Charts and Almanacs

In Maastricht we had our first introduction to the frustrations of touring in the Netherlands. It is compulsory for all boats to carry a copy of the Dutch Waterway regulations in the form of the ANWB Almanak 1, valid only for 2 years and therefore difficult to buy in advance. It is available on-line only to those who have a Dutch credit card, and not for sale as far as we could find in Belgium or France, so David's first task was to find an "ANWB" shop (like the NRMA or RACV) to make the purchase. Also necessary is the Water Almanak 2 which gives details of the waterways such as lock times and VHF Channels. This is valid only for the current year. Each costs 19 euros 50, good value if you are Dutch as #1 is 840 pages long, #2 is 940 pages- all in Dutch in dense printing in 8 point type! Almanak 1 does not have a sinlge word in any language other than Dutch.

Our "Dutch Encyclopaedias"

We have discovered with the help of our translator programmes that the basic rules outlined in Almanak 1 are the international ones, a copy of which we always carry. Translating the remainder would take many many hours and the legalistic "articles" do not seem to change the basic rules. Fortunately we have found our way around Almanak 2 enough to get the information we need for locks and bridges and it has other languages on four of the 940 pages, to show what the symbols and legends mean.   

Lots of Dutch = "Double Dutch"!

As well as the Almanaks it has been necessary to buy many charts. Of course, the Dutch were the world leading experts at charting and probably still are. So it has been a little surprising to find that many charts are single sided, relatively low quality paper often with nothing or advertisements on the rear side. There is a small number of atlases; these are more robust than the paper. It seems consumerism, marketing and profit making are at the forefront.

It proved very difficult to work out which charts we need for the routes we are proposing until we found that Almanak 2 shows the chart relevant for each town. We think we now have those that are required, but it has happened only after lots of urgent train and long bike trips to ANWB stores in various places when we discovered that the next day's travel was not on the chart which seemed when we bought it to cover our trip. We are now the proud owners of 12 charts and 4 atlases, each valid only for one or two years, for a country that measures 300kms North-South  (from Sydney to Canberra) by 200 kms East-West. Fortunately the ANWB stores, unlike most supermarkets, have accepted our French credit card for these substantial purchases.

In both France and Belgium, we can buy good sets of charts with the details and rules for the canals and rivers, in the major international languages, organised so that they cover a clearly defined area of travel. Certainly almost all the boats here are local ones (so far in three weeks we have spotted three German and one English boat amongst the hundreds of boats we have seen) so maybe the Netherlands does not find it necessary to cater for international visitors to their very busy waterways.

It is true too that the charts need to be very detailed as navigation is quite different from the straightforward relatively narrow canals and rivers in the other countries we have visited. We have been on quite shallow bodies of water such as the Randmeren and Kettelmer (and perhaps in future on the Waddenzee) which have complicated channels and marker buoys and require a detailed chart. Ijssemer and Markemeer are even larger so we have tried to avoid those, as any wind would make the trip unpleasant.  

The channels  do change over time too. Where we are now, there was a clearly marked channel on our 2014/15 chart, but when we reached the end we found yellow buoys blocking our route and the green and red buoys shown had been removed. So even these up to date charts and almanacs are not always up to date. As well, the list of places to stay typically does not contain Municipal quays and harbours which are the better places for us as Anja is too big for the many (expensive) Marinas.

We have been really surprised to find that the overwhelming number of Dutch boats are small modern boats. They tend not to own the bigger, older barges that are part of their heritage and history. It is also surprising how few people from other countries come here in boats.

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave