Now we are on the canals marked in green.River Elbe
We called into Lauenberg on the Elbe- Lubeck Canal for the night.
There is a lovely old waterfront with beautiful buildings and a quaint post box.
We set off early next morning to go up the Elbe to Domitz. There are many sandbanks on the Elbe in this section but we have been told the level is OK for our draught of 1metre.
The river is very well marked with a very interesting navigation system which we learnt about at Lauenberg. We followed the markers very carefully and had no trouble. The markers show where to cross from one side of the river to the other so we very carefully went from one side of the river to the other about 40 times in 68 kilometres.
These are the port markers
And the starboard markers
This empty barge was carefully following the markers also.
The river is very wide and flowing about 3kph
The Elbe used to be the border of East and West Germany and we saw this sentry box on the East side.
Domitz - Muritz-Elde Waterstrasse
We were very happy to come off of the Elbe at Domitz and not worry about the sandbanks anymore. We stopped at the Panorama Beach Hotel Marina which had a very nice restaurant on the top floor where we took this photo of the haven. If the weather was hotter we could also have enjoyed the canal side beach.
In the morning we enjoyed a walk around the old town of Domitz.
And took this photo which is housing now but was the army barracks
We left about lunchtime heading north on the Muritz-Elde Wasserstrasse canal heading for Schwerin. The canal is quiet and narrow and a nice change from the canals so far.
There are a lot of disused factories along the canal.
This photo is the calm before the storm. About ten minutes after this as we were coming towards a lock it started raining just as I went out of the boat. All of a sudden we were hit by a squall, Kevin estimated the wind at 100kph. Added to this torrential rain, thunder, lightening and hail. During all of this Kevin was trying to drive the boat to a landing as it was being blown from one side of the canal to the other and then sideways down the canal. Meanwhile I was outside being pelted with hailtones and trying to lasso anything that passed by that we could tie to. Finally the boat turned right around into the wind and back to where we were coming from and I managed to put the rope around a bollard and tie the boat up.
We waited out the storm and then went through the lock. The sun came out and we had a fantastic sight of these reflections on a very calm canal. We both decided to call it a day and moored up at the first available spot and had a drink or two to calm our nerves.
Next morning we followed a couple of boats to the Grabow bridge just on 9am, this was one of the 4 opening times for the day so we weren’t held up.
We passed the nice haven of Hechtsforth where they were setting up for a festival. Not having any information for this canal it is pot luck if you arrive at a good port when it is ready to stop for the night. We missed out on this one.
We came to this old lock where the door goes up into slots in the brick piers. We were told by the lockkeeper it was being replaced in October and we all crossed our fingers it held upas we passed under.
Stor Canal to Schwerin
We came to the junction where we turned up the Stor canal to Schwerin.
We arrived at the Schweriner See and followed the chart closely and cruised across the lake towards Schwerin where we could see the Castle in the distance.
As soon as we moored up in the Marina we took short walk into the town and had a quiet drink enjoying the view.
We are looking forward to spending a few days in Schwerin. Then on to Muritz Lake.
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