Gosia, Paulina, St. John and the Michalek clan showed up to work around noon with the additional truck load of top gear for the journey. It took two days to sort things out, dividing piles of stuff into basic categories:
1. Necessary for cruising (on the boat).
2. Necessary for racing in Stockholm (in the van).
3. Wet to be dried (in the container).
4. Wet to be dried (in the van).
5. Wet to be dried (on the boat).
6. Broken to be fixed now.
7. Broken to be fixed later.
8. Lost and found.
9. The rest (in the container).
I have never done proper cruising in my life. I read some books and enough internet material on the subject to have a plan, but nonetheless, it was a logistical nightmare. Dave stayed on the boat unloading racing gear and loading stuff flowing from the container, I worked at the container loading things onto dock carts, and we had 8 people running with dock carts back and forth, everybody keen to get it done since it was raining, bumping into one another occasionally since we were wearing rain gear with hoods covering our eyes. The labeling machine I bought for this kind of situation did not work well in the rain so there was some confusion as to which cart should stay where. As a result keen workers would drop of their cart at the boat, pickup another one that was waiting and rush it back to the container where it had just come from. It looked like a production line in a communist factory, except at a much more agitated tempo. Look up Larry, Moe and Curly robbing a bank.
Some things got misplaced and left behind, but we got it done. The cradle dismantled and modified in size to fit the container which would be shipped to meet us at the next racing location, to be determined later. Gosia, Kasia and Kuba got the provisions and fuel before we loaded the van which felt small for the first time.
After a safety briefing and some lectures over our last meal, Better Than… left the river Hamble in the evening of July 10th, in the dying southwesterly breeze, along the English south coast towards Dover, passing Portsmouth with its famous spinnaker tower in the setting sun.
It was a good ride, mostly sailing, nobody was too hungry and we spent most of next 24 hours trying to bond and learn about each other. Working in three two man shifts, three hours on, six off, with Kasia and Paulina as floaters, St.John put his I pod to work and the time was flying.
It was rather gray but with decent visibility when we passed the White Cliffs of Dover and decided not to stop and have Kuba meet us in Amsterdam.
The commercial traffic in the English Channel and the North Sea is unprecedented compared to any other passage aside from perhaps Singapore. Passing the shipping channels on the sailboat moving at 8kt is always very tricky and exciting, especially on the first night of the trip when one’s visual perception gets easily tricked into panic mode, seeing things much larger and closer than they truly are, or even worse, the opposite.
We experienced that phenomena on the first night and actually every night after.
On the second day everybody got their sea legs figured out and Kasia started feeding us regularly. Gosia was driving most of the time and Paulina regained her sense of humor, she even played some squash for us, it was beautiful.
Soon we approached the Dutch coast east of IJmuiden, with its separation scheme of a forest of wind farms and industrial smoke stacks on shore. We performed our first sail drop without accident, put our quarantine flag up and went for the locks.
It was a Hamble landing dejavue for me, with big breeze and ripping current. Dave took the wheel making it look easy. http://www.amsterdamports.nl
We went about 8 feet into Holland, found the docking spot and went searching for the authorities. The police/customs office was warm and dry. The officer was a bit surprised by our request, but he took our passports and gave us pretty stamps, a procedure long forgotten in United Europe.
After putting up a French flag sideways, we took off for a 3 hour motoring trip to Amsterdam in the building traffic of small boats, barges and ships.
The Sixhaven marina at which I made arrangements, turned out to not have enough water, but Kuba made arrangements in another one just across the river from Amsterdam Central Train Station. Our spot was ready after some boats moved out and we landed slightly brushing the bottom of the keel.
Here comes another 3 Stooges episode.
Every time we touch the dock things go out of control. Where do we go? Where do we sleep? How to get there? Where is the van? Where to eat? What to see? etc…
We wasted the entire afternoon practicing that routine while the red lights of the most fun town in Europe were burning down.
We ended up in 3 different hotels about 30 miles away from each other, since there are no straight lines in Amsterdam. Thank God for Paulina’s leadership in picking out a centrally located hotel where we moved in the next morning and St. Johns touring guidance based on prior research. We managed to see almost everything from Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum to the Red Light District. Everything in Amsterdam has something to do with van; Van Gogh, Univeriteit Van Amsterdam, our van, however, despite it’s pure diesel muscle and cargo capacity turned out to be useless in that bike dominated world. It was Kuba’s ingenuity and persistence that got it through those crowded streets and placed it safely on the edge of the Kerkstratt canal tightly squeezed between two trees. A love for Amsterdam is perhaps the only thing we got consensus on during that whole expedition, with or without cannabis or heavier drugs. It is romantic, young, vibrant, unpretentious and full of incredibly harmonious chaos. In terms of climate as well as woman it was also a huge improvement over Britain, but we had to go, leaving Paulina and Kuba behind.
During our passage and even before, in England, I noticed an unusual pattern in the battery charging system; a very unpredictable on and off. I had been blaming it on the English weather and very irresponsibly invested all my hopes in a dehumidifier’s healing power. Plug it in, turn it on, and go to town. Wrong.
We took off from the Neolus marina toward the sea and shining sun. It was just like in my all time favored “Rejs.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Rejs, known in English as The Cruise (or The Trip Down the River), is a Polish comedy film released in 1970, directed by Marek Piwowski who also co-wrote the screenplay with Janusz Glowacki. The score was composed by Wojciech Kilar.
Rejs is considered as a masterpiece by many and as the earliest cult film in Polish cinema. Shot in a quasi-documentary style, with a cast featuring not more than two or three professional actors, the absurd plot parodies life in the People’s Republic of Poland, reducing a weekend river cruise to a hilarious parody of the entire communist system.
A stowaway (Stanislaw Tym) sneaks aboard a ship departing on a cruise down the Vistula River. The captain takes him for a Communist Party cultural coordinator and the intruder gladly adapts to his new role, immediately setting to work at manipulating the passengers and crew into silly and vaguely humiliating games. Before long, Tym has got everyone under his thumb and created his own comedic dictatorship. A memorable performance was given by Jan Himilsbach, an amateur actor who formerly carved tombstones.
After a good 3 hours of that light comedy, the batteries were down to 80 percent, the wind force outside swelled to 30 knots and we had to stop. Gosia picked up some helpful locals who gave her a ride to a nearby chandlery, but despite friendly advice, we could not find a solution to our serious problem.
Before taking the boat apart we moved to the Ijmuiden, a huge new modern marina just inside a humongous man-made seawall protecting us from, by that time, a roaring sea.
The first boat we passed coming in was the mighty Bonbon, under the command of Jan Mayer, taking shelter there during their delivery from Hamburg (after the transatlantic race) to Palma with some electrical problems. It was a blessing since they had already made friends with the only electric expert in town.
It was Saturday afternoon and there were hundreds, maybe thousands of boats in the marina. Our expert was busy and all my electrician friends in New England could only offer me double condolences. Since both of our alternators were dead, the main Mastervolt probably committed suicide in England and the small Volvo, working too hard for both expired from exhaustion.
Gosia and the senior Michaleks went on the accommodations reconnaissance mission. The facilities are large, modern and plenty, but due to a combination of storm and weekend, they did not have a bed to spare.
I was facing the ultimate nightmare: sleeping an entire cast of characters on the boat.
Not that I didn’t have color coordinated bedding or towels, pillows or ear plugs for everybody, but the unknown factor was what scared me the most and the others were sensing my fear and getting unreasonable and aggressive towards each other.
We could not find any options locally so Gosia decided to take a road trip to the next town.
The bus driver from Mali spoke little English, so we got out in the middle of nowhere and after exploring miles of middle class Dutch suburbs carefully decorated with statues of gnomes and various Christmas ornaments, we finally found an open Chinese restaurant.
They couldn’t help us with the hotel search since there were none, but the General Tso’s Shechuan style chicken was delicious and the house wine heart warming and reasonably priced. St. John approved the Dutch/Chinese Sprite and had as many refills as Gosia and I wine. A short taxi ride back and we were all slipping into the boat like one happy family without a single snore to be heard.
Dave came back equally intoxicated after Bonbon took off with the rising sun and he also managed to find a berth without waking anybody up.
Sunday was a beautiful day and we all went to the showers equipped with our brand new black towels which made us all look like those Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus Corsican twins whose entire bodies are covered with pubic hair.
Nobody likes to look like a schnauzer especially on an empty stomach. Our current guru promised to show up in the early afternoon so we went for breakfast.
They didn’t have any idea how to make a white omelet in Holland, mainly because they don’t have the equipment for separating egg yolks from whites. I showed them the trick cementing Dutch/American brotherhood forever. I hear that the dish took off like wild fire crossing into neighboring countries. They call it Amerikaanse albinisme (American albino).
David thought it would be a good idea to celebrate, so we opened the bottle of Talisker Andrzej got from Klaus Diederichs or Grant Gordon of Fever. Kasia made some polish hors d’oervres and the whole celebration moved to the cockpit, so that I could perform some preparatory dismantling for the electrician. For David and St. John, this was a commencement to a kabanosy world that they would soon live to the full extent. This was one of those parties you remember forever. We got our neighbors and some passing fellow cruisers involved. I heard, but I am not sure that there was, Zubrowka from Michalek’s reserve and some cherry liquor and Sprite.
Hans the electrician came with the assistant and after running some tests and criticizing the quality of my tool collection, announced that we need 2 new alternators which could easily be obtained on Monday, one made in Poland from his Volvo shop atthe facility and another from the Mastervolt factory conveniently located in Amsterdam, a short 20km taxi ride away.
We moved into the nearest hotel leaving the Michaleks with the dirty dishes from the daylong libation.