Friday 19th July 2013 Abv Petershagen lock to Nordholz KP108 MLK. 21.1kms 1 lock

Strange little boat on skis at Petershagen

Misty grey start, but the sun had burned the mist away by the time we set off at 9.05 am. A busy road ran alongside the left bank of the lock cut, a long one, it took us an hour to clear it. At the junction with the river there was a tent city of very well sun bleached tents and we wondered if it was a Scout camp. Saw no traffic moving except for a couple of speedboats, who overtook us slowly before speeding up to their maximum throttle settings. 

Hay collecting

At KP210 there was a motorised hay gatherer and a tractor pulling a trailer that the gatherer was filling with cut grass. In front, the channel was marked with red and green cones and the distant misty Weihengebirge hills were coming into view. Behind us the steam from the coal-fired power station at Lahde puffed out paper white clouds in a cornflower blue sky. Gulls seemed to occupy every post along the riverbank. Charon, a loaded 67m barge came past us blue-boarding, so we moved left to let him have the deepest water. 

Channel markers in the Weser below Minden

The river current was noticeably faster as we got closer to the lock (about 2.5kph) and where the river narrowed as it flowed through Minden. Mike called Minden controllers on VHF to ask to lock through the shaft lock (schachtschleuse) and was told to moor on the startzplatz für kleinefahrzeuge, the waiting area for small boats. We moored on the 3m high piled wall behind a Polish tug and pan, Rentrans Cargo 1 from Szczecin, which blocked the view of the lock. We could just see the lock lights down the side of the tug. Snail came alongside. 

In Minden Shaft lock

It was 11.25 am. Fahrgästschiffe (passenger boat) Helena and a small yacht came down the shaft lock, the yacht went on downriver but the passenger boat (with only half a dozen passengers on board) made a hard turn to his right to go upriver on the Weser. Mike said the passenger boats do a round tour, down the shaft lock and up the two modern locks. The lock lights remained on red. Mike went up the ladder to have a chat with the young Polish skipper of the tug moored in front. He wasn’t going up the lock he was waiting while the river level came up a bit as they were running water from a reservoir to top it up so he could get upriver to deliver a big paper filter roll to a power station. The filter paper weighed 138 tonnes and on it was printed “Projekt Leopard”. 

In Minden Shaft lock.
Bottom end guillotine gate

At 12.15 pm Minden called us on VHF to tell us to go into the lock. We think they said tie up on the right side. We followed Snail into the shaft lock and both stayed on the right hand wall. The spacing was OK for Snail to use for and aft ropes, we used our centre rope and the incoming water between the boat and the wall shoved us out into the middle. No big problem, we just loosed the rope off and let it do it, and then as the turbulence subsided we went back against the wall and put the rope back round a bollard. It did that several times as each economiser pound put water into the deep chamber. The Snails were OK with fore and aft, they didn’t get the same effect. We left the top at 12.50 pm. We carried on to the Mittelandkanal and turned right then winded to moor by the water tap in its box. Oll came alongside and we refilled our water tanks using Oll’s key. 

Minden Shaft lock full - on to the MLK

Set off again around 1.30 pm, noting that all the available mooring space for spoortbooten on the junction was occupied. We continued along the MLK, crossing the mighty Minden aqueduct over the Weser, passing Lyko 1 a loaded Polish boat from Szczecin, then an empty tanker called Tom Burmester (1600 tonnes) followed by a cruiser. 

Leaving Minden shaft lock.

Another cruiser went by as we went under Sperrtor V, the fifth set of floodgates on the canal, these were to protect the canal from the flooding of the little river Aue, 

Water tap on MLK at Minden

and to protect the little river should there be a serious problem with the canal aqueduct. 

Moored at KP108 MLK

At 2.35 pm we stopped at KP108 to moor at the end of another 1 kilometre long empty stretch of commercial moorings at Nordholz on a 25m long mooring for spoortbooten.