Farewell to Lemmer. Pirramimma cruising back home to Elburg: Part 1.

Back again in Lemmer, we were both rather cold and tired after the very windy trip back from Sneek.  After we'd settled Pirramimma in her berth and tidied up on deck, we went below decks to warm up a little. Crew enjoyed a warming glass of Hibiki and Skipper a Whisky Mac - bliss! 

Our cruising plans for the remainder of this trip have now changed. We have decided to move Pirramimma back to Elburg about five weeks earlier than originally planned. We intend to re-provision tomorrow, and on Saturday we will leave Lemmer and start back towards Elburg, where Pirramimma is booked in for winter storage. First stop will be Urk on Saturday night and then on Sunday we will continue on to Elburg, either directly to the town haven or stopping at a nature mooring along the way. So, just two nights and one full day in Lemmer to go now. 

Galley Slave cooked a deliciously warming curry of pork, aubergine, green chilli and peanuts served with basmati rice, home made aubergine pickle and some crisp cucumber slices. Praise be to pressure cookers! Over dinner, we discussed our departure and plans for the cruise to Elburg.

At 1945 hours, this yacht motored swiftly towards us…

 ... pulled into the berth on our port side…

… and promptly ran aground…

I've no idea what happened to the poor person on the bow when the yacht came to a juddering halt (!) but I can say the people onboard were soaking wet and freezing cold. All their kit below decks was completely soaked through (probably from that open forward hatch) and they asked us if we had a jeton they could buy for the clothes dryer at the haven facilities. Luckily for them as the office was closed, we had one left and gave it to them. In discussions later with the yacht skipper, he mentioned their charter yacht draws 1.8m and the guide for the jachthaven gives 2.0m depth. Ooops, something wrong somewhere. 

By 0700 hours next morning, they were gone, making them the last charter boat to pull in next to us at this haven. We spent that day sorting out things like car hire for the 'car shuffle' between Lemmer and Elburg next week, provisioning, cleaning and generally double checking our plans for the next few days.  

Our final night in Lemmer, and in this marina, for the year was pleasantly mild. Windfinder predictions for the weekend were continuing to be very good with next to zero wind and flat calm conditions expected on the IJsselmeer. Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny. We made our usual departure preparations but this time we also dismantled some fittings we had added to our berth here and stowed them securely onboard Pirramimma to be ready for her next summer berth. Finally, we made sure that all was neat and tidy at the berth, and that we'd left it as we'd found it. 

Engine on at 1100 hours. As soon as the engine had warmed up, we motored slowly away from our berth but this time, we turned to starboard and joined a small queue of boats waiting to go through the first of the three brug through the town itself. By the time the brug lifted, there were 7 or 8 boats ready to go through as a convoy. Here we are, through the first brug with four boats in front of us...

What a delightful surprise to find Lemmer "en fête" with an excellent display of retired KNRM rescue boats. There was even a retired RNLI rescue boat in the haven. You might not know anything about the KNRM but it is an organisation/charity run by volunteers and provides the same excellent service as the RNLI in the UK. Good men and women risk their lives to provide help and succour for others in distress on the seas and waterways of the Netherlands. As a volunteer organisation/charity, they rely on donations from you and me. Large or small donations, every little bit helps! For those of us who spend time on the water in either/both countries, it's a bit of a 'no brainer'…. help those who help us. 

There was even an old, retired RNLI rescue boat in the display…

I couldn't resist taking the photo below as a reminder of the moment the Lemmer carillon rang out 'For Auld Lang Syne'! It seemed so appropriate...

The photo above also shows we're through the final brug of the three. There was a bit of a jiggle of boats in this section as several boats in our convoy peeled off to berth up in this particular part of the haven. And then a couple of other boats left their berths to join our convoy, so we all jiggled a bit more as we tried to make space for the stream of boats leaving the sluis we were about to enter. The sluis is the last 'impediment' to leaving the town.

The skipper took a few photos whilst we were in the sluis…

And looking aft at the other set of sluis gates…

Another view. At this point, Crew was not entirely sure whether she was going to pass out, be sick or merely have a heart attack as the fumes from all the boats that had kept their engines running were building up nicely in the confined area forward of Pirramimma. It seemed to take a very long time for those gates to open again.

All in all, it took us 40 minutes or so to travel through the 3 x brug and 1 x sluis.

When the gates opened, we all sedately motored out and moved through the outer arms of Lemmer port. Lemmer is such a busy tourist honey-spot that it's all too easy to lose sight of the fact that Lemmer is also a busy, working port with a significant number of boat and ship building/maintenance businesses. 

The outer quays are usually jam-packed with large barges and ships moored up; and often rafted up to each other.

And they're off….!! It doesn't take too long before skippers increase the revs and pick up speed. The channel curves around to port and we're going to be following it and heading south to the town of Urk. You can probably make out the port hand marker (red!) just to the right of the big commercial barge coming into port as we all stream out of port. 

The Skipper increased our speed also, giving the Perkins engine the chance for a good blast over the next couple of hours on the way to Urk. The Crew was relaxing on deck having long since stowed fenders and lines. We, too, were off on our journey and looking forward to being in Urk again.

Farewell, Lemmer!