After a comfortable last night in the Netherlands, we set off south, and soon came up to the last set of Dutch locks – two massive parallel chambers raising us about a metre and a half. By great good luck we arrived in time to steam straight in, with no tricky waiting about in the wind.
These locks have vertically rising guillotine style doors. Here's the door coming down behind us. There was one big barge and another cruiser ahead of us, though there would have been room for several more.
We pressed on and crossed imperceptibly into Belgium, taking our first tentative steps into the port of Antwerp. Just then the computer-based navigation system – PC Navigo – crashed and had to be rebooted: all you need at a tense moment. However, we got through that and contacted the port authorities on the VHF to register our presence. You have to give lots of details about the boat and yourself, and are then assigned a so-called FD number. Fortunately the operator spoke good English.
We passed all sorts of docks. Some loading and unloading bulk cargoes, like this salt from Solvay:
Others focused on containers. We read up about the relatively recent invention of containers, and how they have transformed global shipping and, one might argue, become the basis for globalization.
The ocean-going ships loading and unloading made the barges that have terrorized us along the inland waterways seem rather small and inconsequential:
I had not realized that the port is so extensive. We sailed for around 12 kilometres, taking an hour and a half. Fortunately the nav system was working again. It would have been easy to get lost without it, and there were no signposts to help.
The port includes a number of dry docks, and it was intriguing to see these spare propellers lying on the quayside. Quite a size!
Finally we reached our port in the Willemdok, after a short wait for a lifting bridge to open, which gave us a chance to grab some lunch. The bridge opens on a fixed schedule, so that by the time it did, there were quite a few boats waiting.
But the dock is spacious and there was no problem finding a comfortable berth, thanks to directions from the friendly harbour-master, zipping about in his inflatable:
Once settled, we decided that the first task was the supermarket chore, and that we would leave culture and sight-seeing till tomorrow. We'll stay at least two nights, and possibly three.
No comments:
Post a Comment