All in the interests of community spirit

It's that time of year in the Netherlands when everyone with young children gets inordinately excited over the arrival of a very ancient, white-bearded bishop from Spain. This gentleman is known as Sinterklaas and his purpose in life is to travel around the country on a horse dispensing gifts to good children and admonishments to the naughty ones. His whole trip culminates on December the 5th when the children receive their gifts on pakjesavond, after which he disappears back to Spain again. How he does this has never been made clear to me, but his arrival by steam boat is always a big event.

Sinterklaas turns up every year in different cities around the country (he's clever like that 😉) and in our area, he comes to the harbour where Vereeniging has her mooring. In fact, this year, he wanted to use Vereeniging's gangplank, so we were asked if we'd move our old lady in time for the grand reception yesterday. In the interests of community spirit, and all, we were happy to oblige and on Friday, in the most perfect conditions (meaning no wind at all–a very rare event), we fired up the engine.

Vereeniging, with Koos's expert help made a perfect manoeuvre and a full turn to land gently against the side of our neighbour, thus leaving a space free for his venerable and ancient lordship to disembark.

Seen from the other side

She's coupled up to the neighbour

 

leaving the gangplank vacant

Just a nice view. Well, I think so!

Our move left the way clear for a tugboat to arrive bearing his nibs, Sinterklaas. To our surprise, the good bishop has moved into the modern era and far from using a traditional steam tug for his tranport, his ship was a rather modern commercial tug, such as we often see working on the waterways here. Anyway, the kids didn't care and traditionalists merely frowned because the crowds that gathered to greet the saintly man were full of good cheer.

Koos went along to take some photos for the record and managed to capture the lively scenes on the shore in some sunshine. As you can see, everyone had a jolly time and the event was well attended.

Today, with all the fun over, we decided to move Vereeniging back to her spot again. Well, that was a different story and something of a comedy of errors. We decided, for some reason best known to neither of us, not to use the engine and just to haul her over with ropes, which wasn't the best decision we've ever made...

Long saga short, the wind was blowing hard and one of us...ahem...forgot to attach a retaining rope to the barge we were lying alongside, so with only one rope at her stern to pull her across, her bow was blown round and out into the harbour. Pulling it back in would have put the god, Atlas, to the test, let alone two humans of a certain age, one with dodgy knees and the other with a rickety wrist. That 'ten-minute job' ended up being nearly two hours even with the help of a kind soul who happened to be watching and ended up taking much of the strain. Of course, we won in the end, and we both realised that hindsight is about the only good thing we could have taken from it, especially as we were both shattered by the time we'd sorted all the ropes out and tidied the decks.

Still, Vereeniging is back where she belongs facing out into the canal, which means she's ready to depart for any new adventures. It won't be until next year, of course, but let's hope the winter won't be a long one. Our brief spuddle on Friday got those faring juices going again.

Have a lovely week allemaal, and I hope the weather's kind to you wherever you are.