Our last night in Serbia and we struggled a bit to find a good berth for the night. First we anchored near a beach and were pushed onto the sand by the waves of a passing cruise ship driving down the Danube. Stuck as we were, we pondered how to get out of our predicament, when another cruise ship passed us, this time driving upstream and its waves combined with Johannes' masterly reversing pushed Sulina back into the river. We drove out a bit and anchored again, but the current was too strong and we decided to search for a calmer berth. We found one too, just as the sun was going down and we had a fine deep sleep in the quiet little Cetate Bay on the Rumanian side, sounds of owls and frogs, almost full moon...
(Johannes reports..)
¨Early start after a peaceful night. But the water level had dropped overnight by a foot and where we had slipped in last evening by sheer dumb luck, we could now not get out again. I tried in several different places but got stuck every time. Liz and I got into the water scouting the underwater terrain and discovered that across the 40m wide mouth of the inlet lay a mud bar leaving a water depth above of between knee deep and belly deep. Nowhere was there a clear exit channel. We were caught. A jet skier and later a speed boat came past and they promised to help but then just disappeared.
And then two cars of the Rumanian border police appeared. Did that mean more trouble? One of them, a young lady, spoke good English and after we had explained our situation she consulted with her colleagues. In the end she asked whether we needed food or water and promised a rescue team in the afternoon. She also told us that the water level was forecast to sink further.
So good and bad news. Torn between relaxing and reading or having another even more thorough exploration of the underwater topography, the worry about the falling level made me decide for the latter.
So in I went again. At the upstream end of the bar there might be a way, but it was convoluted and unlikely to succeed. Towards the lower end there was nowhere Sulina could pass but at one point the water was almost deep enough and the bar of soft mud was quite narrow. If I could hit it at the right point with enough speed, the momentum of our 7.5 ton boat might push through. If not, we were well and truly stuck . But I decided it was worth the risk.
I motored Sulina back into the deeper basin, lined her up carefully and went for it with full throttle. At the expected point we hit the mud and Sulina slowed down. And just at the moment when we thought this was it, we pulled through and were free. Boundless exhilaration. The one border police guy who had doggedly stayed by his car all these hours, looked on in baffled amazement as we waved cheerily.¨
ความคิดเห็น