We are secure at a local pier in a little canal that runs from the big ship canal connecting the coastal port of Ijmuiden to Amsterdam. We arrived here only an hour ago after motoring most of the way from London. We are surrounded by local Dutch craft forming up for the big Parade of Sail into Amsterdam scheduled for tomorrow. Pride II will be the last foreign vessel in the parade as we have the last docking location in Amsterdam harbor. We are to be right behind the largest sailing vessel in the world, the Russian Sedov. It is an honor to be so close to such a vessel. But by bringing up the rear, I think we will have to do something special to stand out despite being last.
Thames River Estuary on the Way to London
I wrote last when Pride II was on her way into London for the receptions scheduled there by various agencies of Maryland state government. With little wind, we motored the whole way from Portsmouth on the south coast in the Thames estuary. Along the way, we saw the very white cliffs of Dover on the English side of English Channel.
Then it was up the wide estuary of the Thames River to an anchorage at Gravesend, a little marine commercial area east of London. There we stayed for a night and half a day waiting for our scheduled entry into St. Katharine's Dock Lock at high water set for 1530.
The Thames is a busy river with a lot of freight traffic as well as substantial commuter traffic. I remember coming up the Thames in 1985 with the original Pride. It seemed then that the commercial aspects of the river were dying. The river and its banks were in an ugly state. Today the commercial aspects are more lively and a lot cleaner as are the river and it's banks. This is especially true of the commercial areas closer to London. A lot of the old docks have been given over to mixed-use development with new office buildings, homes, and businesses. One of the most obvious affects of this re-development is the private dwellings along the river where warehouses used to be.
One of the more interesting water control devices to be seen on any waterway is in the Thames River. It is known as the barrier. It is designed to hold back the high waters of the Thames when and if weather conditions conspire to raise the waters above normal levels. There is a certain futuristic appearance to the Thames River Barrier. Along with the Barrier comes a tightly controlled marine traffic system to prevent congestion and possible collision. The mechanism itself comes up from the river bottom and creates a dam. In addition, the river banks have been built up on both sides leading to the Barrier from down river. It was a very expensive system to construct, but it prevents floods in downtown London during extreme weather periods.
St. Katharine's Haven Docks
St. Katharine's Haven Docks and its associated lock is a fairly unusual docking location for Pride II. We are not the largest vessel to enter these docks, but we are certainly one of the largest. So, the window of opportunity for entering the lock is very narrow - something like half an hour. The lock itself is just barely long enough to contain Pride II. Once in, it is necessary to maneuver through one or two basins with their narrow entrances to get to the assigned berth. Usually, it takes two to three additional little push boats to help squeeze the ship through the narrow slots because St. Katharine's goes back over 100 years and has a silting problem. When Pride II is in shallow water, she behaves queerly. So small push boats and lots of crew equipped with fenders on both sides of the ship are necessary to successfully negotiate the torturous route to the final berth. Surrounding all of this are old stone warehouses with modern businesses that look out upon the activities.
London
London is a fun but expensive place for the crew. When they get time off, there are so many things to do. There is no way one can "conquer" London in less that five days. To help them try, I often give time off to the two different watches in batches of days rather than in alternate days. This time, we were able to give each watch two days off in a row. One crewmember, Paul Gill, chose to leave London. He took a train to Edinburgh and spent a night there.
Meanwhile the on-watch kept up with maintenance and hosted events aboard held by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development as well as the Maryland Port Administration. This time DBED was working with airlines. Iceland Air has been flying into BWI Airport for almost ten years now, but has only recently expanded its reach into central Europe. So together, Maryland Tourism and BWI Airport teamed up with Iceland Air to hold two receptions. One was for tour operators and another for the ticket agents. British Airways also flies into BWI and so there was a combined event with them, too. As always, the Maryland Port Authority hosted it's friends and business partners from the London Port Authority and various commercial shipping agents and ship operators representing services and shipping lines from all around Europe.
Goodbye, London - and Leslie!
Suddenly and (for some of the cash strapped cadets) thankfully, the time came for Pride II to depart London. In the case of those who were happy to leave, the reason was the strain on their wallets. For others of us, there is always more maintenance to do and more London to see, but the schedule beckoned. When it is time to go, we don't waste any time. As a way of demonstrating how expensive London is, the last order of business was paying the bill for our stay at St. Katharine's. $800 for five nights. Not expensive by some standards, but a major expense for Pride II considering that docking is often provided free to non-profit organizations that operate classic sailing vessels.
As we left London for Amsterdam, we were one less in the ship's complement. For a month we have been 19 persons aboard Pride of Baltimore II. Now we are eighteen. Leslie Bridgett, past Teacher Aboard for Pride II's voyage to Asia, returned to the ship for the race across to Europe. Her contribution to the ship's work was taking over the visual recording of the voyage. Almost all the photos taken of the race in New London and across the ocean from Boston to Europe, plus the scenes in the port cities visited are Leslie's work. The favor she did for all of us was a huge one. Without her aboard, the duty would have fallen to deckhand Chris Landers. Leslie spent an average of four hours a day handling the digital cameras, downloading images, cropping and resizing them for presentation to this author for selection, and sending them via satellite to the Pride office for posting on web site for your enjoyment. Sometimes she was able to find a shore-side Internet café to send pictures (which saves us money). The job was not an insignificant one. The fact that it was accomplished without reducing the size or effectiveness of the ship's crew of twelve professional sailors has been an unquantifiable benefit to our mission and to this captain. I am certain that Chris Landers is also thankful he was not called upon to do as much work as Leslie did! Thank you Leslie!
Approach to Holland
Pride II's transit across to Holland was uneventful till we got close to our destination and the horizon filled up with all kinds of sailing vessels making their way to Ijmuiden. We saw Öosterschelde, Eye Of The Wind, Brilliant, Jolie Brise, Mir, Dar Mlodziezy, Eendracht, and many more we had not raced with. Some were sailing and some were not. We set sail the moment we saw Brilliant and Jolie Brise approaching us. All three of us made a little `race' of it to Ijmuiden. I am sure Brilliant was not trying as hard as she might, but we sailed closer to the shore and were able to catch her up again after she raced ahead but got caught in a strong counter current that we avoided by going close to the shore. Jolie Brise called Brilliant and confessed to trying to catch her up, too, but her topsail halyard had just parted so she could not give 'good chase.'
Upon sailing up to Ijmuiden, it was time to take in sail and get directions from the port control radio station. English is the language of traffic control between ships, and the Dutch know their English very well. But the names of towns are just too much to follow over the radio. When it came to hearing directions to our assigned dock location, names like Beverwijk, Zujkanall, Zwaaihaven, or De Pijp are hard to decipher. But everyone was patient with me and my deaf ear and we made our dock with little problem.
Along the way, we locked in from sea in the company of several Class A tall ships. There was Dar Mlodziezy, Christian Radich, Statsraad Lehmkuhl, and three tugs dressed up with flags, plus one Dutch naval fleet-supply vessel.
Once inside the canal system to Amsterdam, there were plenty of vessels with lots local color to see mixing it up with regular commercial traffic. Most startling to me was a fast hydrofoil commuter boat moving at 30-40 knots in such a confined space. But it certainly did not leave much of a wake.
Well, tomorrow is the big day! A Parade of Sail into Amsterdam. How different is that?
Cheers,
Captain Miles
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