Focus on Purchasing Our New Canal Boat - Home Base Delft

Our new home base was to be in the city of Delft. Ken had booked us into this huge, high rise building, Which was part student residence using Booking.com. He made these arrangements before leaving Big Ann. The price was right because the building was being renovated and there was construction in part of the building. Here is a picture taken after renovations were finished.

Photo from HOLLAND2STAY website

The place was truly a luxury apartment in a great setting - Delft. We moved ourselves in and it felt like our home away from home. It had a good sized kitchen so we were able to make meals and eat there.

Delft was a rather big city. We had a rental car so we could explore. After moving ourselves into her apartment we were able to explore the area. Our main objective for the whole trip was to purchase a Canal cruise or so we didn’t go to the tourist sites.

We stopped in downtown Delft to shop. Our rental car was parked in a parkade. Below is a picture in the stairway. The highlight being the Delft, blue pottery. This particular pottery was special as it was rather old. The sheep we saw while driving around that day to look at ship or boat yards. The shepherds had set up temporary fencing for the herd. It appeared that the sheep had a job to do which was to eat back the grass in the area they were assigned to. 

Visits were made to many boat yards. Each night Ken would look on-line to find boats that we should look at, either in our price range on ones that had the criteria we were looking for. At first it was really about price. We were looking at boats that were rather low in price for a canal cruiser but we were looking for a bargain, maybe a miracle. We soon learned that if we did not want to spend a great deal of time and/or money fixing up a boat we had to adjust our price range, maybe our criteria. We or should I say “I” was getting frustrated with looking at junky boats that had no appeal.

I will give a general, description of some of those less than desirable boats. We did not take pictures of boats that did not appeal to us. The junkier boats usually had not been used in a few years so were mossy or dirty or both - on the inside and/or outside. Some had tarps overtop of them because they likely leaked or their windows leaked. Often the layout was odd, for example, the “head” or bathroom was attached to the main bedroom. That would make it uncomfortable for company to use your bathroom, especially at night. Another example of odd layout would be in the main bedroom that has twin beds instead of a double bed or a bed that took up the entire room with no room to put clothes. Keep in mind we plan to live on the boat about four months of the year, we are not the weekend boaters that many of these boats were built for. The less than desirable boats also needed work on the interior such as woodwork that needed to be redone as the sun and dampness had cracked or peeled the varnish. Sometimes someone had painted over the woodwork and had done a poor job at that. Their were lacy curtains, poor kitchen layouts, along with stinky, faded and water stained upholstery. Probably more relevant was the outsides which often needed serious attention - painting or redoing decks, window replacement. I haven’t even touched on the engines and props, etc. Often they were not in as bad shape because they needed to be kept up in order to run the boat. Some motors were on their last legs, however. You get the picture and you can imagine why we did not take any pictures. Our price range adjustment was a hard decision but one that had to be made if we were to actually purchase a boat. 

We did take some time off looking at boats. After all we were in Europe and needed to check out The Netherlands. Even though Delft was in southern Netherlands we sometimes found ourselves up north in the province of Friesland. That is where Alix and Andrew wintered Big Ann, near Sneek. We though we might do the same once we actually had a boat. Netherlands has a small footprint compared to Canada so driving from one end to the other was not a big deal. We did drive to Sneek in our rental car picked below. Gold car does have reasonable car rental rates. 

Our First rental along with the Gold Car Rental office at Schiphol 

Our Second rental. 

Sneek is unique from other cities in northern Holland. It’s biggest distinctive feature is the bridge pictured below.  It has a long and interesting history. This information was gleaned from Wikipedia. The Bridge is called the Waterpoort  and is really a water gate. Sneek used to be a walled city and this Waterpoort is a gate that used to connect to the cities walls. Sneek was on an important trade route between Leeuwarden and Stavoren where North and South Holland could be reached. The city fathers had a harbour built to the southwest of the city of Sneek. This Water gate connected the city and the harbour. The other city walls were demolished in the early 18t century but Waterpoort was left standing. It is so spectacular, so glad they left it standing. 

We saw cats sunning themselves and had to take their pictures. One of the things we noticed in the Netherlands is that there are lots of well cared for cats. These two looked particularity happy and loved. 

Ken had his picture taken by another bridge over the harbour. Nice the bridges in Holland can take pictures. : )

Somedays we stopped and took pictures of a pretty little town on our way to look at a nearby boat. On this day we were off to Kampen. Such beautiful buildings! 

Another interesting, quaint town was Hattem. We definitely went there to look at a particular boat yard. Inside the office was a big, orange cat called Mouse. He was sitting on the counter obviously used to strange people making a fuss over him. Mouse’s “two legged“ said that people come to his boat yard every year to enjoy the company of Mouse. I know I was totally enchanted by this pudgy, orange and white cat. Hattem also had scenery. Windmills are always special to those who rarely get to see them. 

Mouse the cat!

Beautiful, Fall booming  Echinacea