Dutch sailing barge

Alicatt

Well-known member
Joined
6 Nov 2017
Messages
4,349
Location
Eating in Eksel or Ice Cold in Alex
Visit site
Well worth a look is the recent video on YouTube from Sailing Magic Carpet. They are taken out for the day on a beautiful traditional Dutch sailing barge.
Was watching it and they passed where we stayed and went for a canal cruise on a little sloop from last September at 10:39 into the video on their way from Lemmer to the Fluessen island
I had a most enjoyable day looking at all the Lemsteraak in the basin at Lemmer.

Friesland.jpg
We were based at Koundam (just to the right of where it says Paardenhoek) between the Morra and Fluessen lakes, you can see on the above chart the island in Fluessen where they tied up.

_DSC3420sm.JPG


_DSC3422asm.JPG
Going up the same canal from Morra but we are heading into the marina just ahead to port.

_DSC3284sm.JPG

Lemmer town centre the Lemsteraak LE50 was built in 1901, and we ate at the restaurant on the other side Lange Piet, really good food there, and a good view of the boats queuing up to get through the opening bridge just behind the camera.
 

Gary Fox

N/A
Joined
31 Oct 2020
Messages
2,027
Visit site
My 1895 Hollandse Tjalk, she's a gaff cutter, with wire running rigging. 40 tons, rivetted wrought iron. Made in Papendracht to carry dyke-building materials.
The dry-dock, in Arctic Road, Cowes, is a decade older.
Yes the jib is wrong, it's a hand-me-down tops'l from the TS Winston Churchill.
Motor is a Gardner 4LW, a mere 70 years old.
She's been in dock to fettle the stern gear, a reliable motor is fairly vital on a big iron boat; I'm confident manuovering under sail in a yacht, but the tjalk has the potential to do some serious damage if you cock it up, and she doesn't exactly turn on a sixpence :p

IMG_4566.jpgIMG_4618.jpghIMG_4619.jpg
 
Last edited:

Laminar Flow

Well-known member
Joined
14 Jan 2020
Messages
1,843
Location
West Coast
Visit site
Was watching it and they passed where we stayed and went for a canal cruise on a little sloop from last September at 10:39 into the video on their way from Lemmer to the Fluessen island
I had a most enjoyable day looking at all the Lemsteraak in the basin at Lemmer.

View attachment 109895
We were based at Koundam (just to the right of where it says Paardenhoek) between the Morra and Fluessen lakes, you can see on the above chart the island in Fluessen where they tied up.

View attachment 109896


View attachment 109897
Going up the same canal from Morra but we are heading into the marina just ahead to port.

View attachment 109898

Lemmer town centre the Lemsteraak LE50 was built in 1901, and we ate at the restaurant on the other side Lange Piet, really good food there, and a good view of the boats queuing up to get through the opening bridge just behind the camera.
This was our stomping ground for some five years when we kept our boat in Oppenhuizen near Sneek. From here we traveled everywhere we could keep up the mast including the two little islands shown in the video.

The boats shown were not barges, but Lemsteraaks and these were originally fishing boats. The Lemster model is considered to be one of the best sailers as they had to be able to tack out of the Lemster bay against the prevailing winds. Fishing types, I was told, are recognizable by their long, narrow leeboards as compared to the Tsalks, Botters and Skutjes that have round ones. There are many different types of craft, getting them wrong or mispronouncing their names will get you the rolly eye at best or else it might potentially spark an international incident; get it right and the owner will happily show you the entire boat from keel to truck.

Don't let that blunt bow fool you, these boats can really move. Our Dutch friend told us how a Lemster bested his Boreal 43 by outfooting and outpointing him to weather; when it was time to bear off the thing just disappeared over the horizon. In Friesland, the Skutjes (these are indeed barges) are raced near professionally with local towns/regions sponsoring "their" boat; don't try to find anyone in the street, never mind bother the harbour master when the races are on.

I've never met a people that were so connected to the water and boating as the Dutch. Accordingly, they lavish much time and love on their boats and no matter how well kept you think yours might be, compared to a Dutch boat it will look like a derelict.
 

Alicatt

Well-known member
Joined
6 Nov 2017
Messages
4,349
Location
Eating in Eksel or Ice Cold in Alex
Visit site
A couple of the barges that passed by us quite regularly, the Grote Beer seems to be based just beside de Kuilart where we were staying

In a small village near Sneek they found this boat buried in the silt at the bottom of a canal it was dated back to the 12th century
_DSC3644sm.JPG
The boat is in the Sheepvaart Museum Sneek, my wife and myself spent far too much time in there and want to go back and see more of it, a lot of the audio video material was offline due to the covid restrictions.
Home (friesscheepvaartmuseum.nl)
 

Gary Fox

N/A
Joined
31 Oct 2020
Messages
2,027
Visit site
Fries is quite readable, even I can tell it means, 'traditional flat bottomed boats for hire'.
The accent is very hard to even acquire, let alone master.
They are our close cousins in language, especially to those English whose ancestry is on the N.Sea coast.. the saying goes: ' Good butter and good cheese' is good English, and good Fries!'
 

JumbleDuck

Well-known member
Joined
8 Aug 2013
Messages
24,167
Location
SW Scotland
Visit site
Fries is quite readable, even I can tell it means, 'traditional flat bottomed boats for hire'.
The accent is very hard to even acquire, let alone master.
I have rarely found any Dutch (different language, I know) which I couldn't read as a mixture of German and Scots, with occasional English. And some Geordie ... it took me a while to work out that "gooi" is the same word as "hoy".

Pronunciation is a different matter, of course, but I haven't yet met anyone in the Netherlands who was rude about my attempts with Dutch. When I retire, soon, I plan to study the language properly. I did plan to go and live there but of course that's not an option now.

They are our close cousins in language, especially to those English whose ancestry is on the N.Sea coast.. the saying goes: ' Good butter and good cheese' is good English, and good Fries!'

The usual version is "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Fries / Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Fries." According to Sam Llewellyn in "Shadow in the Sands", a hundred years ago Norfolk English and Fries were mutually understandable, with a lot of trade and intermarriage between the two areas.
 

oldmanofthehills

Well-known member
Joined
13 Aug 2010
Messages
4,698
Location
Bristol / Cornwall
Visit site
Fries is quite readable, even I can tell it means, 'traditional flat bottomed boats for hire'.
The accent is very hard to even acquire, let alone master.
They are our close cousins in language, especially to those English whose ancestry is on the N.Sea coast.. the saying goes: ' Good butter and good cheese' is good English, and good Fries!'
My multi lingual hungarian/austrian empire mother said all germanic languages were eventually comprehensible to her and english was easier cause it didnt pretend to be regular.

Listening to flemish folk I often think they are speaking english till I realise I dont know their words - I dont have my mothers facility
 

JumbleDuck

Well-known member
Joined
8 Aug 2013
Messages
24,167
Location
SW Scotland
Visit site
Listening to flemish folk I often think they are speaking english till I realise I dont know their words - I dont have my mothers facility

Dutch from a distance sounds very much like Scots - the rhythms and cadences are very similar. I have been told that during WW1 soldiers speaking of Doric (north-eastern Scots, least affected by the damn Normans) and locals speaking of Flemish found they could converse quite happily.

Fortunately for me, most Dutch people speak better English than most of the people I meet in Tesco's.

Many years ago I ran a residential activity for children which included a coupel of Dutch children aged about 12 or so. After a couple of days one of them came to see me and said, as closely as I can remember "I am very sorry that we don't speak better English, but we have only been studying the language for two years and so we have limited vocabulary and our knowledge of grammar is not as extensive as it should be." Meanwhile the Britsih 12 year olds grunted a bit. The Dutch children taught me to say "Turug naar het kasteel" (we were staying in one) and laughed themselves politely silly at my attempts to say "geit".

A Dutch academic acquaintance of mine think that the Netherlands may switch to English as its official language quite soon. It seems unlikely, but his argument is that smaller languages are doomed and so they might as well bite the bullet. I think there is also a suggestion that with Britain gone, a mainland EU country with English as its official language could do very well.
 

AntarcticPilot

Well-known member
Joined
4 May 2007
Messages
10,010
Location
Cambridge, UK
www.cooperandyau.co.uk
Dutch from a distance sounds very much like Scots - the rhythms and cadences are very similar. I have been told that during WW1 soldiers speaking of Doric (north-eastern Scots, least affected by the damn Normans) and locals speaking of Flemish found they could converse quite happily.



Many years ago I ran a residential activity for children which included a coupel of Dutch children aged about 12 or so. After a couple of days one of them came to see me and said, as closely as I can remember "I am very sorry that we don't speak better English, but we have only been studying the language for two years and so we have limited vocabulary and our knowledge of grammar is not as extensive as it should be." Meanwhile the Britsih 12 year olds grunted a bit. The Dutch children taught me to say "Turug naar het kasteel" (we were staying in one) and laughed themselves politely silly at my attempts to say "geit".

A Dutch academic acquaintance of mine think that the Netherlands may switch to English as its official language quite soon. It seems unlikely, but his argument is that smaller languages are doomed and so they might as well bite the bullet. I think there is also a suggestion that with Britain gone, a mainland EU country with English as its official language could do very well.
Back in the mid 70s, I was on a seismic survey vessel working in Dutch waters - we sailed out of Den Helder. We could receive Dutch television, and found it a useful resource - ALL the programs except current affairs and news were in English with Dutch subtitles. I've yet to meet a Dutch person whose English wasn't pretty much as good as my own.
 

JumbleDuck

Well-known member
Joined
8 Aug 2013
Messages
24,167
Location
SW Scotland
Visit site
Back in the mid 70s, I was on a seismic survey vessel working in Dutch waters - we sailed out of Den Helder. We could receive Dutch television, and found it a useful resource - ALL the programs except current affairs and news were in English with Dutch subtitles. I've yet to meet a Dutch person whose English wasn't pretty much as good as my own.
They didn't dub Van der Valk into Dutch?
 

Other threads that may be of interest

Top