そしてそれはガリシアの周り別の大まかな夜。約 2 にヴィーゴから出航した、全体の朝は私にとって眠れぬされています。ダッシュ ボードのロール振幅をチェックした後私は 10 度から 15 度発振を実現!具体的には、それは急な階段をしているときに戻って私を引っ張る。なら、これらの階段壁のようなも。

かなり強力な加速感があります。船長を目撃していた乗客で唯一の事故はこれらの条件でだった。老婦人は彼女の部屋に落ちた。第 2 の官は、彼らが唯一の心配し始めるだろう、ロールが 20 ° を超えています。彼らはこのような多くの悪化を見ていると思います40 ° ロールの映像.

ベッドでは、それはひどいです。私は暖かい毛布の下、もっと睡眠をしたいが、私はできない、すべての周り移動されています。それは、私のテントの中でハエや蚊私の耳の周りローミングまたは私の鼻に着陸を保持として同じ恐ろしい感じ。

しかし、一度ベッドからそれの幸福。私の足は船の動きに自動的にカウンター バランスをとる。 橋から日の出を見て、貴重です。それから、まるでこのスチールのモンスターを運転していた、それが良い感じ、隊長の座に座る。

我々 航海していると一緒にいくつかの他の船とおそらくチャネルにも向かいます。ビスケー湾、Golfe ・ ド ・ ガスコーニュの英語名で期待の嵐は、幸いなことにはまだには起きていません。レーダーはより前より人口多く、我々 は壮大なセント ・ ジョン、Nounou Flinter ローズとレースです。再生カウンター ストライクのようないくつかの選手は、名を選ぶが下手です。自動同定システム (AIS) 高速で起こっているを示しています。

一等航海士 (ラ マンシュ) チャンネルの局の呼び出しについて言われます。すべての船は、チャネルに入る前にコーリング ステーションに報告し、承認を入力するを待ちます。それは交通渋滞区域でだけ起こるし、乗組員は冷酷な危険なジャングルとチャネルのトラフィックを比較する続けているを考えると、このようなトラフィック制御が必要と思います。

私たちのコーリング ステーション、ウェサン島の名前は南の西から到着.ウェサン島のように聞こえる ウェッサン島、それは同じ島ですと!フランスの北部最西端ポイントだし、私はしてきたが子供として。まだ私の寝室の壁には、島を取り巻く灯台のはがきがあります。残念なことに、我々 はウェッサン島から西 30 海里を渡す、それは島を見るには遠すぎるので。小型船のみは、それに近い車線を使用または危険のウェッサン島、東も航行できます。 通路のデュ Fromveur.船の好きなところに行くことはできません、 トラフィックの分離スキーム、仮想のレーンのようなものです。それは遠ざけるべきブリタニーの海岸から以来すべての後に悪い考えではない、我々 がウランを運ぶ、それが証明していること 間違って行くことができます。 この辺り。

彼らは大西洋でより古い大陸の周りより明らかに多くの情報を持っているので、もっと面白い、海図になっています。多くのゾーン「爆発的な投棄場」、「発射練習場」の標識があるまたは「海底運動区域」.素晴らしいことだ 1 日、ことができますにハイキングに行く倒れたコンテナー間で海のベッドの残骸、秘密の軍のすべてのものに捨てた、チャネルを乾燥します。

一等航海士は、私の地域の灯台の写真を含む海上ガイドブックを示しています.懐かしい!Creac'h、Ar-メン、レ Kéréon、ラ ヴィエイユ カープ オ ピエール ノワール.私はそれらをすべて知っています。この地域は、確かに、世界最高 印象的な灯台.

6:30 を参照してくださいするため目を覚ます ウェッサン島 ’ s 灯台、回廊は 6 回転ウェイ ポイントにウェサン島の海上での ETA を指摘していたので。私は橋の上を取得、私の右側に見て、即座に点滅の赤い光を見るし、白いライト一層の権利。それは間違ってすることはできません、それは、 ・ ファー ・ デュ硬い!白い光の 2 つのセットには、最も強力なの 1 つがある必要があります、 Créac ’ h、ヨーロッパの (または世界の) 最も強力な灯台。もう一つ可能性があります。 Nividic.

我々 は、48 ° 50 N、灯台 (45 km) からわずか 25 海里。しばらくすると、スリープ状態に戻るし、朝食を欠場します。我々 は、チャネルに今、以上のうねりがあります。だからこそ船は非常に安定して、よく寝た。

私たちに対して 30 ノットで風が吹くし、天気ががらくた。ノルマンディーへようこそ!我々 は、土地を見ることができる、フランスの海岸です。実際に、それはフランスではありませんが、 オルダニー島 の、 チャネル諸島、と、 Casquets 灯台、白い塔 10 私たちから NM。シェルブールはすぐ後ろです。私の電話は、英国信号をキャッチします。我々 のルートに目に見えるフランスの土地の最初の部分がイギリスに属していることが奇妙です。

まだ、ラジオがフランス語のアクセントで話すが、 Jobourg 岸駅.それは、ヨハネスブルグに立っていません。その駅はコタンタン半島の先端で、Jobourg と呼ばれる町で、それはないから離れてキロラ ・ ハーグ アレバ核燃料再処理サイト.すべての北の船のレポートの駅です。ラジオ話を続けているし、聞くと言う、10 南と私達のすぐ近くで 10 北船で起きています。船員の公式言語である英語と役員を教えてフィリピン役員フランス局への報告を聞くときそれは非常に面白い。それはすでに"grisse naize"とは何だったかを理解するいくつかの時間をかかった。それは、します。 Gris-Nez、別のレポートの駅、国際交通を指示するための最も実用的な名前間違いなく。

The Channel is always busy, but since we are now in winter with bad weather, the crew say it’s much easier than in summer time, when yachts, sailors and fishermen are all over the place, enjoying their right of way because they are smaller.

It’s the second time I see this kind of cargo, that looks like a huge floating building. It’s very high and all indoor. I would call it a floating fridge, but it is officially called a RORO, for roll-on/roll-off, because it carries cars. Only 15% of the hull is submerged, and vehicles drive directly into it. This one is the ペルセウス リーダー, from the Japanese日本郵船, 会社三菱家の最大 7500 の標準的な車を一度に運ぶことができます。ニューヨーク ・ タイムズが公開しています 非常に興味深い物語についてのビデオと、 アンドロメダ リーダー、姉妹船から、合った方法を説明する多くの車に、日本車が殺到する世界をどのように迅速にすることができます。120 の RORO 船の船隊は、世界中で年間 300 万台を超える運ぶ。

The traffic is much more interesting now. Listening on the channel 16, the radio for distress calls, I hear heated conversations between huge cargo ships and tiny fishermen boats. The later have right of way, but the former has a fixed direction and cannot turn within less than half a mile. It’s like a fixed truck. Some ships are using the distress channel to chat, while a reporting station advertises their weather forecast there too. We also receive navtexts, saying that “gunning is ongoing” in certain areas. Working as an officer looked rather easy in the Atlantic, where we have been on autopilot for 5 days in a row, but it is looks stressing now.

Boom boom boom boom, we arrive in Rotterdam, the hometown of the Vengaboys.海から見える最初の人間の存在の煙突からの煙は、 広がった maasvlakte それ発電所.これ、ロッテルダム港の拡張は、既に干拓地のユーロポートの拡張です。ヘイズが厚い、コンテナ クレーンは、風力タービンで全体でをゆっくり表示されます。

2 つの交通車線の間、ロッテルダム港までチャネルにビーコンのブイがあります。ブイのモールス符号で文字を出力を保持するトランスポンダーを装備しています。それはレーダーに奇妙な信号を説明します。十分な長さの遅延設定でレーダー モールス文字を完全に描画します。ビーコン ブイがそれぞれの ID の文字と紙のチャートにもマークされているため我々 は GPS を参照しなくても我々 の立場を推測できます。

フーク ・ ファン ・ ホラントのビーチに歩いて外を参照して、私を得る橋のデッキに私のカメラで。しかし、即座に、冷たい風が私の指を凍結します。痛い!温度の大幅な落ち込みです。南アフリカ共和国、スペイン、15 ° の海で 30 ° C 前後の 20 ° C 前後だったし、今では 0 ° に近いです。2014 年 12 月の最初の日は非常に寒い、私はまったく必要ありませんでした。冷凍指にもかかわらず私たちのターミナルまで、港の運河の全午後の間に 500 の写真を撮っては。

内陸で今は、 ライン ムーズ川デルタ、14 に 16 メートル深い運河の航行と呼ばれる、新 Waterweg、接続、 Scheur北の海。両側の海岸から石を投げます。下部に 4 m のマージンがあるのでのドラフトは 10 メートルです。

水路によって大都市に到着する素晴らしいことです。私たちの最終的な宛先は、30 キロ内陸です。橋のデッキからは、非常に大きな通りでゆっくり移動 200 メートル長い 5 階建て高層ビルの屋上にいると同じです。それはすべてが私たちより小さいミニチュアの街を探索するような感じています。私は自転車の多くを参照してください!

More than the industrial area on my right, the most interesting feature of the Nieuwe Waterweg canal is surely the潮. It’s a storm surge barrier, i.e. a fence that protects the city of Rotterdam from being flooded by the North Sea. But because the canal is 360 meter wide, it makes a massive mobile fence.

Each of the two gates is 210 meter long and 22 meter high, and is said to weight twice as much as the Eiffel Tower. It is a massive piece of engineering, and it serves an equally massive goal: to save the Netherlands. Since over a quarter of the country lies below sea level, the デルタの仕事ensure that disasters like in 1953, which saw 9% of total Dutch farmland flooded, do not happen again.

The pilot is on board and I guess the crew is excited to finally reach Europe. Most of them will be replaced when the ship reaches Hamburg, but we first unload the cargo (and myself) in Rotterdam.

はロッテルダム港is the largest port in Europe. From 1962 until 2002 it was the world’s busiest port. To show how small Europe is, today, 6 of the top 10 コンテナー輸送で最も忙しい港 are in China, relegating Rotterdam to the 11th position. The remaining 4 of the top 10 are also in Asia. The first Sub-Saharan African port is Durban, 54th. Ranked by cargo tonnage, Rotterdam is the world’s fifth, still behind the Chinese and Singapore.

The 2nd officer tells me that the port (or ports) of Shanghai, the world’s busiest, is too big and too far from the city, so rather annoying for the crew. He adds that Rotterdam and Hamburg are still the most efficient in his eyes, with the most skilled container crane operators, that would start unloading containers even while the ship is mooring.

The port stretches over 40 km and has distinct sections, including a huge petrochemical one. If on one side, the town of Maassluis looks pretty, right in front of it is petroleumhaven, with tanks of Shell, Exxonmobil, and Esso. As we get deeper hinterland, terminals are more numerous, with more ramifications, and the city expands around this industry. I’m taking notes on my phone, but since my fingers are frozen, I can’t type anymore …

I keep switching from port to starboard, and back, to see as much of the port as I can. At one point, a docked vessel looks like it is missing half of its hull.

それ ’ s を 重量物運搬船, a giant that carries other giants, like oil platforms, military ships and submarines. This one belongs to the company Dockwise, specializing in ultra-large transports, and known for one of its vessel: the ブルーマーリン. Such ships can submerse themselves and lift 私がすることができます構造 ’ t 持ち上げられている想像してみてください。.

A funny thing about sailing within Europe is that, unlike flying, it can be considered as an international trip. Even if we sail from a EU port to another EU port, without even leaving the EU waters (20 miles from the shore), we are considered as coming from outside of the EU. This creates funny customs problems.

In Pernis, we turn right and enter Eemhaven, our final destination, in the “suburbs” of the port of Rotterdam.

This one has several dry docks and the service center of Rolls Royce Marine.

Vessels can be a fun and original marketing support too. For example, I was told about the Borussia Dortmund vessel, named and painted after the German football club. And ironically, it is docked in Rotterdam right on the opposite berth!

The radars of any ship in the vicinity of that boat will display the vessel name on screen. And if the ship manages to dock in historical ports, where the city is built around (Cape Town, Hamburg) and not relocalized away (Rotterdam, Tangier Med), at berths with good visibility, these ships will surely be seen from the city center. Like a 5-storey building covered in advertising and moving from city center to city center.

At 4 pm, we finish parking at our berth in Beatrixhaven. It’s too cold! And the sun sets already. No way anyone can hide and sleep in the shade. If I step outside and don’t move, I’ll freeze.

I’ll be leaving the ship tomorrow morning, and spend the rest of this day preparing. In the meantime, cranes are emptying the entire ship.

Now docked, my first goal is to find wifi to announce my arrival. This port is the worst place for it … and I end up walking 3 km, eyes on my phone, until I can find unsecured wifi outside. In this area, there are roads bordered with piled up containers only, without a single house. Then it’s night, my fingers freeze and my battery dies. So much hardship just to send an email …

Back “home” in the ship, my bike preparation consists in pumping up my tires and swapping the mirror’s side. I adjust my brakes too. Schwalbe inner tubes were really great, I didn’t pump them at all between Switzerland and Mauritania. Now, with standard tubes, I have slightly deflated tires after 3 weeks of inactivity, which is normal.

After the containers have been removed, the real show can start. The sun sets but the cargo deck opens. I will finally see what’s hidden in the bowels of the ship. Instead of packing up in my cabin, I stay outside and watch the cranes unloading the break bulk.

In the meantime, a Figee Marcor 2 crane mounted on a barge floating next to us is getting ready. We open the tweendeck, and for the first time I see the very bottom of the ship. Twice deeper, it’s a hole of 18 meters deep under the main deck. The ship’s cranes are used to remove the tweendeck separators. Then the floating crane takes the cargo (minerals) from our lower deck into a floating barge on the other side: it’s an insane amount of power and steel at work right now! There are 10 cranes around the ship (6 on the ship, 3 from the port, and 1 on a barge), and things move into all directions. We carried some 25000 tons of stuff from South Africa and Namibia, and unload it now, 20 tons at a time. When the shovel hits the hull, my bed shakes.

This kind of barge can then travel within Europe. For example, via the Rhine, the cargo can travel straight to Basel without leaving the waterways.

Including the unloading operations, I compiled a 船の全体の旅行のビデオ:

The floating crane is still unloading cargo in the morning, but unloading my bike won’t be that easy: the small rear crane that the ship uses to put the gangway in place is not working. Instead, they have attached a large net under another crane, and they will be unloading some luggage with that solution. I thought leaving Africa would also free me from the usual “Sorry Sir, the <insert whatever here> is broken so we can’t <insert expectation here> …“. Not yet.

I am not keen on letting my bike mix with luggage in a loose net, but at the same moment, they inform me that they have just set up the side ladder and a gangway, steeper and less stable, but okay for my bike.

Here are my wheels touching European soil again, two years after leaving it. It’s kind of a special moment. My eyes are myopic again, suddenly. They can’t bear the cold. The first “local” I talk to is the lady at the gate of the port. She sees my South African flag, still attached on my bike, and says she’s from Vereeniging in Gauteng.

It’s incidentally my first time in the Netherlands and I don’t know how is Dutch different from Afrikaans. Apparently, it’s very different, since practicing my little knowledge of Afrikaans gets me weird looks.

I can’t bear the cold, but one good point is the presence, even in the port, of cycling tracks! From Africa to the Netherlands, from the urban jungle to the land of bicycle commuters.

The best is when cars stop at cycling lanes to yield the right of way to cyclists. Ha! Traffic lights, public bus service with digital time announcements at bus stations … Ha! I don’t even have to cycle on roads since cycling lanes take me all the way through Rotterdam. But the Dutch beat me at this game: it’s Sunday morning, I am freezing, considering taking a train, and all these people are happily cycling.

Even with the magic bike paths, it takes me ages to cross Rotterdam while trying to find free wifi in the streets. There are 50+ of them at all times, but all WPA. The buildings in the city center are covered with fog. It’s time to be realistic and to quit: I won’t be able to cycle to Amsterdam today. I overestimated my ability to deal with the distance and the cold. I can now take hours of sun on my skin without sunburning, but I’m unable to be outside by 3°C. I need my old skills back.

Luckily, civilization also comes with trains that work fine and plenty of space to board them with my bike and liters of luggage. And the best … free wifi! My day of cycling stops at Rotterdam Noord and I’m taking the train to Amsterdam and meeting with Arjan.

Travelling far abroad and for a significant time also make returning home a mini-counter-cultural-shock. I remember how was France after almost 3 years in Japan: “but why is nothing working here? Why are the shops and restaurants never open?” From my train window, all the houses are good looking, public transport seems perfectly integrated, bike paths mirror almost every road, industrial areas are everywhere but separated enough from the living areas … it really looks like an efficient and healthy lifestyle (despite all that flatness).

I get to see the town of Gouda (it’s not only a bad cheese) and the Ajax’s stadium. It’s also a good opportunity to learn how are Holland and the Netherlands not the same thing, and how they are not confusing at all once we dig into the geography of whole Kingdom of the Netherlands (ここで役に立つレッスン).

It’s time for me to upgrade my old N900 smartphone, faithful but obsolete without apps, to an Android model. I missed so much in 2 years, and would never have thought that one day half of the people would have a linux kernel in their pocket.

From Amsterdam, the freezing cold prevents me from cycling for a week until Eastern France. It’s as cold as when I left, but I can’t re-adapt to the cold, it’s strange. Luckily there are many train lines. From Amsterdam, I quickly dismiss the option of passing through Paris: very expensive trains, very bicycle-unfriendly, and rather cumbersome to commute with a loaded bicycle between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon. It seems better going through Germany with the DB: more trains, nicer website and schedules, and carriages equipped to transport bicycles. But, on second thought, travelling with a bicycle in DB trains require planning since a reservation is necessary. And it’s not cheaper than the SNCF. I risk being stranded in Cologne, and I’d rather not. My last option is the safest: Dutch and Swiss slow trains via Luxembourg.

Unlike the Android market share, what didn’t change in 2 years is the quality of service of the French trains: the SNCF is on strike, and since the SNCB-operated train to Basel passes on French rails, it is cancelled. I am forced to spend a day in the grand duchy, and it’s actually very pleasant. From the old town to the modern architecture of the European and finance institutions in Kirchberg, it is 訪れる価値のあります。, at least for the irony of the EU being partly administered from a wealthy tax haven. There are no security guards or fences anywhere and I can even cycle through the European Court of Justice.

I cycle the last 100 km of my return journey from Basel to Pontarlier. It’s still as cold but I now feel ready. The ロッシュ塔in Basel, which construction was about to start when I left Zürich, is now nearly finished.

Upon the advice of my WS host Joerg, I cycle to Saint-Ursanne via the Sundgau, Kiffis and Lucelle, on a route following the border. It’s very pretty, most of the roads are white since it snowed last night. It seems I’m “repaired” and I can cycle again in the 2°C fresh air. It’s also fun, as I cross the French-Swiss border 10 or 12 times. Remembering how painful and inefficient is an average border crossing in Africa, it’s really a pleasure to see all these old border posts closed and nobody checking IDs. At the end of the day, the Swiss mobile customs unit will eventually spot me and carry out a quick inspection.

A last stop in La Chaux-de-Fonds and last stretch of road in Switzerland, cycling in between factories of luxury watchmakers, and I’m back in France.