The Solent to The Kiel canal

[BelleSerene]

I am interested in this thread as we are planing to go to the Baltic this year. However, I don't have any charts or pilot books that cover East of Dover so passage planning is difficult. What pilot books are recommended to get me from the Hamble through the Kiel Canal? I draw about 2.3m and I may be single handed so I don't want to do really long legs of I can help it. if I can find some crew then obviously it will be easier.

Brian Navin’s the man. I had his N Sea Passage Pilot, which covered I think up to Den Helder. But for God’s sake get the 2018 edition (I had an older one) and also the latest charts, as much of the shipping channels and wind farms on the Dutch side if the N Sea have changed recently. I also had his Cruising Guide to the Netherlands, and I’m told that his Cruising Guide to Germany and Denmark is excellent too.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Brian-Navin/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n:266239,p_27:Brian Navin

The Navin pilot books are excellent for routing on the tides.

Did I mention to get the latest charts? You’ll be in trouble if you don’t.

Like you, I was single-handed. Towards Kiel, I ended up doing Hamble - Chi - Dover - Scheveningen - Den Helder - Terschelling/ Vlieland - Norderney - (would have done Helgoland but for a storm) - Cuxhaven (stormbound for a bit) - Brunsbüttel - couple of stops up the Canal because I was getting lazy and enjoying a nice broad reach; I’m sure the engine was actually, um, on in the canal as I know the motoring cone was up - Kiel. My longest passage on the way up was Dover - Scheveningen which took me 25 hours but should take you a bit less. After Kiel... gissa call for a drink in the club and I’ll tell you.

FWIW, I’d have spent much more time on the way though in the Frisian Islands if I’d had it, but wanted to get over to the E of Sweden so the family could fly out and sail around there a bit together.

 

[Beelzebub]

Brian Navin’s the man. I had his N Sea Passage Pilot, which covered I think up to Den Helder. But for God’s sake get the 2018 edition (I had an older one) and also the latest charts, as much of the shipping channels and wind farms on the Dutch side if the N Sea have changed recently. I also had his Cruising Guide to the Netherlands, and I’m told that his Cruising Guide to Germany and Denmark is excellent too.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Brian-Navin/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n:266239,p_27:Brian Navin

The Navin pilot books are excellent for routing on the tides.

Did I mention to get the latest charts? You’ll be in trouble if you don’t.

Like you, I was single-handed. Towards Kiel, I ended up doing Hamble - Chi - Dover - Scheveningen - Den Helder - Terschelling/ Vlieland - Norderney - (would have done Helgoland but for a storm) - Cuxhaven (stormbound for a bit) - Brunsbüttel - couple of stops up the Canal because I was getting lazy and enjoying a nice broad reach; I’m sure the engine was actually, um, on in the canal as I know the motoring cone was up - Kiel. My longest passage on the way up was Dover - Scheveningen which took me 25 hours but should take you a bit less. After Kiel... gissa call for a drink in the club and I’ll tell you.

FWIW, I’d have spent much more time on the way though in the Frisian Islands if I’d had it, but wanted to get over to the E of Sweden so the family could fly out and sail around there a bit together.

I went to Brunsbuttel once, hit solid ice about 15 miles out. We then relied on an incoming ship to break the ice for us so that we could enter the lock at Brunsbuttel.

The Kiel Canal was a mass of slush and it was impossible for us to navigate through it due to the engine water inlet constantly being clogged with ice.

We went back outside and went round the north of Denmark (slowly) crunching through the ice that ranged all the way across the Skagerrak until we reached our destination, Lysekil in Sweden.

Hopefully if you undertake the trip in summer, you won't encounter these little problems.

 

[Ladybirdgaffcutter]

Nothing much to add to the good advice, except if you stop at Heltenau, cross the canal by the first foot ferry and walk up the hill to the Machine and Engineering Museum. It's a wonderful large museum, with a workshop where friendly pipe-smoking old boys in brown shop coats are restoring fantastic steam engines and historic diesels , gennies, turbines, all sorts, all on the button.
A must-visit place, little known. I will try and post some piccies if I can, but if not just go anyway.

Ok the inline diesel is a self contained genset, the other is a WW2 U-boat alternator, driven by an axial flow diesel turbine, mega advanced tech for the early 1940's. The guy (who restored it to working order..) said it's loud enough to make your ears bleed!

 

[BelleSerene]

I went to Brunsbuttel once, hit solid ice about 15 miles out. We then relied on an incoming ship to break the ice for us so that we could enter the lock at Brunsbuttel.

Thank you. Anyone know when Cuxhaven ices over? I was hoping it wouldn’t.

I locked out of Brunsbüttel a few weeks ago, to keep the Noble Sloop out of the impending ice. The fat oak floating pontoons in the locks there lie but a few inches above the water. With a high freeboard such as Belle Serene’s, if you can’t pretty much kiss your knee while standing on one leg, you’re in trouble when it comes to climbing back on board. Anyway, being single-handed that night I used one of these mooring devices on a pole (a decorator’s paint-roller extension pole, but that’s another story) to secure the boat by hooking into the chain that falls down the lock wall and through a hole in the floating pontoon, shackled somewhere in the depths. I was the only vessel in the lock.

The water rose, and my gated mooring hook subsided through the hole in the dock, trapping it there until the water level in the lock was next lowered. I had to call the lockmaster (what’s the German for une bétise?) to ask him to let all the water out again so I could unclip my high-falutin’ mooring toy from the chain and clip it on to a flat mooring ring on the dock, and then fill the lock again. He was pretty cool.

 

[jamie N]

I'm there a few times during the year, last in late December and have never seen it iced over in Cuxhaven. Helgoland lift the pontoons out in winter, and Bunte Kuh is closed until April!

 

[Beelzebub]

I'm there a few times during the year, last in late December and have never seen it iced over in Cuxhaven. Helgoland lift the pontoons out in winter, and Bunte Kuh is closed until April!

Cuxhaven was certainly iced up in January 1987!

 

[Seven Spades]

Brian Navin’s the man. I had his N Sea Passage Pilot, which covered I think up to Den Helder. But for God’s sake get the 2018 edition (I had an older one) and also the latest charts, as much of the shipping channels and wind farms on the Dutch side if the N Sea have changed recently. I also had his Cruising Guide to the Netherlands, and I’m told that his Cruising Guide to Germany and Denmark is excellent too.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Brian-Navin/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n:266239,p_27:Brian Navin

The Navin pilot books are excellent for routing on the tides.

Did I mention to get the latest charts? You’ll be in trouble if you don’t.

Like you, I was single-handed. Towards Kiel, I ended up doing Hamble - Chi - Dover - Scheveningen - Den Helder - Terschelling/ Vlieland - Norderney - (would have done Helgoland but for a storm) - Cuxhaven (stormbound for a bit) - Brunsbüttel - couple of stops up the Canal because I was getting lazy and enjoying a nice broad reach; I’m sure the engine was actually, um, on in the canal as I know the motoring cone was up - Kiel. My longest passage on the way up was Dover - Scheveningen which took me 25 hours but should take you a bit less. After Kiel... gissa call for a drink in the club and I’ll tell you.

FWIW, I’d have spent much more time on the way though in the Frisian Islands if I’d had it, but wanted to get over to the E of Sweden so the family could fly out and sail around there a bit together.

Thanks Chris that is the sort of reply I was looking for. I have a friend who did the ARC Baltic last year and was hoping to come to an arrangement with him for his charts. How old is too old, what is the trouble you are referring to? I am only at the planing stage, my wife can't join me until school breaks up so I plan to try to get to Gotland around the 12th July where she can join me for the summer, it is just that I have to get the boat there.... my knowledge of the Friesian Islands is only what I have seen in The Riddle of the Sands.

 

[Fossil]

If you are sailing anywhere in Dutch or German waters, you need the up-to-date charts. That means THIS YEAR! So far as I know, there are no legal penalties for not having them, but you are quite liable to spend time aground in the wrong places (and possibly have to spend a large number of euros getting a tow off by the legalised pirates in large RIB's who patrol the inland seas looking for stranded mariners).

All the area from Den Helder to Cuxhaven is subject to continual change. Buoys and withies are moved all the time - we were once overtaken in the narrow channel behind Terschelling by a coastguard workboat that that then happily proceeded to remove all the port-side markers for about two miles in front of us, leaving us (drawing 1.4m) to grope our way down the now-invisible channel in depths varying between 1 and 2m, touching here and there, until we reached deeper water! And on the trip home, we saw a very big motoryacht fast aground on the then silted-up channel between Terschelling and Vlieland who had obviously been using the previous year's chart which showed it as open with 3m of water. (It was closed that year but the Navionics app shows it as buoyed, but very shallow, this year).

Buy new charts! And if you are in a harbour, make a point of asking the harbourmaster if there are any recent changes - they are always happy to give information.

 

[Seven Spades]

Goodness, sounds like a nightmare. I assume it is easier to keep to the North Sea, I draw 2.3 so not ideal for these waters. Do you know how reliable is Navionics do they constantly update their app with the latest charts or are paper charts really more up to date?

 

[BelleSerene]

Thanks Chris that is the sort of reply I was looking for. I have a friend who did the ARC Baltic last year and was hoping to come to an arrangement with him for his charts. How old is too old, what is the trouble you are referring to? I am only at the planing stage, my wife can't join me until school breaks up so I plan to try to get to Gotland around the 12th July where she can join me for the summer, it is just that I have to get the boat there.... my knowledge of the Friesian Islands is only what I have seen in The Riddle of the Sands.

If I understand you correctly, the ‘trouble’ I meant is just that you’ll find the multiple changes to traffic lanes dangerous, especially at night, you’ll be bewildered by multiple lights marking new wind farms and so on. But there’s also the issue of that three-fathom keel of yours digging into the shingle around the shifting sands of the Freezings.

Beware your friend’s charts from his 2017 cruise - at least check the publication date on them. I believe the big changes to the Maas Delta lane scheme were in 2017, and I am hardly the authority on what else has changed since his charts were published.

Bob

 

[Seven Spades]

I no longer have the wing keeled Starlight. That only drew 1.7m, I now have a Discovery 55.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Buy new charts! And if you are in a harbour, make a point of asking the harbourmaster if there are any recent changes - they are always happy to give information.

What's really needed is an upright Englishman in a yacht who can survey the islands and passages between them. Big job for one person, of course, so maybe a friend could come out from London to help him, bringing some rigging screws and a spare Rippingill.