Saturday, Aug the 8th

Micael starts 6:00 AM and Olga joins for the first lock, so the skipper is left to sleep. Another day of good luck with the locks.

While speeding to keep up with a barge for entering together with into a lock, the motor starts to run a bit uneven. Probably a diesel filter being a bit clogged up, we think. Coming closer to the lock it dies just leaving us with enough speed to jump in land and tie the lines.

When checking there seems to be flow of diesel and no water in it. Still we change the filter and the motor runs again. We then see a small leakage on one of the supply pipes to the second filter (there are two in line) and after checking and re-tightening it is working again. Just to continue.

The kids use the stop-time to have some fun feeding the swans and bathing.

At 20.00 h we come in to the small town of Miltenburg. There is a lot of people and bands are playing rather loud. We are greeted into a small marina (but still bigger than it looked on the map) and they say that we can stay at the entrance. It turn out that tonight is the “Night of Lights” in Miltenburg. The population of 10.000 it quadrupled, two bands are playing on two scenes and they will have the biggest fireworks in Germany. We come into a lot of things by pure chance. The night gets a little later than usual.

august the 5th

We take a taxi in to the city of Nürnberg, and have a little sightseeing. In the afternoon we do some shopping and we get going again by 15:00PM. We keep on going until it gets dark and stop after a lock and moor between two barges.

it gets really tight when we have meeting going the oppsite way

August the 4th

We start from Kielheim up DMK (Donau-Main-Kanal). The canal is good. No stream, our speed increases significantly, we can easily make 7knots if we want. The canal is also relatively straight as the land is fairly flat, it looks very man-made with stoned banks and flowers all along the banks. The limiting factor is all the locks. In the morning it is no problem, we hang on to a barge that we keep the same speed as and just go straight into the locks. We can follow it until the sea water filter gets a bit clogged up from the river and canal debris, and we have to make a short stop to clean it.

the highest point of the voyage

We travel through the landscape and the farmland and it feels like we pass straight through the farms. We wave at the farmers in their tractors while they are harvesting. We are up high and we have a good view over the land. We are over 400m above sea level. Higher than the highest mountain (or hill?) in Estonia. We pass the highest point and then the canal starts going downhill. It starts with 3 locks of each 24,67m. All together we went 156,8m up and down today. Late in the evening we reach Nürnberg.

August the 2nd

After Passau the river gets really narrow and shallow. It looks like very low water here and the depth is as little as 2,3 m – 2,9 m in the middle of the mainstream. 2,5m depth is usual, all over it feels deep. There are lots of people bathing and water-skiing, but we do no longer meet commercial transport: one cruising ships and just a couple of barges.

We stand on ground for some minutes when we tried to anchor to take a quick bath.

At night we moor at some loading place for barges. It’s less than 100 km left on Donau for us.

July the 31st

The first thing planned this day is the motor repair. Magnus goes round the area in a taxi trying to find a diesel repair. In the end he finds a Massey Fergusson’s dealer who has some pipes in the used parts, but none is exactly the same. He takes a couple that seem to be the same length and bend them in place. This seems to work out, so we shop some food and leave for Linz in the afternoon.

In Linz Olga suggests to moor not in a yacht marina, but in the commercial harbour, she thinks we might find a barge on the way upstream. At least there’s lots of mooring space here, so we stay and take the chance of seeing Linz by night.

Budapest

July the 23rd

When we wake up, Mercur has already left for bunkering diesel. Thomas has been talking to them and it will take them a few hours before they are back and will head for Vienna. We’ll use that time to drop the Andersson family off and set off to a pontoon in the city on the Pest side. We find one close to the hotel they will stay at. Two Hungarians come looking at Ellide Embla. One just asking if we have any Swedish beer aboard and the other if she is built in Scotland, he has seen the CQR anchor that is made there. While Olga and Daria go searching for ice-cream I decide we shall stay one day in Budapest and we sail for the marina that Hans found for us.
Passing through Budapest on the river, although it is still early hours, is like a traffic jam. There are cruising ships, small ferries, jet ferries crisscrossing and one has to be quite alert not to run in to any of them, or let any of them run into you from the aft.






We found the marina were Hans said it should be. They showed us a place to moor and after some formalities and a shower we took a taxi to the city. In Budapest the first thing we bought was ice-cream. It turned out 4 small ice-creams cost as much as taxi from the marina to centre. Taxi is cheap, ice-cream is expensive in Budapest. The city is very beautiful but it is quite a bit of a tourist trap. There are tourists everywhere and sightseeing tours etc…



The marina is excellent with a service department for Volvo Penta. I borrow some tools to try to fix the hard-to-turn steering wheel but it turns out it need more than that. I also find a little oil leakage on the connection to the pressure gage. Something easily fixed when at a marina with service department.

Beograd to Novy Sad

July the 18th

We leave Beograd next morning after a fast shopping. Micael waves us good-bye. The day is very hot and we rather stay inside.

Morning shower

In Novy Sad we check in with the local border police. They find out that we have not registered the change of crew in Beograd, which is “ne dobre”, but they decide to do nothing about it and wish us a pleasant stay in Novy Sad (but we promise them to leave the city at 6:00PM). We do some shopping in Novy Sad – a COLD beer and a local wine and have a lunch at a pizzeria.

Novy Sad (Ellide Embla looks so small on this river)

Serbian border

Thursday, July the 16th

Thursday morning we are waked by the Mercur 205 crew. We are at Veliko Gradiste, a small town on Serbian side of the river, ca 15 km before we shall enter Serbia on both sides. Mercur will anchor the barges and we will go together to the border police.

We moor and the skipper leaves with all the papers. It is ca 8:00 AM, but already hot. Olga wakes the kids to play in the playground which lies just 30 m from the boat. She herself goes through nearby streets in hope to find an ATM and get some local cash to buy ice-cream for the crew, but there are none and the café would not accept a credit card.

An hour later two female police arrive with our passports. They compare us to the photos in the passports and tell us to stay inside the boat until we get our passports back, some ten or fifteen minutes later.

Magnus comes back and tells how many papers he had to fill in. Now he should wait until he gets a paper that we paid the tax for passing through Serbian part of Donau, ca 60 EUR. A guy comes with the paper an hour later, but still no pass-polices. Olga and the kids want to go ashore (so they do), and Magnus goes and asks for their passports. He gets them back, just the three of them. Then Olga decides to go into the town to get some local cash and ice-cream.

We wait and wait, but the control – they call it “revision” here – is not ready. It goes even worse for Mercur, during the revision the border police finds some flies in the cargo on barges. So they will have to stay until Monday, threaten the police.

Girls take a bath in the river whil waiting.

Magnus decides that we shall not wait for Mercur, he finishes our revision. We want to have a dinner inland and then leave for Beograd. A police comes by (we bet we were watched all the time) and informs us that it is ok to go inland, but first we have to go through the passport control again since we are checked-out at the moment. To go into the town at the moment is a “big offence”. Magnus cannot hear of more paperwork and we leave at once.

no restaurant's dinner this time, but nevertheless very tasty


and a good view.