10 July I woke up at about 4am on Tuesday morning thinking about how we would get out of the harbour in the morning. The previous night the habour was completely full, and I could hear the wind picking up. We had someone moored alongside us; the 17m boat behind us had 2 boats moored alongside it, then around the corner were 3 sailing yachts moored alongside, and then another large cruiser with a small cruiser moored alongside it just before the bridge on the port side. On the starboard side of the bridge it was 3 deep as well. Diagram showing Moondance in purple (bow to right), and other nearby boats in the harbour at Dordrecht. The bridge only opens every 30 minutes and we planned to leave at 9:30. Luckily many boats near us, left before or at 9:30 (shown in grey above). We were the last to leave for the 9:30 bridge, so all we had to do was back out past the cruiser and get through the bridge - there still wasn't room to turn around. This was still a bit tricky in the tight space with a bit of wind, but we managed to do it with quite a lot of bow-thruster, although we did bump the wall inside the bridge. Unfortunately however the bow thruster packed up just after we were through the bridge. So we tied up on the poles meant for waiting for the bridge and decided what to do. We still had to back out into the major busy river. AIS told us it was clear so we headed off almost straight away and made it into the river. I then headed off up the river and turned off to Rotterdam through the traffic and rough water, while Howard tried to work out what was wrong. The battery was fine, but Howard could see sparks so perhaps it was something electrical. He called the City Marina at Rotterdam to check on our mooring and warn them that we would have no bow thruster. They assured us they had an easy mooring for us to get into. So we headed up into Rotterdam. At one stage a water taxi pulled alongside and told us that we had to listen to channel 81 to get instructions from the Rotterdam Sector Control - their equivalent to Air Traffic Control. We had to turn across traffic to get to the channel to our mooring, so we were told when to turn by the Sector Control, telling us we'd have to hurry as there was another barge coming at 14 km/h, 500 meters around the corner. This we did, and we were happy to get into the calmer waters of the channel. You can see why they need a traffic controller. The squares are ships not moving and the arrows are moving ships. Then we had to go under a bridge which was listed as 3.4m high, however as the area is tidal we watched carefully as we went under with only about 20cm to spare. Finally we turned into the marina through a lift bridge. The harbour master came out in his little boat to meet us. He had saved us a great mooring that was easy to get to, however someone had moored illegally there when he wasn't watching and we had to wait for them to leave. Loitering in the wind was quite difficult with no bow thruster. The harbour master helped out by giving us a push from time to time. The harbour master's skiff Finally, the other boat left the mooring but then had to wait for us. They did this so close to us that it was difficult to reverse when needed. In the end they did move, and after a lot of manoeuvring we got into our very nice mooring. I was quite drained. Showing our track to get to our mooring at the marina in Rotterdam. The habour master was very nice and is arranging a electrical guy to visit the boat hopefully this afternoon to have a look at the bow thruster.
We are happy to be in Rotterdam and will stay here until the bow thruster is fixed.
2 Comments
ROBIN TULLY
11/7/2018 01:10:16 am
Great story Deb ...always look forward to your blog posts.
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Richard Keir
11/7/2018 01:21:17 am
Sparks eh! Possibly electrical. Sounds serious!
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