June 2022 – Part 2
At 8:30 we were up and ready to leave SRF after a seven week stay. Definitely longer than we had anticipated.
The company that painted SHENSI said they would let us have some extra paint to fix any future damage. They said they had dropped it off near our mooring in the yard, but try as we might, we couldn’t locate any tins, and eventually we gave up and decided to leave without it.
We managed to extricate ourselves from our backwater mooring and with great delight headed off to Leeuwarden. However, to our great consternation after a mere twenty minutes the high temperature alarm on the engine went off, and we quickly pulled over to identify the problem. After some thought, I felt it was probably because not all the air had been bled out of the cooling tanks when they were re-filled, and so once the temperature had dropped sufficiently I was able to add more water.
Whilst this was happening (and luckily for us) I again heard from the painter, this time with a photo of the paint he had delivered identifying exactly where he had left it, and so we returned to the yard … this time to discover that he had in fact delivered it to the wrong boatyard. Apologies all round and an hour later the paint was correctly re-delivered to us – unfortunately it was everything but the top coat which was the important stuff. What a waste of time.
Finally though we were on our way again, although due to the delays we decided to stop at Franeker, a delightful little town that we had previously visited.
Arriving in Franeker we found a nice mooring in the haven and. as it turned out, just across the water Andy and Nats on Ebenhaezer had also moored up, so we had a very pleasant evening together with them on Shensi having drinks and nibbles, and sharing stories. Next day we set off, again looking to stop at a Marrakrite mooring just beyond Leeuwarden but Shensi quickly started overheating and so we had to pull over to cool down before we could fix the issue and then we were ready to continue. Not an arduous task now that we know what to do, but hopefully we won’t suffer this too often.
Continuing on, we spotted a mooring alongside a cycle track – it turned out to have only been installed within the previous two weeks – and pulled over for the night. However we ended up staying there for four days because another boater advised us of a bridge closure a little further on, but we were quite happy there, so that wasn’t a problem. Coincidentally, we were right next to a lovely, fairly new tea garden which we had to support, and where the owner and his family were extremely friendly and welcoming, even inviting us inside to show us the renovations they were making to both their home and business.
By now we were retracing our steps from the previous year, and leaving ‘our’ tea garden mooring we continued up the Dokkumer-Ee to Dokkum, a lovely journey ending with an overnight mooring under one of the town’s windmills. Dokkum is a very picturesque town, very easy to walk around and relax in.
Sadly we moved away from Dokkum, but not too far away we stopped at a lovely island in the Lauwersmeer (one of the many man-made lakes formed when land was reclaimed from the sea). The weather had improved by this time and the beautiful sunshine made the visit idyllic.
We spent a couple of nights in Lauweersmeer before moving on again, this time onto the Reitdiep where we were lucky to stop at another out of the way location – a very secluded spot near farmland and no access to anywhere really! (Last time we were here we were visited by the local police, who had had to walk across the fields to get to us.)
Next day we headed toward another lovely town along the Reitdiep – Garnwerd – mooring (yet again) directly outside a delightful restaurant where we treated ourselves to a lovely meal (another opportunity to try out a chef’s surprise menu, which we thoroughly enjoyed). We spent three nights here and spent time wandering through the rural walks in and around Garnwerd, visit a small cafe which was exhibiting artwork of the local artschool and just relax and enjoy the area.
Leaving Garnwerd we continued along the Reitdiep for our pre-arranged mooring at Reitdiephaven on the periphery of Groningen, meeting up with Ella (the havenmeister) and a few others that we had got to know on our last visit. We had booked in for a week at the haven so that we could usefully use the time spent waiting for Amy to fly over from South America to join us for a while, and sort out various issues that needed dealing with (namely, replacement of Nicki’s residency card). We ended up staying for one extra night as we had got Amy’s arrival date slightly wrong, and moved into Groningen itself on 5th July where we were lucky enough to pick up a mooring at the Emmerbrug right in the centre.
