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| Trawler moored below Landsbergen schleuse |
Sunny with white clouds, light breeze, much warmer.
Clouding over in the late evening. We went into Nienburg in the car to do some
shopping at the Real hypermarket. There was a bike/scooter shop on the same
site so Mike was able to buy a new inner tube for the moped (5€). They guy in
the bike shop told him where to find a fishing tackle shop where we bought two
brollies for 78€. When we got back to the boat there were some WSA surveyors
marking things with orange spray paint by the moorings. Unloaded the car and
Mike parked it on the road by the bottom end gates of the lock. We set off at
2.30 pm, after Dutch boat Lady Anne came up in the lock, we followed Lüssen 13
from Bremen, loaded with sand, into the lock and dropped down 5.5m. Mike moved
the ropes down the bollards while I made a cuppa. House martins were nesting
under the bridge over the tail of the lock and one plucky bird was having a go
at getting the crustaceans off the lock wall to feed to its brood. At KP225
Umschlag, an 85m boat, was loading with gravel. A black kite followed us then
soared on rising hot air from the cornfield alongside the river.
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| Smooky blue-boarding around a bend |
Mike spotted
signs along the bank that said Begegungs Strecke with an arrow with 500 in it.
Looked up the words in the dictionary, it meant a meeting place – or a passing
section for the big boats. There were quite a few more along the winding
section of river down to Drakensberg. An empty called Katharina from Haren-Ems
went past heading upriver. A honey buzzard was using the meeting section sign
at KP263 as a perch. Polarstern, a loaded (675 tonnes) Dutch boat from Delfzijl
went past at KP266. As we went through the town of Nienburg (where we’d been
shopping earlier) we noted on the left bank a line of campervans parked along
edge before an empty high piled silo quay (which looked abandoned, but might
not be) then the quay continued at a lower height under the bridge and
downstream for about 150m. An empty 85m called Brittas was moored on it and a
trip boat filled the rest of the space. No room for boats like ours. On the
opposite bank there was an arm where the Yacht Haven welcomed visitors, again
not much space for boats of our length (and we’d have to pay). No signs of the
lady from the day before and her boat Pegasus, she must have continued to
Bremen. Downstream of the town loaded boat Navatrans V went past heading
upstream with a slow running noisy engine. A small tankership called Acidum
from Bonn was unloading just upstream of the autobahn bridge. At KP273 we were overtaken
by Umschlag, which was now loaded with 1,296 tonnes of sand. A Dutch boat
called Smooky, loaded with cullet (broken glass) was blue-boarding coming
upstream around the right hand bend before Mehlberger Yacht club (we moored in
there once). Mike moved over to the left and called Oll on the radio to do
likewise. Another boat was fast catching us up, Stella Maris, in a hurry to get
into the next lock with Umschlag, he overtook us as the river went off to the
right (where there was another yacht club) and we went straight on into the
lock cut. Mike called Minden to tell them we weren’t going through the lock (so
as not to hold the commercials up) and asked if we could stay overnight on the
pontoon above Drakensberg lock. Yes, OK. Same guy he spoke to earlier in
English. It was 5.55 pm as Snail tied up and we tied alongside on the 15m long
floating steel box.
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