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.

arrive to Beograd

Friday, July the 17th




We go all night and arrive to Beograd next morning. We shall change the crew here, Per and Hans want to take train to Budapest and Micael will fly home.

New crew arrves to take the voyagefrom Beograd to Budapest - the Andersson family.

Vice-president of the marina greets the captain welcome and offers us stay and all the facilities at his marina free of charge, the only condition is that we should spread a good word of Serbia in the EU, which we are glad to do, as long as it concerns Beograd or Engel Marina.

Old and new crews at lunch in Beograd.

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.

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.