Wednesday 27th July 2016

Playing around I found a photo of the marina at Ijmuiden - the green track marks our track in and the red x is roughly where we were moored.

Yesterday we left Ijmuiden and travelled along the North Sea Canal to Amsterdam. Not a very long journey but as we missed one locking in (it was full) we had to moor up and wait for the next which turned out to be an hour later.

We had done a walking reccy on our travels a couple of days before, just to check the lay of the land.

This is the lock we would be going through, to the left is a slightly bigger one and further to the left are two even bigger ones where ships go through.

Although we were the first boat to be waiting for the lock I think we were the sixth to go in. All in all there were about 18 boats in the lock. We could see some were turned away because the lock was full.

The only snag with sailing two handed is you don't always get time to take photos. I try to have the point and shoot camera ready, but we don't often have time to get the 'good' camera out. Whilst in the lock there was great excitement as what I can only describe as a super yacht went into the lock next door. It's mast was enormous but as we were in the lock we couldn't see the rest of it.

If you look carefully at this picture you will see two small horizontal lines. The one on the left shows the top of the mast of the super yacht and the one on the right shows the top of the mast of a normal yacht which is next to it in the lock. Huge difference.

We had an uneventful trip down the North Sea Canal, it was amazing to see the size of various cargo ships, barges etc on this waterway. The South Yorkshire Navigation it certainly isn't. It was only 12nm and only took about two and a half hours, it was very hot throughout the journey as being made dogs or Englishmen it was mainly in the midday sun.

The Marina came on us rather quickly and we had to swiftly get to the other side of the canal - John saw a gap and went for it. The next interesting bit was getting into the correct bit. As we had pre booked, I phoned through and they gave us our berth number - it was just finding how to get there. We went past this restaurant, it looked rather nice so needless to say we ate there last night. Excellent food and excellent service. 

These rather sweet cygnets came to see us as soon as we moored up.

Everyone who comes to this marina must take a picture of the bath. Not only is an actual bath a novelty but it's the situation of this bath and the window.

Luckily there is a button you can press to make the window opaque - which I did as you wouldn't want to frighten the locals!

However once in the bath - making sure nothing of me was visible I flicked the switch again to take a photo from the bath looking out.

The bath in the other room actually overlooks the restaurant tables you can see on the bottom right. That could put someone off their meal. 

Today we took the free ferry into Amsterdam and mooched round - we did our 'steps'. We will return tomorrow and do a few museums etc. Tonight we will have a quiet night and eat in. We might even start watching one of the box sets we bought for the trip. As yet we don't seem to have had time to watch anything tonight. The weather has turned rather windy and rainy so we are pleased we are not on the move.