Merelbeke to Ghent

29 April 2015

Well, that was interesting!

Woke up at sparrow’s trying to catch up on the blog. At sunrise the canal was still and quite pretty with an early morning fisherman watching the water with intent, as usual…

Later, and feeling quite ambivalent about moving on (read ‘Lazy’), Ian kickstarted us into doing the 4.2kms into Ghent with the Jachthaven Lindelei our objective. At a most sedate pace we meandered through the suburbs and, branching into the Muinkschelde canal, made our way into the heart of the city. The Muinkschelde is narrow and we had to squeeze past big party barges, sunken leisure craft, and through narrow and low bridge openings.

Just past the Muinkbrug and, seeing dredging up ahead, we slowed down to idle until we could ask what was going on.

“No way through. Closed. Go back.” – As simple as that! But how do you turn a forty foot long boat around in a 38 foot wide canal? You try as best you can, with the swim platform banging against the steel palings until the pulpit (the very front of the floaty thing, ye landlubbers) is jammed against the quay and there is no way of defying the laws of physics.

This ain't gonna work!

Now you learn a new skill…how to reverse an object, designed primarily to go in a forward direction, backwards through a narrow canal – oh, the joys of having a bow-thruster! Well, we finally did it and, with almost no paintwork damage except for a spot off the pulpit, did a 180 degree turnabout under the bridge dodging concrete, steel and the bows of a huge party barge.

The reversing manouvre.

The problem.

To much relief we found a mooring a little further down the canal and right under the walls of St Pieters Abbey, close to the Technikon and, having scraped the bottom on our approach, washed the slime and mud off the ‘quayside’ and hammered in the stakes,

we finally settled down to enjoy a Campari and orange juice, a ‘St Bernardus 8’ beer and a lunch of olives, salami, herring and artichokes.

Later we took a ‘short’ walk looking for a shop selling nasi goreng mix which Lynn was sure was located near the station – the shop was but the nice Thai lady had no idea what nasi goreng was...

Army barracks and youth center.

A tree for Lesley

I do not like modernized churches.

Mmm...some people obviously don't like Kortrijk!

...so it was back to Elle for a spagbol supper followed by drinks with the Njordians at the very cosy Guest van Gent bar some 100m away – a very talented sketch artist drew this picture of us around the bar and emailed it to us.

The artist at work.

His subject...

...projected onto the ceiling while he worked...

...and the finished product emailed to us the same evening!

An eventful day and despite late showers, a good one again.