In our last fun filled instalment I left you at the lock. Well, once again our skipper managed to test the integrity of the hub and the length of my patience, but as dark was falling I felt we needed just to get on with it and left him to moor us. Again, probably a bad choice. Either every piece of concrete in Holland is highly magnetic and we have an aluminium boat with steel bow or the skipper is just, well, a bit sh&t…

We are in Lelystad harbour, and everything is shutting down. Showers are nowhere to be found so we make best use of the sinks and retire, very tired and somewhat annoyed…Sleep came slowly due to the cargo hold being hotter than a snakes a$$ in a wagon rut.

The next day again was a a 6am departure. I decided to ease us away from our berth. The steel is only about 6mm thick so there is a limit to how much damage Captain Crash could inflict before we really hurt the old girl. Out without a touch and enroute I hand over to the Master of Disaster since we are a good 500 yards from anything solid and let him take us forward.

We make good time to Amsterdam where we come across the bridge lock combo. I watch closely from over Bumper Car Billy’s shoulder as we wait for the bridge to open.

We ease through with some grace and I think he might have it sussed. Good-oh, I can take things a bit easier. We proceed to the smaller lock in central Amsterdam which is open to us and I head to the bow to tie up. Unfortunately the grace with which we passed through the dock had obviously used up all the Skipper’s aiming juice for that day and Captain Calamity repeated his pinball locking manoeuvre down the lock. Bow wedged and scraping on the starboard side and stern pretty much on the port side of the lock at 30 degrees. Tied up, I stomp with purpose back to the wheelhouse. I quietly and gently take over the wheel and say “It’s ok, I will get her out as I need the practice” whilst motioning for him to take over on the line I have just vacated Lock done and we slide out with ne’er a scratch…

The remainder of the trip was quiet through Amsterdam and beyond. Another lock dispatched with yours truly at the helm proved less damage inducing than Tragic Tony’s so I was now almost the permanent skipper, using the real skipper as an autopilot more than anything. We headed out to sea past Ijmuiden and down in the hopes of making Scheveningen by nightfall.

As we pulled into Scheveningen we had a difficult little spot with 2 plastic boats either side of a 90’ gap. Bear in mind Zee is a 75’ barge with no bow thruster and 130 tonnes, you only have to touch a plastic boat and it will go ‘poof’ in a cloud of fibreglass and money. Fortunately, the owner of one of them saw the impending insurance claim and quickly shuffled his yacht back 20’ or so to give us a healthy gap. He even helped us tie on our lines (more an act of self preservation I feel, but much appreciated). We tied up, my other half went to scope out showers (having learned from the previous night) while I shut down and attended to the ‘beast' with some more lube oil and a little TLC (in an engineering not amorous way).

My beloved returns with a couple of men in flak jackets with pistols and handcuffs. I see Douane on the jackets and realise they want to see our papers. About 50 minutes later, they leave after taking photos on their iPads of all our paperwork, I show the bill of sale showing the VAT has been paid, Kadaster (Dutch ships register) removal paperwork, UK Small Ships Registration, Insurance and pretty much every other piece of paperwork in my arsenal. They seem happy and intrigued by the barge so I do the gracious host thing and show them around, tell them what we intend to do with her etc etc. They leave, we pack for a shower and a meal, head out and eat. Scheveningen marina was a bustle and we found a nice little Italian place to settle down for a pizza and a beer.

I cannot tell you how good that shower felt after spending much of the day in the engine room. I believe I have been as disgusting but only after 6 days on the moors during survival training…

Day 3 (said in a Big Brother type Geordie accent) was another early start after a poor night’s sleep. we pushed off at about 6:20am and I kept Chuckles the Wonder Skipper on the mooring ropes. As we headed out to sea it was obvious there was a bit more chop and wind about. Now this dear reader is where it gets interesting for a few hours of my life. And by interesting I mean so stressful I wasn’t sure quite how it would end up.

We were pitching and rolling a bit and the booms started to work their way loose. In fact the mizzen mast behind the wheelhouse broke its line and started flapping around quite violently… I quickly headed to the foc’sle to get another line and descended the ladder to hear the gut wrenching sound of…. Water. Sloshing. In a supposedly watertight hull… Poop. Or words to that effect. It wasn’t just a little water either but a considerable 100-ish litres. I look around for where Chuckles had rammed the various large immovable objects but couldn’t find any obvious leaks. A quick taste test of the rusty brown water showed it was not salty. I surmised that the chop and rolling had emptied the old hot water tank which had been left in there as it was too heavy to lift out. It wasn’t heavy now as the contents were swilling around the floor. So we weren’t going to sink. I could deal with this later but you know the sinking feeling you get when something bad happens, that was a big one and it took a while for my stomach to ascend from somewhere around my ankles…

I took my life into my hands and stopped the mizzen flashing left and right in a ‘Gladiators’ type challenge to tie it down and prevent any further damage. I was somewhat worried given Chuckles was driving and if I had mistimed it and gone over the edge, the fact he was as deaf as a post and not really keeping the safety of the crew in mind, I very much doubt he would have noticed my missing until we docked that evening. All the other booms were tied down as a precaution and I went to check on the engine.

Whilst adding lube oil (it’s a 2 stroke so it does burn a fair amount of oil) and oiling the moving bits on the fuel pump and oil pumps I looked across at the fuel pre filter plastic bowl and to my horror couldn’t really see the plastic filter element. On closer inspection (having crawled over the flywheel gangway and burnt my arm on the 12” diameter exhaust) I could see the bowl was at lest 80% full of crud and gunk. The lumpy water from the day before and today had obviously dislodged all the cr@p in the tank and had entered the fuel system. The pre filter had done its job but given much longer the engine might choke and stop. I tried to loosen the retaining collar just to see if it was an easy ‘off’. Alas no joy. Several spanners later and I am scratching my head, no further along. I rifle through all my tools looking for something suitable and, as a last gasp, looked through the ‘Kromhout Tool Box’ (ie those spanners deemed too industrial and just plain ridiculously big to be included in any normal tool box). Lo and behold, I find a C spanner, no idea what for, but with a little ingenuity and some brute force (more of one than the other) the vice like grip of the retaining collar is loosened. Now I know I can get the filter off I tell Captain Crash, shut the engine down, reposition the flywheel with the scaffold pole (seriously…) for a hot start and turn off the diesel to the fuel lines. Huddled on my knees in about 50 degree heat, pitching and rolling gently with the swell, I release the pre filter bowl, gag on the smell of rotten diesel and gunk, flush the filter out and refit as best I can. The diesel is turned back on and flows into the bowl. I open the air bottle on the starter system and fire her up. She kicks into life and settles to a gentle idle at about 120 rpm.… Success. I emerge from the belly of the beast, pale, sweating profusely, burnt (literally), burnt out (figuratively) and utterly drained.

We make gentle progress and as I think we are set for the day we are suddenly intercepted by customs in a RIB. I am at the wheel at the time so a quick discussion with Captain Pugwash and they disappear, happy that we have already been inspected. The weather calms and we make better progress for a few hours. Suddenly we see another RIB closing rapidly. It’s customs again. There is no record of the previous inspection so we go through the whole process again.

Suffice to say there was a slight SNAFU. We discussed the problem openly and honestly with the Customs guys and they seemed to think there was no malice behind our oversight and once I showed them around, the plans for our boat and how it would be our home, they left, happy that we weren’t transporting huge quantities of cocaine or migrants or both. We made Flushing late afternoon on the Dutch coast, eased through the dock (where our replacement skipper watched us) and made our way to our mooring in the industrial/fishing area. A quick chat with the harbour chap and we had a free mooring for a few days due to its position.

We said “Au revoir” to Captain Calamity and I am sure I heard Zeelandia breathe a sigh of relief. We knew our new Skipper was waiting for us so we shut up shop, went for a shower and grabbed a bite to eat, met up with him near the station and welcomed him on board. Suffice to say our new skipper, Chris, having just finished a Tahiti to Seattle trip on a 44’ yacht was the epitome of experience, prudence and professionalism. I felt in safer hands and as we left him to his salubrious skipper’s accommodation and descended into the cargo hold.