don’t miss the space we had before, and I’ve set up “office” on the nav station. It’s intimate and you certainly have to be able to get along well with the person you live on the boat with, and we do get along great. (Truth be told, David and I did have a couple of issues, but we fixed them. I think it’s near impossible for that must adjustment in such a short time and not have some upheaval in your relationship.)
When I wake up in the morning, the cool breeze of the water comes through the hatch. I poke my head out of the companionway to take the dog for a walk, and the first thing I see is water off of our “back porch.” On those afternoons where it’s beautiful outside, we can sit in the cockpit and read and have dinner out there.
I’ve learned I just don’t need a lot to be happy. Frankly, I don’t think anyone does, but that’s just not the way the world works!
In honor of our one month anniversary of “living” on our new boat, I thought I’d catch the old blog up with everything that’s happened. Hard to believe it’s only been a month, because it feels like it’s been so much longer.
First off, yes, it’s been a challenge as well as easy all at the same time. We moved from a 2300sf house in Port Townsend to a ~180sf boat. This was not the plan, but it’s the way it turned out. The plan (which turned out was a loose plan) was to housesit in the Berkeley hills for friends of ours starting on November 1. A few things delayed that entry date, and we ended up on the boat temporarily until they were ready to leave the house. It looks like things are going to start to come together the way we thought they were going to somewhere around the 2nd week of December. After having been on the boat for a month now, and making this boat a home in the last month, I’m going to be sorry to say goodbye to her for now.
Why are we leaving then? We don’t have the permission from Richmond Yacht Club to live on her yet… there’s a limited number of liveaboard slots here, and we don’t have one of them. The good thing is that there are some boat projects that need to be done that are difficult to accomplish while we are living on the boat… simple things like replacing the galley faucet. That requires the water to be turned off on the boat, and if it’s not done within the day, then you don’t have running water that night. Engine maintenance on the engine requires taking over the area right next to where I’m working, and it would be distracting and need to be cleaned up nightly so we can continue to live here.
Anyway, we will be staying aboard close to a week a month until we get the status we need, and maybe a couple of weeks a month and cruise the bay, staying at different docks and learning anchoring and how this boat reacts. All good stuff.
Things that I’ve learned since “moving aboard” on October 31:
I can adjust to living in any space, even one this small. Emotionally, it’s not been an easy adjustment for me, especially feeling like we don’t have a defined place to live… knowing we’ve been on a deadline to abandon ship due to the liveaboard status… and the delays with the housesit… but, we have gotten through this month together.
This boat feels large to me, and for a boat it’s comfortable. The last boat was 4 feet smaller, and 3 feet less wide, but I never felt like I could comfortably live on that boat. The layout and the space on this new Prudence is perfect, and she has a lot of storage.
David and I fill up the 30 gallon holding tank within 2 weeks (in other words, 2 of us can pee 30 gallons in 2 weeks). We also use about 120 gallons of water every week and a half.
This life is going to work out pretty well. This life is simple… I paid bills yesterday… No car payments, no house payments, no boat payments, no utilities (for now). Verizon for the phones, and I also have a MiFi that I use for boat internet (speed is better than the wired internet we had in Port Townsend). Garbage gets taken off the boat, I shower every day in the marina shower (I don’t have to clean it afterwards, there are housekeepers at the club for that). Even doing laundry hasn’t been that much of a hassle, though I will admit I do take our clothes most weeks to the wash and fold in town and someone else does it. On Monday, I took the sheets and clothes over there, and 2 hours later everything was washed and folded (by me). I also took my computer and worked on emails and a couple other things while I was there, so it wasn’t wasted time at all.
The Projects
We’ve done a few projects while we’ve been on the boat. The first and most important was replacing the morse cables that run from the throttle and shifter to the engine. When the boat came back from the yard, the shifter snapped when the boat was backed into the slip. It needed to be replaced anyway as it was super stiff, so it was not a surprise that it snapped. We replaced the morse cables on the previous boat, so didn’t think this project would be a big deal… that was our first time, so 3 days seemed about right.
The first indication that this project was going to be a pain in the ass was learning that the cables were 22′ and 26′. On the last boat, they were only 8′ and 9′, so even though we’d gained only 4 feet on boat, we clearly gained a more complex system. Getting into the steering pedestal was not a problem, and that’s where the “fun” started. There’s not a direct access from there to the engine, so the cables go down the pedestal, wind back to the stern of the boat, go around and do the hokey pokey a few times, then down into the aft cabin, underneath the aft cushions, under the water heater, under the floorboards, and then into engine. And, all along the route, they’ve been zip tied to prevent chafing and keep them in place.
The first 6 hours we cleared the path, and we were elated because it was “so easy” and “we know what we’re doing”, so what we thought we were within a day of being done. We were only 4 days off. I also forgot to mention the reason we were in a hurry to do this project immediately is that we were living on board and using the toilet, and as mentioned before, it takes David and I 2 weeks to fill up the holding tank together. Prior to that, 5 women (me included) had been on board and I had not emptied the tank when I brought it back from that weekend. The tank was now full, and we couldn’t empty it without being able to move the boat.
Good thing I had used a Temp-o-Head before; it came in handy for a week.
After 4 days of having the boat somewhat apart, calling our fellow Sabre 402 owner Sam for “tech support”, calling Edson Marine, calling Sam a few more times, and hitting Google, David finally completely unlatched the cables, reran the cables, and got the engine hooked up. Finally we could take the boat over to the pumpout dock and start using the actual toilet again.
The other project we’ve started has been replacing the sink faucets. The faucet in the V berth has been replaced, and it brought the whole room together. After we start housesitting, we’ll be able to replace the other 2 faucets. I’m looking forward to “modernizing” the space.
All in all, it’s been a great experience so far. Frustrating at times, but I feel like we’re finally doing what we’ve talked about doing all these years together.
In the next episode, learn how we start getting rid of the mounds of stuff we moved down here!
