Berlin-Amsterdam 1

Darryl met me at Tegel airport in Berlin. Several hours later we were off to the Potsdammer Yacht Club to observe the Ansegeln, or "sailing out", that celebrates the beginning of the boating season (left below). The next day we had the pleasure of spending most of the day with high school classmate and friend Wolfgang Rommel (center left), who is now a lawyer living in Hamburg. At right below are pictures of my bunk and the doorway from the cabin to the cockpit of our sailboat Moira (details)

We left Berlin on April 5th with beautiful weather. The send-off party included Darryl's wife, Barbara, and some of their Berlin friends (left). Barbara is at far left in the photo. A friend who traveled with us the first day took the photo of Darryl (red shirt) and me as we were leaving. At center right is the Glienicke Bridge (also known as the "Freedom Bridge"), where a number of Cold War spy exchanges between East and West were made. Francis Gary Powers was one of the most prominent of these. The sunset at Wusterwitz, where we spent the first night, is shown at right below.

On day two of our trip we encountered the Schleuse (lock) at Hohewarte, which had a change of level of 19.5 meters, greatest of the 35 locks that we transited. The photo at left shows the entrance, and the next one the interior of the lock. At the far end is a large freighter that preceded us into the lock. At each lock we had to secure the boat with lines to tie-points in the lock, and move them to new tie-points as we went up or down. Hohewarte was an exception, where a movable tie point allowed us to connect only once and rode up with us. About a kilometer past the lock we crossed the Wasserstrassekreuz (literally "Water Street Crossing"), an aqueduct that carried the Middle Land Canal across the Elbe river. In the right-hand photo you can see the Elbe river some 60 feet below us through the railing along the aqueduct.

There were many interesting sights along the canals including mistletoe clumps growing in a number of trees (left), bicyclists (next), and hikers as well as road traffic. Most nights we stayed at marinas or yacht clubs ... one of the prettiest was at Heidanger, center right. Moira's mast and sails had been left in Berlin because of potential clearance problems and the difficulty moving around deck in the locks if we were traveling with a lowered mast. We motored at around 6 to 6.7 knots most of the time. The right photo shows Darryl filling the diesel tanks.

The first "filling station for boats" that I had ever seen is at left below. On May 9 we stopped in Luebbecke, not far from Osnabrueck, where we were joined for dinner by friends Wolfgang and Mecki Dreuse (second from left), whom we had met during a 2003 trip to the historic Busdiecker family home "Am Bussdieck". The visit was notable because the Dreuse's were leaving the next day for a vacation in India. Many times we saw mirror-smooth water and fields of Raps (yellow) and other crops. At far right is one of the smaller locks that looked very much like a roadside park.