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| Water tap in a box. MLK |
Overcast mostly, a few brief
sunny spells but still hot. Rain first thing. Our weather machine had said that
it would rain all day. It didn’t, just the odd light shower. We were going to
fill up our water tanks but a commercial arrived before we got the ropes
untied. He was there for ages, another came alongside him but gave up and left.
As soon as the commercial set off we reversed up to the tap in a box and Oll
got his key out. There wasn’t a proper fitting in the box and the only one that
would work leaked if you turned it on too fast (now we know why the commercial
was a long time)
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| Wharves at Bulstringen |
Finished refilling eventually and we set off to do the last
bit of the Mitteland at 12.45 pm following a little brown tjalk called Vrouwe
Cordelia (first private boat of any size we’d seen for ages). The first
commercial past was Marie Erna from Minden, an 85m boat loaded with sand, which
went by as we passed the commercial havens at Bülstringen. It was getting
hotter. The moorings in Haldensleben had gone, the new marina had been extended
to accommodate larger vessels and the tjalk had gone in there. There were now
no mooring places in the town. New commercial quays had been built when the widened
the canal and they were very busy, there was a short space for private boats at
the very far end, as far away from the town as you could get.
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| Was this built by a beaver?? |
Took photos of a
wagtail that stayed on our roof while he did a full preening session. A trio of
boats went past in the opposite direction as we passed the last of the quays.
First was a digger in a pan being pushed by a Polish tug, then Dettmer 83 from
Bremen (79.5m x 9m 1,202 tonnes) an empty tanker, followed by a loaded boat
called Vorwarts from Plaue (69.8m x 8.20m 983 tonnes). The last boat went past
just before we went under the Neues Sperrtor (built in 1995, to replace to one
that was demolished when the new commercial quays were built).
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| Polish tug and pan |
The next boats
went past by the silo and winding hole at KP307 Vahldorf, Dettmer Tank 51 from
Bremen (85m x 9m 1,326 tonnes) followed by Sobieski from Stepnica (PL) (67m x
8.2m 855 tonnes) and three cruisers trailing behind them, one Dutchman and two
Germans. An empty was catching up as a tug and pan came the other way as we
entered a newly widened stretch of canal. Tug Edmar pushing a pan with boxes of
sand went past first, then the empty went past slowly, Tiffany (80m x 9m 1,124
tonnes) The new banks had sloping rocks on both sides.
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| Annegret overtaking. |
A brightly painted little
tanker from Szczecin called AGT-05 (56m x 7.5m 500 tonnes) went past. The sun
came out briefly and it was very hot. A pair of red kites flew over as we
passed the masses of electricity pylons we’d spotted by car the day before, the
kites were gone, way over the distant trees before we could get the camera set
up. Earlier a black kite had taken us by surprise, picking some poor fish from
the water almost beside us then flying round while eating it, no time for a
camera again before it had gone.
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| Adding topsoil to the new sloping canal bank |
At KP312 there was a digger on the left hand
bank putting topsoil that it was unloading from a pan on to the new bank. A tug
called Edwald and three pans went past. A loaded 80m boat called Annegret (with
a lovely old thumper of an engine) overtook us just before a diversion to the
right where they were building a new aqueduct over the railway at KP318. At
4.45 pm we moored in the short arm above the old Rothensee ship lift (don’t
know if it is still working or not) opposite a large Dutch barge which was
moored among the commercials. Not long after we’d tied up a cruiser moored
behind the Snail. More on the Rothensee boat lift
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| Rothensee boat lift at the end of the MLK |
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