Tuesday 5th July 2005 Wusterwitz to Zerben.

Police boat out for repair

12.9º C overnight. Wet, cold and miserable. Mike had to get out of bed and take the mast down at 2.30 a.m. as the wind had picked up and it was raining hard. It was still raining heavily when we set off at 8.30 a.m. Michael B had left about an hour earlier, but the loaded 57m boat, called Alte Heidelberg, that had arrived later last night was still tied on the dolphins furthest from the lock. A tug pushing three pans had just come up the lock before we set off, we hoped he was going to go faster than us. We hadn’t been going long, I was making some toast, when an 81m empty called Tina-Marie overtook us. There seemed to be a more or less constant stream of loaded sand boats heading towards Berlin. We met one named

Floating fire appliance

Goldberg at the end of a newly widened stretch of canal at KP 365.5, closely followed by a Bromberger tug called Navrgarz 2, pushing a panful of sand. At KP 365 we found the quay where all the boats we saw earlier in the week must have loaded up with scrap wood for re-cycling. Today there was no one around, no boats either, and only a few small piles of scrap wood. The next pan of sand was being pushed by another Polish Bizon

WSA accommodation boat

tug, we met it just before the first of the bridges at Genthin. On the right bank was another long empty piled factory quay belonging to Henkel. After the footbridge in the middle of town a new small square offline basin had been built for small pleasure boats to moor in. It was piled and had short finger moorings parallel to the canal, unfortunately it was much too small for us. There were a couple of boats in there whose crews waved as we went

A curious police helicopter pilot

past. A little further on I noticed another old mill that had been converted for housing, this one had some lovely castellated towers. A police helicopter flying along the canal towards Berlin did a circle over us just as Mike was telling Bill on the radio about the mooring we were just passing. He had to stop talking as we were being deafened. The mooring had signs which said Fahrgastschiff (passenger boat) but there was a padlock

Queuing below Zerben lock

below this which could be unlocked and the sign swung round so that the reverse of Fahrgastschiff could be seen - which said Sportboot (pleasure boat) When we moored there in 2001 a hotel boat arrived and turned the sign around and so we had to move a bit further down the canal and tie to some park railings. The boat yard on the other edge of town had an 80m boat called Königstein on its side slip and a police boat was out on the hard undergoing maintenance to its hull. On the far edge of the town there was a 2 km long

Two loaded Brombergers passing Rosy

length of piled edge on the left bank with signs to say it was a mooring area for class II boats, although it had tiny bollards and ladders every 20m (which would have suited us perfectly). It was completely empty and we weren’t allowed to moor there. The police helicopter came back for another look at us and circled round again. This time Mike retrieved the camera from where it was keeping dry in the engine room and took a few photos of it. At 12.30

Squeezed into Zerben lock 

p.m. Michael B went past heading towards Genthin, loaded with sand. We wondered where he’d been to load it in the five hours since we’d last seen him. I made some sandwiches for lunch, which we ate before we got to the lock at Zerben. We were overtaken by four cruisers and a loaded Polish boat from Szczecin before we got to the lock. They had to wait with the tug pushing three pans while two more Polish boats came down and a couple of cruisers, then the commercials went in slowly followed by the cruisers. We expected to get shut out, but the keeper leaned out of his cabin

In the middle between four cruisers in Zerben lock

window and called us in to occupy the space in the middle between the cruisers, who had gone two to each wall behind the commercials filling the last available space. We dropped alongside the two Dutch cruisers on the left hand wall and Bill came alongside us. The keeper filled the lock very slowly. The Dutch guys alongside us had a bit of trouble keeping their boats alongside the wall with nearly forty tonnes hanging alongside them, but neither of them complained, in fact neither of them spoke! The two German cruisers on the other side of the lock were only separated from us by a couple of feet and were looking decidedly nervous. (It would have been better for us to have entered the lock first and two of the cruisers could have tied to us, but they had arrived first and they were going to enter first. It would have been unheard of to allow another boat to go in a lock ahead of them - that would have meant that we could have left first!! As it so happened - we did! The two Polish boats left and the first German cruiser on our right was out right after him, leaving Rosy plenty of space. We moved out and the rest of the cruisers followed. We went to moor on the pontoon on the left hand side above the lock. Bill carried on, he thought we were going to Magdeburg today! There was a cruiser called Arrivee already moored on the pontoon, whose German skipper said (in English) that we could have the mooring as he was only waiting for the lock. We tied up and Bill brought Rosy alongside. It was still pouring down with rain. Made a cuppa and Mike waited to see if the rain would ease up. It didn’t. He found his chest high waders from the engine room and put his waterproof jacket on and set off to fetch the car at 4 p.m. - he was back at 6.30 p.m. Gave him a hand to put the moped back on the roof – it had stopped raining – and then went in to cook dinner, a transport caff special – sausages, eggs, beans and potato pancakes. Two car loads of skinhead youths arrived and looked longingly at the pontoon. Two of them set up to fish in the corner from the bank behind us, four of them hung about watching and two girls stood around also looking bored. They’d gone within half an hour. Mike had called in Kaufland in Genthin on his way back and picked up a crate of beer, plus crisps, bread, tomatoes, lettuce and cheese. He told me he’d sent me an SMS to ask what else I wanted in the way of vegetables, but the phone on the boat never beeped so I missed the call. He said the cruiser Arrivee (who had vacated the pontoon we were tied to as we arrived) was just tying up on the pontoon we left this morning as he collected the car. We had no satellite TV – too many trees in the way.