Change of plan, need to buy Dutch Charts.

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Toutvabien

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Holiday starting today, changing plans at the last minute!!

Having looked at the weather f/c for the next couple of weeks Holland is looking like a preferable destination, (we were going west towards Alderney etc).

Issue is whilst I have passage charts for the N Sea, we do not have the charts for the Dutch Inland waterways, we are leaving from Brightlingsea tomorrow and I am fairly sure that French's will not have them.

Plan is to buy the charts for the inland waterways in our first Dutch harbour, which maybe Ijmuiden, will this work or will I be stuffed and find myself wandering around looking for chandlers who then will have to order the charts?
 
Toutvabien said:
Holiday starting today, changing plans at the last minute!!

Having looked at the weather f/c for the next couple of weeks Holland is looking like a preferable destination, (we were going west towards Alderney etc).

Issue is whilst I have passage charts for the N Sea, we do not have the charts for the Dutch Inland waterways, we are leaving from Brightlingsea tomorrow and I am fairly sure that French's will not have them.

Plan is to buy the charts for the inland waterways in our first Dutch harbour, which maybe Ijmuiden, will this work or will I be stuffed and find myself wandering around looking for chandlers who then will have to order the charts?
Click to expand...

buy them in the first port
electronic charts are a free download on the open cpn site
 
Thanks chaps, that is very useful, I have not done the Standing Mast Route since 1997 so I feel the need for some up to date information rather than relying upon my ailing memory. A few current charts will make all of the difference.
 
We made it through the canals from Amsterdam to Hellevoetsuis using the Standing Mast route books and our chartplotter. Now looking for a Bertha window to cross back to the East Coast. Intersting new marina in Amsterdam that is a lot bigger than Sixhaven with the best marina showers in the world. A lot of places in Netherlands seem to struggle with UK bank debit cards, we had several occassions when this caused minor problems in restaurants, marinas and shops.
 
Toutvabien said:
A lot of places in Netherlands seem to struggle with UK bank debit cards, we had several occassions when this caused minor problems in restaurants, marinas and shops.
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Yep, we found that anything with Visa or Mastercard on it was difficult to use. They still have Maestro over there. We ended up having to get cash out from ATMs (with the added penalty charged by UK banks!). At least there are plenty of those about though.
 
Toutvabien said:
A lot of places in Netherlands seem to struggle with UK bank debit cards, we had several occassions when this caused minor problems in restaurants, marinas and shops.
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Maybe the banking industry is already anticipating a UK withdrawal from Europe?
Seriously though, something's up with the banks.
- More and more UK ATMs are refusing my Belgian debit card. ATMs which had previously accepted the card for many years.
- On several occasions this year I have had my Belgian credit card (Master Card) refused in Britain. Last time was when I wanted to renew the car insurance. Had to use the wife's UK credit card.
- Early June the wife's UK credit card (Master Card) was refused in France. And again in Belgium two weeks ago.
- When the wife wanted to us her UK debit card in France it was refused once and charged a €2.50 'service charge' at another.
- Until February the wife was able to transfer funds to France using the bank's on-line banking facility, now she has to call in at the branch. When I transfer funds from Belgium to the UK, the wife's UK bank charges a cost 'to accept' the money and takes 4 days to do it. When I transfer money from Belgium to France it takes 1 working day and is free of charge.
 
Toutvabien said:
We made it through the canals from Amsterdam to Hellevoetsuis using the Standing Mast route books and our chartplotter. Now looking for a Bertha window to cross back to the East Coast. Intersting new marina in Amsterdam that is a lot bigger than Sixhaven with the best marina showers in the world. A lot of places in Netherlands seem to struggle with UK bank debit cards, we had several occassions when this caused minor problems in restaurants, marinas and shops.
Click to expand...
shops use the Dutch "chipnick" cards & not debit or CC.
service cards ok in atm`s cc in eateries
 
Although I don't remember specifically how well it worked in Holland, I now find that my Saga Visa credit card works apparently everywhere abroad, and is reputedly one of the lowest-cost cards as regards charges and exchange rates. In fact it is cheaper for me to draw cash out with it at an ATM abroad than using my Lloyds debit card.
 
Have had no problems at ATMs in NL, Germany! Denmark or Sweden (Visa cards). We tend to use cash when possible, ie draw out a large sum in local currency and use that rather than cards for most purchases. The chandlery, Herman's, I think, in IJmuiden certainly takes VISA payments. note that 2014 editions of the charts have not been published (at least that was what we were told in May) because the NL hydrographic office was short of money. but Herman's had the 2013 versions.
 
Try living in the place..! The banking system is like it was in the 80s. They dont do visa debit. If you want a visa card you need a credit card and that is an extra card from the bank and is only credit.
 
We had no problems with ATMs at all, however several places agreed that we could pay with British debit cards, both restaurants and marinas, but then found that the machine says NO. A 155Euro fuel bill saw us scraping the change off of the floor after the card was refused, having been told card payment no problem. In one case a restaurant owner had to take me on his scooter to another restaurant to get a cash advance. I don't think it is any particular card, as we have a selection on board all of which were tried at the more difficult locations, but rather how some businesses have their electronic payments organised.

Luckily we usually had enough folding to sort stuff but thought it worth sharing to avoid folk having some very long walks to the ATM.

The 20130 version of the charts are still current and for sale, we used the books of charts for Zeeland and the Standing Mast route and found that this was sufficent for the passage we did from Amsterdam down to Heloveotsluis, last time I did a similar trip we had a full set of charts but this time we were cheapskates.
 
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Travelling in Europe a lot I have found its essential to let your Credit card provider know in advance that you are travelling, otherwise transactions are stopped due to security checks. Now my banks used to it and I have very few problems with mastercard or visa debit or credit cards.

Whilst living there for six years we found the Dutch banking system far superior to the UK, they had PIN in the late 90's, however most of the banking transactions are electronic, we are now catching up.
 
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