From the woollies and fires to decks you could fry an egg on

The photo below was taken on May the 20th when the Kogge I wrote about in my last post came to the harbour. When we went to visit it, we were wearing jerseys and coats and that evening we lit the fire it was so cold. Well, the next day everything changed, quite dramatically.

Suddenly, the cold air turned to warm, the wind wafted in from the south instead of the north, the sun came out and the world around us decided it was summer.  By the weekend, we were sweltering. Woollies went back in the cupboard and I had to rummage in the depth of my tee-shirt drawer for the colourful short-sleeved ones I'd put away last September. 

I love warm weather, but this sudden switch from cold to hot was a bit of a shock to our systems and the rhythms of our life. All of a sudden, I've been having to get up early to walk Zoe and do jobs outside before the heat makes it difficult. Having had a salutary lesson about skin cancer quite recently, I have become a bit less blasé about working long hours in the full sun. That said, daughter #1 took advantage of my little garden to do some en plein air sketching. I loved the results, which you might just be able to see if you click on the picture.

Better late than never, too, the poppies have exploded with such profusion it's quite glorious. The previous week there'd just been a smattering of them, but now they are everywhere in profuse abundance. I adore poppies, so I always take photos of them. The trouble is, it's never easy to tell which year is which when I browse through my poppy pics later on, but I think I'll recognise this year's; it's such a bumper crop!

Poppies apart, the great panel job is progressing slowly. The downside of boat work is that the window of opportunity is always so small when you have nowhere to escape, scrape and paint under cover. It's a question of doing what you can when the weather gods permit. This week, we've managed to replace two panels, which is a major advance on the previous efforts when we only managed one due to the incessant rain. Even so, we could have done more had it not been quite so hot. I know. I'm never satisfied, but some transition between arctic and tropical would have been nice.

Panel removed. That's the easy part.

Daughter 1 assisting with the placing of the new panel today.
For most of this operation we were both in the boat!

"Licensed to drill," so quipped my girl :)

Another member of the family who prefers the cooler temps is Zoe. The heat exhausts her, especially as her coat grows so fast in summer too. The thing is, she doesn't lose much hair and even though she moults a little, it's not enough to get rid of her dense curls. I trimmed her quite substantially a little over a week ago, but it's already grown since then. Walks are now early in the morning and after dinner in the evening, but for the time in between she mostly resembles a rather plush furry rug. 

Someone is finished by the heat.

But then things will probably change again soon if the forecast is to be believed, so no doubt I'll be giving you an update from a rains-soaked Rotterdam, which is where I have to go next week. Have a good weekend allemaal and enjoy whatever the season is bringing you!

Replicas reap their own rewards

Today, we had an interesting visitor in our historic harbour in Sas van Gent where Vereeniging has her mooring. This particular visitor is not, strictly speaking, historic in the real sense, but is a replica of a very much older vessel. De Kamper Kogge is a wooden sailing ship built on the pattern of a 14th century original that was found wrecked and buried in the Flevopolder (see Flevoland on a map of the Netherlands), presumably when it was drained. A kogge was a ship built to transport goods and was introduced by a hanze, being a cooperative of traders during the middle ages (remember the Hanseatic League from your school history lessons?). Several cities on the Baltic Sea, as well as the Dutch Hanseatic city of Harderwijk, carry a kogge in the city coat of arms.  The design, interestingly was inspired by Viking ships.

The original kogge was found near Nijkerk at the bottom of
this map

This kogge took four years to build as a reconstruction. It was completed in 1998 and is used today to demonstrate what these ancient vessels were like. The Kamper Kogge travels around the country as a 'faring' museum exhibit and this year, our historic harbour has been honoured with a visit.

Since, for my sins, I am the secretary of our harbour committee, I felt duty and honour bound to go along and see it. Luckily for me, Koos was also keen because when we arrived with Zoe in tow, we found there were dozens of people flocking to the spot where it was moored along our quayside. I am not a fan of crowds, so it was Koos who braved the throngs to go on board and take a look.

Despite not being all that old as replicas go, the ship exudes the atmosphere of an ancient craft. Its planking is thick, heavy, dark wood and its shape distinctly bath shaped, but for all that, it is beautiful in its way with its sharp prow and stern. What impressed me most of all, though, was the keen interest so many local people were showing in it.  This enthusiasm certainly gives us hope that the heritage and culture of the Dutch waterways still matters to more than a handful of eccentrics like us.

Anyway, that's it for this week, allemaal! I hope you like the photos and I'll be back with some more news and views from our corner of the Netherlands soon.

Throngs of visitors both on board and waiting

Our chairman on the quayside chatting to someone on board

A useful information board for the visitors

I'm not sure what you'd call this crenellated
cubicle mounted at the stern, but I'm guessing
it was for the tillerman*

The Kamper Kogge at her bow

And again at her stern

The usual residents of the harbour

Looking across to the kogge from Vereeniging

 *See the comment from Shirley Read-Jahn below with reference to the crenellations.

Getting decked out

Since I came back from France, it's been fairly full on with both work and, well, other work. The work work is routine, but it keeps me pretty busy. The upside of it is I can do it anywhere, and if the course doesn't involve real time Zoom or Teams sessions, I can also work at a time of day that suits me. With the days growing longer and just a matter of weeks until the summer solstice, this flexibility gives me the possibility to work on my barge, weather permitting, of course.

That being the case, it was some months ago when daughter #1, Jodie, committed to helping me for a week in May. We made plans; or rather she did. She's better at that than I am. We decided we were going to start replacing the wooden panels along the side of Vereeniging as they were rotting to the point of no recovery. I last replaced them about ten years ago, as I recall, but that's the thing with wood. No matter how much you prime, prepare and paint them, they inevitably deteriorate in such a wet climate.

It all started last Friday when we went west to the town of Oostburg to buy materials we couldn't seem to find closer to home. Oostburg is roughly 40 kms from our village and it has a substantial and well-stocked Gamma, the hardware store we mostly use. However, having loaded up the roof-rack with large sheets of rather light insulation, we noticed the wind had picked up so we decided to take the by-ways rather than the highways to get home – slower, we told ourselves, being the safer option.

This decision proved to be a blessing. Despite having bought two slats to act as support for the long sheets of insulation we'd bought, and even though we'd strapped it on well, it wasn't long before we noticed the insulation was flapping in the wind like huge birds ready to take off. We had to pull into a lay-by sharpish to prevent them from lifting off and away in a manner akin to a magic carpet. Luckily, we had a spare strap, so we looped it around the ends of the sheets at the front end of the car and tied them tightly to the wooden slats. Situation rescued, if not totally secured, we headed off again, but neither of us could help peering out of the window to keep an eye on our flighty purchases.

As it turned out, the back road we took was exceptionally pretty and I'm now sorry I was too worried about the safety of our load to think of taking photos. It was pastoral Holland at its burgeoning spring best and we enjoyed the trip when we weren't keeping an anxious eye on the roof.

On Saturday, however, we decided to postpone the start of the great panel job until we'd painted the decks, a job I'd not succeeded in doing last year and was much needed. Over the weekend, we both scraped, sanded and painted like dervishes because we knew that rain was forecast for Monday. Luckily, we managed it all, as the very pleasing results show below.

Scraping the flaking paint off was the first job

Then out came the sander and the extension cable

Here I am scraping the engine room

First stage: the roef or back cabin complete 

Doesn't it look nice?

Then came the engine room roof. Easier to paint because there’s less of it.

And finally, the foredeck, which was the biggest job of all

The foredeck in glorious close-up

Phase two has begun. We've removed one of the panels and cut its replacement, but it still needs prepping and painting. Rain has delayed the next step and both my able assistant and I have had to work today, so we're hoping to get on with it tomorrow. Fingers crossed that my next post will reveal a set of smart new panels, but nothing is guaranteed when we are at the mercy of the fickle Dutch seasons. Today, I spent the cold, wet morning marking assignments, but I did manage a few touch-up jobs on board this afternoon, which included some more prepping with anti-rust treatment, as well as hacking down , sorry, strimming the knee-high grass and nettles on and next to the path leading to my barge. 

However, the best, as they say, is yet to come, so I will provide more pics next time.

For now, allemaal, keep everything crossed for us that it doesn't rain for the rest of the week, and enjoy yours wherever you are.