An amazing thing happened this week. The Dutch owner of a lovely hotel barge whom we met at Oudenaarde over a drink, very kindly offered to do a search on a Dutch ship website for us. He very soon found a message from the nieces of the original 1927 owner of our barge, then called Elizabeth, who were wondering what had happened to their uncle's old ship. All they could say in their posting is that it had been sold in the 90's and renamed 'Max' .

We are now arranging to meet the family this summer in the Netherlands to find out some more history and hopefully a party on-board to celebrate the re-union. To date we only had the original 1927 Meetbrief with the original owner G. Timmerman and it seems that he owned her right through to retirement. Here is a picture which looks like from the 60's

Photo courtesy of Wrijfhout www.kustvaartforum.com

Huge thanks go to Maurits and Olga on their beautiful hotel barge De 4 Vaargetijden www.cruisebelgie.com for their help in tracing the Timmerman family. We now have a more complete history and will no-doubt discover even more after meeting the family.

Isn't the internet wonderful when it reaches out and finds that single needle in the haystack?

The ship history website www.kustvaartforum.com is in Dutch but Google translate does a reasonable job in understanding the postings.

Dry Dock - Sas van Gent, Holland

Essential for maintenance, insurance, certification for European TRIWV regulations, Esme requires dry dock and hull care every five years so hang the expense let's get it over with then we can have some fun.  We booked the dry dock with four other barge friends so it was companionable indeed!

Esme up on the chocks                          Five of us - aerial view

Hull thickness marks made by the surveyor      Dwarfed by Esme's hull

Removing the old box cooler                    A bit past it, definitely needs changing

The new box cooler ready to install            What a beautiful bottom!

Oudenaarde to Menen

Following on from dry dock, we headed back to Gent and on to the Oudenaarde, the second most important art town in Flanders, famous for cloth and tapestry and  some superb Gothic buildings. Then on to the Bossuit canal, a small but beautiful route to Kortrijk and then Menen. Here, the border with France darts left and right to the point where you can cross a street and suddenly be in France without any sign of a border, only the car registration plates change and wonderful Saturday market produce on the French side.

Oudenaarde Yachthaven                          De 4 Vaargetijden, see story above

Some very big locks . . .                      and on the Bossuit some old and small locks

Esme and Hilde at Menen                        The sun is shining!

Esme gets a red stripe at last                 Dressed for the Royal wedding