Saturday Evening – Entering the Kiel Canal

The Kiel Canal is basically a shortcut, through Northern Germany, joining the North Sea to the Baltic. It’s wide enough to allow two large ships to pass, but it is strickly controlled; all ships have to have a pilot accompanying them throughout its length. With the imposed speed limit, it takes approximately 4-5 hours to cover its distance.

We entered the canal at about 11pm, so it was dark and cold, and, of course, most people were out in their best bib and tucker. It was a rather fascinating experience, though; I’ve been through canal locks at home, so I was expecting someone to bound out of the gloom any minute wielding a winlass… it was a much larger operation, naturally, and quite fascinating to watch, as the gates closed behind us and another ship tailing us, another vessel was passing through the opposite direction, all in quite close proximity to each other, and all well floodlit. For a canal lock, there didn’t seem to be a lot of swirling water as levels were balanced; someone observed that the amount of level-changing would vary according to tides… certainly not a lot of noticeable turbulence at all, and we were on our way in no time. I say ‘no time’; because of the speed restrictions, it did all seem to happen at a very slow, and lumbering pace; about an hour and a half later, my cold was getting better of me and I left Tracey, to watch the final part of of our passing into the canal, to head off to bed.