Day 25, The Kiel Canal, 57nm

Sunday, 28 July

The Kiel Canal is the busiest man-made waterway and connects the South-West corner of the Baltic to the North Sea.

In 1864, William I of Prussia (soon to be Germany) ‘liberated’ the previously Danish duchies of Schleswig-Holstein

and they subsequently built this canal in the 1890s, bigger and wider than the previous Danish canal along the river Eider. Big enough for war ships and originally named Kaiser Willelm I canal, opened by Kaiser Willelm II in I895.

For us this is a good thing as it means it’s a major shipping channel with some very big container beasts coming through, which subsequently means all the bridges are tall enough for our 21m mast.

We very luckily only had to wait a few minutes to go into the entrance lock, (we had heard stories of 2 and a half hour waits) and there were around 13 yachts in our lock – no monsters at all – very nice! The water only went down 3 bricks.

It is a very sunny day and we had a pleasant motor – there are lots of swans and ducks.

Lots of ferries crossing the canal, who often kindly waited for us,

Bridges,

And some of these!

We originally planned to stay overnight half way, but after looking at the tide charts we decided to push on through and wait near the exit. When we come out into the Elbe, it’s best to be with the tide.

That’s a long 92km of canal. As it got straighter, Greta did a lot of the helming. Some of us had a snooze.

The marina at the end was pretty full, but the ever helpful Quattordici found us a berth further back up the canal and we strolled the 15mins into town for dinner.

We enjoyed a drink of special rum brought by Kevin

Unfortunately sleeping was a bit erratic because the big boats’ engines reverberated through the water – it sounds like very loud heavy rain or a fire and you can feel the throbbing. Now we know how the poor dolphins and fish feel when humans go by in these huge things!

Our gas bottle is empty, so Cuxhaven will be a service stop for us, we will need diesel too.