Boating Holidays 2014 (2)

2014 Holidays Part 2

Motortjalk Australia

To Blokzijl

Overview Map

red line is for Part 1

Blue and Green Lines for Part 2 (This Blog)

31 August 2014 Sunday

1230 hours Drachten. After a morning of rain and a forecast of "clearing" we headed off from Drachten only to find ourselves in the middle of a thunderstorm for the best part of 2 hours.

Luckily, I had made "improvised" repairs to our wipers a couple of weeks before. Improvised in that the blades are difficult to find for a 40 year old system. A chap in an auto shop in Drachten ferretted around in an old box and found 2 blades "that might fit".. "You can have them for a couple of Euros as I'll never sell them anyway". A few alterations later they were made to fit...... and a reminder to keep an eye out for some more.

So, the rain didn't bother us too much as we went through Nes and Akkrum on our way to Heerenveen. We were in the Tjonger at exactly the 5 hour mark and half an hour later we were moored on an island, again with facilities provided by the Marrekrite Group. Sounds rather idyllic but we later discovered that the island should be named "Mosquito Island"; the steel hull was almost not enough....

Day 1

Mosquito Island

Day 2 New route through Kuinre to Ossenzijl

I found a piece on the of history of Kuinre here (in Dutch)

http://www.stellingwerven.dds.nl/index20e/dorpsleven/Kuinre/aansluiting.htm#.VAlXnfmSzN0

(Village Life Kuinre) I found it interesting that there was "much dissatisfaction" in 1939 - a town meeting raised the prospect of asking to become part of Friesland rather than Overijssel because roads, waterways and facilities were poor. They felt that they were in a "forgotten corner" of the province and that many families had more ties with Friesland at that time. It wasn't until 1973 that Kuinre joined with two other villages to form a Local Government area with better representation for all three.

This photo is of the lock at that time. It looks almost exactly the same now; note the curved walls which coincide with the return trip out of the village (see map). We enter along one side of the road then through the curved lock and leave on the other side of the road. ie a long "U" shape rather than leaving on the same route.