March begins tomorrow and so does our countdown to relaunching Plan B and returning to the original focus of this blog----tracking the transition to our new life aboard ship.
Here's what we'll be doing in March: Late in the month, we move from Domburg to the bebop-named town of Bergen-op-Zoom, close to Plan B's drydock. From there, we can start working on the boat. For one, we'll refresh the antifouling coat, a layer of paint that slows the growth of organisms on the hull below the waterline. Besides plenty of general cleaning, we also have a bunch of projects for the interior.
We need a new mattress. The old one was moldy. We're probably going with cold foam rubber. It is cool to the touch, for one thing, and quite firm. Underneath it, we will place a mesh under-mattress to allow air to circulate. This is a big problem on boats. Condensation builds up and mold follows.
We'll also do some decorative work on the interior, painting and dying. Before and after photos will follow. Suffice it to say for now that we've been inspired by The Little House Blog and Cabin Porn, two blogs we list (and love).
We also continue to study for our licenses, me with Britain's Royal Yacht Association, and Aila with Germany's Motoryachtverband. Theoretical and practical. Rules of the road and basic knots, signage and steering. We're pretty solid with the theory stuff, bookish as we are; the doing will be the real learning challenge.
Holland is a particularly benevolent place to do this. A license is in fact not required here. We want them because acquiring them gives some structure to our learning efforts and anyway licenses are necessary in Germany and France, when we do eventually get there.
Which brings us to the next topic---quo vadis? Well. We are developing a broad plan, an itinerary even. But before we sketch it out, let's have a look at our tools. We found a nice set of guides for cruising Europe's inland waterways, eurocanal.com. We ordered the one on the Netherlands and now we're getting the whole batch. They give the kind of general and even fairly specific information we need to plan our journey. Avoid this, that is a must-see; heavy traffic here; lovely detour there. They're like having a conversation with a knowledgable acquaintance.
For the really granular stuff, moorings and locks, currents and channel obstructions, we're going with the rather brilliant PC-Navigo route-planning software, which we've mentioned earlier. It's the business. Put in your boat's dimensions, enter your destination and it gives you a choice of routes your boat can use---the fastest, the one with fewest locks, the most scenic. Just like a car GPS.
Now, to the 'plan' itself: We aim to wander northward, avoiding Amsterdam on this our virgin tour. We want to get into Friesland, Holland's northeast province. There's lots to see there, so we don't want to be too firm about time frames. But as things stand today, we might try to cross into Germany in the fall … or not. We’ll see!
