Tuesday 24th September 2013 Spandau North of the lock to Spandau South 20.8 kms 2 locks

Waiting area abv Plotzensee lock. 

Drizzle that lasted most of the day, becoming heavy at times. Set off at 9.30 a.m. with the generator engaged to do some more washing. Winded and went back North up the lake a short distance to the start of the Hohenzollernkanal, grey and dismal in the wet. At 10.45 am we arrived at Plötzensee lock and moored next to the waiting area – a very inhospitable length of metal tubing whose horizontal bars bore witness to innumerable scrapings of multi-coloured paint from the boats whose fenders were in the wrong places when they tried to moor next to it. Mike pressed the button to call the lock keeper on the intercom and had no reply, the thing was broken. It looked like work was going on in the left hand lock chamber, (the right was out of use), with a WSA boat in the lock and various workmen in fluorescent reflective waterproofs attending to whatever was going on in the lock. 

Leaving Plotzensee lock

A voice made an announcement on the tannoy system, but it was drowned out by the noise of traffic on the road alongside the canal. Mike managed to pick out the words “two hours" and "work” and so we took shelter from the rain for a while. Around midday the WSA boat came out of the locks (it had a blue and white "diving in process" flag on it) and we got green lights. 

Houseboats.

The lock was surrounded with cameras and we deduced that it was remotely worked, from where we had no idea but the gate rose from the murky depths behind us, the chamber emptied and we left 0.9m lower than when we went in. Still raining quite heavily as we ran down to the junction with the Westhafenkanal and I took photos of the houseboats in the corner basin. We turned right and ran along the Westhafenkanal for a short distance then turned left on the Charlottenburger verbindungskanal (link canal to Charlottenburg) dead straight for about two kilometres to a junction with the river Spree and the Landwehrkanal. We intended to take the latter route but found a sign that said “No entry, except boats with engines less than 3.69pk”. We had heard that this canal now had one way working and we hadn’t known which way, now we knew – the opposite way to the one we wanted to go. 

Houseboats. Looking back towards Plotzensee lock

We turned right, heading down the Spree through Charlottenburg and spotted a boat we knew, little Katje, an unusual DB that we’d met up with at Burgwall. We winded and went to moor by the boat hoping we might get more information about navigating through Berlin from the crew until it dawned on us that there was no one on board and this was Katje’s home mooring and no one was going to be on the boat any time soon. We decided to push on to Spandau and take the long way round as we were unsure of crossing through the middle of Berlin without a “legal” VHF Marine radio (with ATIS - our new one is waiting for us at Mum’s). 

Under the autobahn bridge at the end of the
Hohenzollern kanal

Past the gardens of the grand palace of Charlottenburg and on to the lock of the same name. I made a cup of soup to warm us up a bit. There was a large cruiser waiting for the lock. The skipper said about a quarter of an hour. Not long after two commercials came past and went into the lock, filling it, no room for us. I made a hot sandwich for lunch and we almost had time to eat it before the lock refilled and we got a green light. The lock at Charlottenburg had been rebuilt when we were here last in 2004/5 and had a very smart elevated cabin alongside the chamber, however, from the number of cameras surrounding the lock we suspected that this also was remote-controlled. 

Is there a lock keeper up there?
Charlottenburg lock.

We followed the cruiser into the lock and dropped down another 1.1m. The rest of the Spree running into Spandau is a bit grim and industrial made worse by the rain. Past the coal-fired power station next to the huge Siemens factory. The 24-hour mooring in Spandau below Spandau lock was totally empty. We tied up in the rain at 4 pm, two kilometres further South than where we started from this morning. As we finished mooring a Polish Bizon tug pushing two pans of coal for the power station came down Spandau lock. It moored opposite us while the tug unleashed its two pans and ran round to the other end and coupled up again – it was too long to make it round the bend on to the Spree so it did the simple trick of swopping ends. Mike said he was surprised they tied the pans up while they moved the tug, as we’d seen Polish tugs do the same thing with free pans on the flowing river Oder at Eisenhüttenstadt with a skill and timing that was remarkable.