Thursday 16th June 2005 KP 181 Str. Bielice to KP215 Lipki.

Road bridge at Drezdenko

11.0º C overnight. A hazy, cloudy sky first thing. Sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. Mike and I transferred the anchor from the front deck to the engine room. Unhitched from the tree at 8.10 a.m. and followed Rosy downriver, overtaking as we came in sight of Drezdenko. The old chap with yacht was moored stern into the bank. He was wading in the river with his trousers off, washing the hull down to remove the dirty marks around water line. We waved. A bit further downstream, two people on the bank stopped mowing a hay field with scythes to wave too. It was 9.15 a.m. when we arrived at

Moored by the road bridge at Drezdenko

Drezdenko town. Mike winded the boat and stuffed the bows into the bank (the water level was considerably lower than when we were here last time) and I tied to a root and threw the bow line on to the bank, but couldn’t reach the posts which were well set back from the edge. Mike put the plank out off the bows and I went to take a stern line and attach that to another post. The bows were on rocks again and we listed

Moored by the road bridge at Drezdenko

slightly to port. Bill went off downriver to turn Rosy - Mike said he’d gone agricultural boating! He brought Rosy alongside as a German couple on a cruiser went past heading upriver. (It is getting busier). Mike helped Bill get his bike off over our boat, he went to get resupplied and to the post office, so Mike asked him to post a letter for us. He was also going to try and find an Internet café, so Mike asked if he would look on Kodak’s website and see how much their batteries for our

Old German built house in Drezdenko

camera were. Mike went a walk into town to get some bread and veg, while I put the inverter on and the PC to catch up with the log, which had been sidelined the past couple of days. He was back at 10.10 a.m. with tomatoes and two small bloomer loaves (they had no brown bread) and a cabbage, (they had no lettuce, broccoli or cauliflower either - good job we’d got plenty of tinned stuff). He brought back

Polish houses by the road bridge in Drezdenko

some more cans of Tyskie beer and put it in the 12v ice box to keep cool. He went to take photos of the boats from the road bridge, then lay down and snored while I finished off the log, bang up to date. Bill was back at 11.30 a.m. having found a library with free Internet, but hadn’t been able to order a spare battery for our camera. We set off again downriver at 12.10 p.m. As there was no lettuce at the supermarket, I

Polish yacht moored at KP210

made coleslaw for lunch, which we ate sitting under the blue sunshade. We passed a stork’s nest with three or maybe four little half grown storklings! No time to take a picture as we flew on down the river at almost 10 kph. We passed our mooring of the Saturday and Sunday 23^rd & 24^th April at KP 202, the fallen tree and cut off stump were still there, but the reeds were much higher. A day for butcher birds! We saw three or four red-backed shrikes sitting on lookout posts atop trees. There were no birds in the big meadow downstream of the road bridge 157 and lengthsman’s

The Bizon tug going past, heading back downriver with two pans 

house, there were very noisy bridgeworks going on with one man dressed like a deep sea diver cutting concrete with a high speed grinding disc. We kept a lookout for otters, but this time we saw none. The Polish yacht was moored, tucked well into a gap in the bank downstream of KP 210. There was no sign of the man or his dog. We’d expected him to have motored on to Santok. Shortly afterwards we started looking for tree stumps to tie to and suddenly there was nothing but reeds and goat willow. Mike spotted a stunted stump and we turned back upriver to go and tie to it. It was pretty rotten, but held while Mike got the plank off and banged stakes in. Rosy came alongside and Bill attached a bow line to a live tree a bit further upstream than our rotten one. It was 3.50 p.m. by the time we’d finished lashing to the bank. The soil was black and loamy, excellent for growing things but terribly mucky on shoes and carpets. At 4.45 p.m. the Bizon tug came back downriver, pushing two big pans. Amazingly the tree held and didn’t break off! Mike stood on Rosy’s front deck to take photos, waking Bill who’d missed the commercial going past. Chicken saté stirfry for dinner.