Winter in port

We arrived in port close to our home on December 6th. This is a nice picture of the Swedish winter.

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.

boatlife

Wednesday 15th of July.

Passing the lock, “Iron Gate I” will be a little later than planned, as it is closed. Convoy anchors very close to land in 4m depth. At ca 4.30 am things start to happen and me and Hans stay on deck. We slowly move into the lock. Length and width is the same as the previous but the height is 30m. I don’t want to miss this. It turn out however that it is in two steps so it is not really as impressive as expected, although still very impressive. Passing the lock goes well although when Mercur reverses full with her engines our aft lines get very tense. But as they say as long as the line is noisy it won’t break, worry when it gets quiet again.

After the lock the landscape changes and we feel more like in the Alps, with the hills around us. Just waiting to hear the bells from the cows. I go to sleep.

Waking up at 11 am I hear the agitated conversation from the crew. “I have taken a hundred pictures”, I hear Micael say. Coming out in the cockpit the scenery is amazing. Not something I imagined I would see from the deck of Ellide Embla. It is a Fiord like landscape where the river has cut its way through the mountain. A fantastic scenery.

The kids start to talk about a small animal they have been offered by a lady on one of the barges. The lady herself is a “pro”, rented for the voyage by one of the Skippers. After a coffe at another barge we pick up a rabbit and the kids are allowed to bring it aboard for a little while.

The kids also get a present from the previous Captain of Mercur – a bunch of chocolate, and Fanta, and other things. It is handed over to us by the present Captain. And this after all the stories we have heard about how much they charge for towing yachts!

Looks like we are following the time-plan, which is a good news.

Iron Gate locks

Tuesday, 14th of July.

Approaching Iron Gate II

We are getting close to the lock “Iron Gate II”. The captain of the convoys asks me to call the lock on the VHF, to ask if we can pass together with the convoy, alongside Mercur 205, but they won’t answer me. When they call from Mercur 205 in Roman it is no problem and we go through. The lock measures: Length 310m, Width 34m, Height 8m. The convoy just about fits in.





Today the weather has improved, it is hot. Ca 30 degrees and we have to fill buckets from the river and pour over us to cool down and get shower as well. We are not spoiled with hot showers and clean clothes.
We steam on towards Turnu-Severin and there we stop as Mercur is changing the crew and as well as changing some barges. We take the opportunity to fill up our supplies as they are more or less run out.
The new captain, who speaks German – the only one speaking something but Rumanian in the new crew on Mecur allows us to continue with them and as soon as they get going we moor alongside them again.

Lifting with Mercur

Sunday, July the 12th



Some of us get invited to a little party on one of the barges. A few of the other skippers are having a little “disco” with home-made liquor. One or two of them are drinking quite a lot. We communicate in a number of languages, German, Spanish, French, English, Russian and the body language. The message is still not always clear.









It is a very comfortable way to travel on a river like us, lying alongside a pushing tug, not using any diesel, having 220V, possibility to stretch your legs on a convoy of 300m and get local information from the crew.

meeting with Mercur 205

Saturday, July the 11th

We start off up the river. Run aground (AGAIN!), well, they say you shouldn’t trust the charts on Donau, since the river keeps changing. A little slower this time though.

We start looking around and find a barge of 10 ships, it goes slower than we, but the skipper decides to hang on to them – they will move slowly but stable. We can hang on in ca 3 days, until 931 km, which should be somewhere just before Rumania ends.

The skipper of Merur 205 does not run aground although handling 10 ships (plus us) altogether 300m long.

The weather gets cold and rainy. Luckily, we do not have to stand outside steering in the night. We drink and sing inside.

Bulgaian coast

Crew from Sv. Vlas to Belgrad

Friday, July the 10th (we think)

We have problem with dates – no-one aboard can say what day it is without checking one’s phone or watch. The weather is hot and in the evening a thunderstorm comes by. We wanted to moor on the Rumanian side, but found no good place. We cross the river just in time to moor by the side of Tsar Kaloyan when the storm starts.

The crew of the barge welcome us and offer a drink of homemade slivovitz (Olga loves it when it smells of ripen plums, even if she feels drunk at just a smell of it). We plan to stay the night and move on as soon as we shop for more food.

Tsar Kaloyan, the crew winking us a good-bye

Unfortunately the Bulgarian authorities have learnt that a yacht has moored on the Bulgarian side and they come on board. We have to go through the immigration and all the paper work with the Bulgarians again. This time we get some help from the crew on Tsar Kaloyan.

Just before leaving we ask if we can get some fresh water as we are running out of it. To supply it we have to turn Ellide Embla around. First time to moor with the current (ca 3-4 knots), which turns out to be a real challenge. Finally we do it successfully with only a ‘small’ bump.

first emergency stop

Wednesday, July the 8th

We are going up the stream which is not very strong, ca 2 knots. It is hot.

In the afternoon one of the motor’s cylinders stop working. It turnes out it is one of the pipes going from the injection pump to one of the injectors, very very uncommon. Actually never heard of by skipper or nobody else onboard. Malte Månsson will hear of this when getting back. The captain decides to look for a place to repair. We turn from Donau into a little channel – Micael sees a town there on his GPS. The first turn is not very lucky – we run aground and the mast rocks giving a bad feeling to the captain and Micael, don't trust the charts too much.

We stay the night in a small town (sorry, still do not know the name), Calabrista or something similar.

In the morning two guys from a local canoe club come by. Micael explains in body language that we are having a stop to fix the motor and they offer help at once - take us to a small workshop there the injection tube can be soldered.

Moreover, we get a chemical that functions in the cooker. So positive!

The skipper comes to the conclusion - no more whistling on board.

After a lunch dinner we will set of and continue during the night. Last night the gypsies at the shore were partying at least until 4 am. As well as the mosquitoes. We've had a few baths in the river, not actually knowing if we are getting cleaner or dirtier. At least a bit cooler.

in the channel to Donau

Tuesday, 7th of July.

We take down the mast in the little Ana Marina south of Constanta and decide to head for the channel to the Donau.

While Olga and Micael go shop for food Ellide Embla arrives at the locks where a Russian-speaking captain of a Rumanians barge offers us a lift. If we hang on to them are we allowed to continue go until 10:00PM, otherwise we must stay just after the locks until the next morning.

in the locks, we go in front of Argos (the barge is 107m long and has ca 90m long barge´pushing in front of itself).

We hang on to the barge. They have a crew of five. Vladimir, the captain comes from a Russian village in Rumania. They are religious people who moved out of Russia in the 18th century. Vladimir has a dream of coming to Russia one day.

Coming out of the locks we start cooking to discover that the lamp oil Magnus hunted around the whole Constanta is a wrong chemical and our cooker is not functioning as it should. We decide to grill.

Micael is grilling under the mast.

Next morning we start early and around 10:00 AM we have gone through the channel. We separate from the barge, and it seems that both sides look at the voyage together as an economically good affair.

Ellide Embla hanging on with Argos, same 5-6 knots.

Arrive in Marina Dineva

Now we have arrived in Marina Dineva in Bulgaria. We arrived late yesterday, luckily some Estonian charter travellers went also to Sunny Beach, so we could share their transfer bus. We have cleaned a little on board and test started the engine. Olga has tried the grinder to grind of some mold (lite, lite mögel). And I had to weld the bathing ladder together as it had a small damage from the winter (then of course it was time for a swim!) Otherwise everything seems to be intact. Tomorrow we hope to head for Constanza.

32 in the air and 24 in the water, very nice!