Amersfoort

The morning started out drizzly and cold as we headed through the first bridge and up the River Eems. The first boat we passed was an enormous barge headed downriver at quite a lick, in reverse, as the river is too narrow for them to turn around. They seem to go backwards just as well as they go forwards. We stayed well clear. 

Moored up in Amersfoort.

The lower reaches of the river are undergoing works on the banks and dykes and there were dredgers and work barges busy busy for a couple of km's, narrowing the already narrow river to a single file. We were quite grumpy that NONE of them were displaying the correct day-time signals (i.e. combination of black balls and cones for "work vessels unable to manouevre pass on the side of the cones"). Now, normally this would not bother us in the slightest, except we had just had to spend weeks learning all this crap to pass the ICC test.

A very friendly chap lifted the last two bridges into town for us and then met us at the quay. Turns out he is the havenmeester and he presented us with a nice shopping bag full of maps, bumpf, yachting mag, haven guide etc (and a packet of mints, for some reason). The habour fee for a boat our size is 11 euros, water, electricity and wifi included, AND to my delight a laundry with washer and dryer included in the harbour fees. Now that is a good deal! As Skip had left a bag of dirty laundry from LAST year (!!!), I made that my first stop and set it all going while we put the bikes ashore and took a ride around town. Very attractive old town center with the usual modern outskirts.

The Waterpoort into the old town. The boat is 100m away. And, yes, As it was grey and miz when we arrived, I pinched this picture off the internet.

There is an Ikea close by and as we were looking for some knobs to match the existing ones (which we knew came from ikea) we headed the couple of kms out of town to find it. Skip attached our new tablet/phone brackets onto the handlebars which Santa had brought us (thanks Allan!) so we found it with no problem.  We also came home with some cushions for the aft deck and a pot plant for the cockpit.

By now the sun was out and we spent a glorious couple of hours on the aft deck watching the scene while enjoying some smoked mackrel and a Kasteel Triple, which turned out to have 11% alcohol (for beer!!!!), so we stuck to one.

BBQ for dinner, natch.