Wednesday 30th April 2014 Spandau to Schmergow 37.8kms no locks

Tug and pan. Spandau

11.4°C Grey clouds but bright first thing, sunny and getting hot later. We were woken by the rudder clanging as something went past fast at 5.30 am. Must remember to lash the tiller with a fender between the rudder and the stern to stop it making noises. We set off from Spandau early, around 8.15 am, after a police launch had gone past with a tug pushing an empty pan following it, heading south down the lake. I decided that as we may not get a good Internet connection later that I would stay indoors and get the blog up to date, starting with putting

Fire dept boat. R Havel Spandau

seventy photos through Paintshop before editing yesterday’s log and blogging it. The washing machine was running too. Mike said the big lake, Wannsee, was virtually empty, he’d never seen it so quiet. One police boat had come up from the the direction of Zehlendorf, but had ignored us and gone past, then a Kuhnle hireboat went past hugging the left bank of the lake. The only other traffic was two commercials as we went into the narrows between the main lake and a smaller one at Sacrow. Through more narrows into the Jungfern see, now heading northwest. I took Mike a cuppa and sat out as we went through the building works

Start of Sacrow-Paretzer kanal

that is still (it was like that last September) surrounding the start of the Sacrow-Paretzer kanal. Mike had slowed down to follow a Bromberger (now Berlin registered) through the restricted one-way working for commercials. Shortly after we were overtaken by a large chartered cruiser and police launch 4 (they’re all numbered, one day we’ll have spotted the full set!) went past in the opposite direction, crew smiling and waving. At last it was quiet on the wide canal, only us and a few fishermen. At KP25.5

Signs by the building works on the Sacrow-Paretzer

they were starting to build another new road bridge, 200m further on there was a shiny new rail bridge. As we crossed the little Schlänitz see we passed the tug we’d seen first thing, now minus the empty pan, going in the opposite direction. The A10 crosses the canal and boy was it noisy from all the traffic thundering overhead. Different world down here! The underside of the bridge was red rusty, looked like it had never had a coat of paint. Goat willow trees were dropping a blizzard of fluff on to the breeze, it looked like snow. Glückauf, one of the lastkahns (German equivalent of the

Hitch-hiker!

French péniche and Belgian spits, 38m x 5.20m) that we saw working here (there were only three, everything else was much bigger) when we were first here in 1999 was moored before the Ketzin ferry, its skipper must be retired now. Still looking very smart. Took photos of the cable ferry hauling cars across the Havel lake. A little further on downstream we spotted our first Dutch boat, an empty 80m (1,175 tonnes) called Maro from Maasbracht, it was tied to dolphins by a long narrow island of trees in the middle of the Havel. A speedboat came past heading upriver, then a load of cruisers (someone must have let them out) two went

The tug that passed us before we set from Spandau.

past, the speedboat went back downriver, the charter boat we’d seen earlier was setting off from Ketzin and appeared at the edge of the chain of islands. Three more cruisers went past, all heading upriver, the last one was a big one towing a speedboat behind it. A honey buzzard was hunting over fields to our right and a black kite was circling. We turned left into a narrow channel around the south side of Mittelbruch island (there are four big islands in the Havel just downstream of Ketzin and the channels through them are interesting, except the wide main one through the middle for all the big stuff. There was a fisherman fishing across the entrance.

Car ferry at Ketzin.

He smiled, said hello and reeled several lines in - we dropped out of gear to avoid catching any of his lines. He was having competition from a tern who was fishing close by – it left as we went past. The sign at the entrance said it was 0.6m deep, wrong again. A nice winding channel with reed beds and warblers singing loudly, a black kite was hunting for fish down low (but too far away for a photo). We emerged into the eastern end of the Havel lake called Trebelsee and went gently, as it wasn’t very deep, across to the old basin at Schmergow. The wind was blowing a little too much for reversing into the basin (and there was another fisherman on

Moored in the old basin on Trebelsee nr Schmergow

the corner) so we turned around and went in bows first and tied carefully along the left hand concrete wall; carefully as there were old bolts protruding which once secured baulks of timber fendering along the walls. With strategically placed fenders and tyres the hull was protected from scrapes. It was 2 pm. Mike decided to go and get the car from Schmöckwitz. He had planned to collect it Thursday, which is a holiday here, May Day, but we had arrived earlier than planned as we had set out early. No need for a plank as the grassy quay is almost cabin height. I got on with the log and photos and was amazed to find we had Internet on 3G. All mod cons! Mike sent me a text to say he’d arrived OK at Schmockwitz on the moped after being pulled in for a documents check by two policemen on big BMW motorbikes near Potsdam!