Thursday 26th May 2005 Below lift 3 Oleśnica to Elblag.

11º C Sunny and warm. Up at 7.00 a.m. Did a few chores while Bill glued the rubber gasket on the lid for his weed hatch (the only person we know who does that!). Set off at 9.00 a.m. following Rosy to lift 4, Jelenie, arriving at 9.30 a.m. Rosy went into the trolley to go down

first. When the other side came up we got on that. Meanwhile Mike had a good look at the bearings on the wheel carrying the cable. He said the bearing was on the wrong way round for the direction of thrust. Mention of clocks and monkeys came round again (After the end of WWII an eminent British politician was quoted as saying “Handing over former German industry to the Polish – when the Germans left Prussia, retreating to west of the Oder and it became Polish - is like giving a wristwatch to a chimpanzee” – very insulting but Mike is beginning to believe there is some truth in what he said). We had to wait on the trolley as there was something coming

uphill. Two small Polish yachts were in the upcoming trolley as we went down. More video. It was ten past ten when we reached the bottom. Mike changed the film in the 35mm camera and had problems with it – the shutter had jammed. He went inside to try to fix it and I steered down the canal to lift 5, Całuny Nowe, the last lift. We passed the newest trip boat of the fleet, called Ostroda, the guide book boasts it even has air conditioning! I pressed the buzzer to call Mike and the engine alarm went off. Mike went to check it out, either the alternator was packing up or the oil pressure was falling – but he could find nothing wrong.

Photo from Wikimedia by Lestath

Could be a momentary intermittent fault. Bill called on VHF to say he was setting off down lift 5 and there was a tripper coming up and another one waiting at the bottom. We went down the last slope with Kormoran coming up. Mike filmed the steep slope from the stern of the boat as we came down. We left the bottom at 10.50 a.m. passing a swim-suited Polish couple on a tiny sailboat heading for the lifts. The engine alarm kept sounding off and Mike had come to the conclusion that mending the camera was not going to be easy, there were hidden fasteners to find. The alarm stopped going off on its own! There were lots of weeds and twigs and muck in the Elblaski canal between the lifts and below them too.  The goat willow along the banks leading to the big nature reserve around lake Druzno was shedding fluff again – it looked like snow blown by the wind. Bill called on VHF to say that some fishermen had a net out across the canal at the end of a long straight and he’d had to get them to move it to let Rosy through. He told them we were coming. There was no net out when we got there. It was ten minutes before midday when we reached the beginning of the lake. It was getting weedier, full of birds – swans, black-headed gulls, pochard and ferruginus ducks, plus coots and mallard, grebe and heron. We passed an anchored small open boat with three men with cameras on board. They waved and said hello. At midday we noticed Rosy drifting into the lilypads and thought Bill’s gone to get his lunch, when he came on the radio to say he’d got something ‘orrible on his prop. Weed hatch up and he proceeded to extract metres and metres of blue fishing net from around the blades. We hovered in the channel in case he needed assistance. We ate lunch following Rosy out of Druzno on to the canal. Common terns were diving for fish and black terns were

Elblag - Wikimedia photo by Janusz J

skimming over the weeds catching insects. Where the lake narrowed there were big groups of over forty swans on either side of us, all close together and heads down dredging something they were all particular to from the bottom of the lake. We passed another small sailboat heading across the lake towards the lifts. At the end of the lake there were lots of great crested grebe. A mink swam past then dived out of sight, right opposite some fishermen, as we entered the canal. A tiny day boat went past with two kids on the bows, several adults stood at the back and more inside the little cabin It was so far down at the bows we were surprised that the outboard leg reached the water! They were all having a great time. Two two-man canoes went past – another family having a nice day out. As we approached the outlying houses and factories of Elblag there were more and more people on the banks (which lead us to suspect that they were on holiday today) they were fishing or sunbathing, and most of them were smoking. It was ten past two when we tied up on the town quay. Loads of people were promenading up and down or sitting on the wall at the back of the quay. Mike and Bill went off on foot to do a bit of reconnoitring. The Post Office was closed (it was a bank holiday) so they went to find people to talk to about the

Elblag - Wikimedia photo by Janusz J

availability of diesel. I wrote out the postcards we’d bought from the stall by the top lift. We moved the boats over to the other side of the canal by a canoe hire place, with Rosy on the inside (sitting on the bottom) and us on the outside. The proprietor had told them where they could get diesel and had offered to take them to the garage in his van. They made two trips with as many cans as they could muster. We had 268 litres at 3.54 Zł to top up our tank and Bill had about the same. They both gave the guy 25 Zł, he said no, he didn’t want paying, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and so Mike stuffed the 50 Zł in his ash tray! They were back at 6.40 p.m. and started siphoning the diesel into our tank (Bill had the first load). Later Mike and Bill went for a couple of well-earned jars on the ship moored next to the town quay.

Sorry for the lack of photos, first two were taken with our ancient 35mm camera (and I've posted them before!) before it broke, things will improve soon when we enter the digital age!!