Wide Kiel Canal
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Rex with his Towel Out Waiting for Diesel
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Blues skies welcomed us in the morning, and of course the wind was on the nose again. Our first priority in the morning was to fill up with diesel; we were dangerously low. As with most canals, we were only allowed to motor along it for the entire length. We made sure we set off early to the fuel station which was only 400m along the canal. To claim our first place in the queue, we followed the time honoured German tradition and placed a towel by the pump. At the duly appointed opening time of 8am, an official turned up and failed to notice the British stab at humour, and we proceeded to take on 350 litres of fuel.
Since we ran out of milk a day ago, I asked the official if there was anywhere along the canal where we could buy milk. His response of, "I only sell diesel", was later qualified by him stating that we could buy milk at Rendsburg which was two thirds of the way along the canal, or at Kiel itself. We resigned ourselves to black coffee and lemon tea for the rest of the day.
Rendsburg Transporter Making a Dash for it
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We continued our journey along the 97km canal. This is a big canal, 164m wide and 12m deep. It wound its way through delightful countryside with the occasional scattering of sheep and cattle. The trees on each bank were a dense mass of shades of green, and full of shrill bird song; I even heard my first cuckoo of the year. The paths along the banks seemed to be a paradise for walkers, cyclists and anglers, many exchanging friendly waves with the yachts. All manner of ships plied the route, from small yachts, through numerous barges and container ships, up to huge cruise ships. A submarine passed by us at one point.
The Kiel Canal or Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (North Sea-Baltic-Canal) is the shortest link between the North Sea and the Baltic. It avoids around 460 extra kilometres that would be accrued by going around the Jutland Peninsula. The original canal was built in 1784, but was upgraded in 1895 to accomodate the increasing number of larger vessels.
Rendsburg Transporter
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As we travelled its length we were never far from one of the numerous tiny ferries that plied back and forth across the canal. Every so often we would pass under a road or rail bridge that towered high above us. To reach these dizzy heights, the road or rail inclines started kilometres away from the bridges. Indeed at Rendsburg, which boasted the longest rail bridge in Europe, the rail incline was a complete circular section of track. Rendsburg was also unique that it had a vehicle and pedestrian transporter slung by cables below the 40m high rail bridge, the transporter traversing the canal a few metres above the water level. This was obviously now a tourist attraction. All in all, I found this an enjoyable 10 hour journey.
We left the sheltered canal waters and entered the choppy Kieler F�rde and sailed down to a marina in Kiel that we had already identified, D�sternbrook. It was night time as we entered the first basin of the marina. The moorings were all box moorings, basically tie up to two posts at the stern and a couple of bow ropes on the pontoon. This was no easy matter, the boxes were huge and obviously meant for larger boats, and our stern ropes were too short. After a good deal of frantic rope searches and bowline tying we moored up. Our boat was a midget compared to our peers.
We ate well at a good local restaurant that night, savouring a couple of beers to boot. I managed to convince the waitress, a pleasant Russian girl, to sell us three litre cartons of milk too, an added bonus.
Submarine in the Canal
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