Quality Improvements Plus a Side-Trip

We found our dream boat! It, of course, had a few places where improvements could be made. I guess we wanted perfection. We went out looking for those items that could take Otter from “great” to “spectacular”. We had little time left before we would be traveling to Spain so here is what we desired for Otter or what we saw looking for those improvements.

We drove to Haarlem which is about an hour and a half drive from where we were staying in Heeg, Netherlands.  Haarlem was really a side trip from our main destination. Having never been to Haarlem before and driving close by we thought we’d drop by.

Just an interesting looking building in Haarlem

A Sewing Machine Shop

Which was of particular interest to me. 

Windmill in Haarlem.  

About a ten minute’s drive away from Haarlem was our actual destination of Spaarndam, Netherlands. This small, marine town had a shop that interested us with a type of boat heater called Heatpol dieseloliekachel in English an Heatpol diesel oil heater. Ken wanted to check to see if it might meet our boat heater needs.

This is Ken checking out the shop across the street. Not being peak tourist season, 

the shop keepers kind of decided on there own store hours. This shop was not open. 

Here are the Heatpol heaters. They appear to be like a stand alone heater.

You would not have to running ducting to carry the heat to different areas of the boat. 

Ducting, etc. For boat heaters. 

I am in front of the shop we were in. 

Once after spending the day on Otter we decided to stop in Drachten at the GAMMA, a hardware store. We do not have a sink in the bathroom. We thought we should look for one to install. Being Europe there were lots of home grade very small sinks that would work. I hardest part would be deciding where to install the sink in the mini sized boat bathroom. 

You can likely see the sinks are a decent price (remember, in Euros). 

We were also trying to measure for fit. 

Finding Otter

Finding Otter was easy. Simply drive from one end of the Netherlands to the others and across the IJsselmeer. Look at boats until to understand them and voila! We found Otter.

Otter with her previous owners

Purchasing Our New Canal Cruiser - Finally

I remember the day very well, the day we actually committed to purchasing our small yacht. We drove from Heeg to Drachten. There was a rainbow in the sky which we took as meaning something positive in regards to buying our new boat.

The Salesman, Henk, at Smelne Yachting BV gave is free rein of the boat, having lent us the entryway keys. I am sure Henk did not want to accompany us for several reasons, foremost it was clear, crisp and cold outside and on the boat. He likely didn’t want our minds to be crowded with sales pitches and truly wanted us to throughly check out the boat, every little nook and cranny. He was not a pushy salesman, just gave us the facts and information we wanted.

The boat was built in 1974 and owned by the same person since that time. The boat was built nearby in the Otter Shipyard. That shipyard was closer to Jachthaven Drachten de Drait than Smelne. Supposedly the previous owner’s Doctor recommended he give up his boat for health reasons. Sad for him. He did not speak English so all communication between us went through Henk. Thankfully the boat was not stocked with dishes, pot and pans nor linens. Everyone has their own style so that suited us fine. The curtains were included and they were nicer than most we had seen. The upholstery was not new but was clean and tasteful. The walls and doors were made of mahogany as I stated before. We found out the previous owner and a carpenter friend of his had refreshed the boat’s interior. They haddone such a professional job. None of the windows nor skylights leaked. The carpet was fine, however, not to our taste. We checked out all the holds, drawers and cupboards. Ken opened up the engine compartment to check that out, too.

We had seen enough, pondered enough, thought enough of the pros and cons we were ready to commit. We loved the boat but tried to not let it show too much as we were now in the negotiating phase of the purchase. We were already at the second or third price cut of the season. The original owner put the boat up for sale at Smelne at the  beginning of April 2018. He loved her and felt he should get a really good price but to his chagrin a buyer did not materialize until we arrived. We sat with Henk in his office drinking tea trying to negotiate a fair price. Our initial price was not even taken to the owner as we thought it might not be. This day we wanted to be realistic. After all we did not want to lose the boat to a higher bidder. We had a fair price in mind and put in our offer. The offer was pending an inspection (inspection - next post). The previous owner was given time to decide if he would accept our offer.

We were a bit nervous about whether or not the offer would be accepted. We remained positive and would find out the result the next day.

Here are a few interior shots of the yacht we loved.

Ken near the steering station. 

Good shot of the lighter wood ceiling and the screened, big skylight. 

This is a shot from the galley up to the salon. 

 Note the lovely mahogany steps. 

Good shot of the upholstery. The steering gears are

inside that little cupboard door. 

The salon from the stairs going to the galley. Obviously 

the table folded up. Note the size of that window and the curtains. 

Back in the aft cabin, aka our bedroom. The skylight is obvious.  You can see

our closet and the patch of blue on the left is our bed. 

Another view of the aft cabin. Great idea

 to have a sink in the bedroom. 

This looks into the v-berth (lighting too poor to actually see in there) from the salon. 

Salon with table open. At least four people can dine here. 

The carpet looks rather new. It is a good colour to match the wood. 

We are just not keen on carpet. 

The head which is tiny, clean and very functional. 

This is a TV/monitor stand with lots of drawer and cupboard space. 

More outside pictures.

This is the back deck. You can see a small corner 

of the aft cabin skylight. Those white panels are made of  

a material called Trespa. They are washable. The wood trim 

above the Trespa matches the exterior wood doors and the wood mast. 

Back view of the boat showing the swim grid, flying the Friesland flag.

 You can, again, see the wooden deck railing 

with matching mast and wooden doors. 

This is the Friesland flag. Those are not hearts but water lilies. Picture taken from 

https://northerntimes.nl/how-do-frisians-feel-about-their-flag/

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