Schoten - 16th August to 18th August 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: 13 Euros, Marina is not secure.

Electricity: 4€ for the day

Water: 50 cents but at the land end of the dock, we had the Harbour Master bring the big hose from the club house.

Shower: 1€ for 7 minutes, to use you will need to go to the Harbour master and ask him to unlock the door for you.

Great location, Restaurants, supermarkets and Gamma (like a Bunnings) walking distance from the marina.

Sint Job Yacht Club - 14th August to 15th August 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: 10 Euros, Marina is secure, need code to enter

Electricity: 3€ for the day

Water: Free

Shower: 1€ for 7 minutes 

Great location, supermarkets walking distance from the marina.

A nice bakery close by. A much bigger town, does have a couple of supermarkets close to the marina and lots of restaurants.

Brecht - 11th August to 13th August 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: 20 Euros, Marina does have a fence and gate around it but the gate isn't locked.

Electricity: 3€ for the day

Water: Free

Shower: 1€ for 7 minutes 

Not much around, the walk from bridge to bridge is a long one. There is a cafe/bar at each bridge so there is a place to sit and relax for a bit, unless it is closed. And a restaurant, Cuvee Hoeve.

Steel yard 

Boarding, Trading and Sports Stable and they also do Jumping and Dressage training.

Turnhout- 4th August to 10th August 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: 10 Euros

Electricity: 3€ for the day

Water: 1€ for 120 liters - Note none of the tap's work, so every Friday the HavenMeester comes around with a big hose and fills anyone that would like water. He has a counter on the tap so he knows how much you needed and bills accordingly.

Shower: 3€ unlimited time - Shower is located in the restaurant, yes that means you can only use it when it's opened, and you pay the 3€ to the restaurant. Yeah, we passed and showered on the boat.

Washing Machine and Drier: 1€ for 20mins

Great location, supermarket is only a three-minute walk from the marina, center of town is about 1.4 kilometers. Note, the marina is not secure.

Markets: a Farmers market on Wednesdays right near the marina, big market on Saturdays near the Castle finishes 1:00pm, Sundays is a large secondhand market near the Castle finishes 12:30pm and then on Sunday afternoon near the marina secondhand clothes.

Home for the next week

Filling with water. The Harbor Master has a very long hose and a counter, he uses the tap at the back of the restaurant.

View of the Marina from the other side of the canal, Sun Chi is the second boat on the left. and the restaurant is very close, no loud music at night so we slept well but they were doing work on the other side of the restaurant at 7am. 

Between the two buildings is the Carrefour supermarket, an ALDI, toy store, pharmacy, Laundromat, Bakery, Zeeman and Wibra.

Wide view of the marina from the other side on the canal.

Around town

View of the restaurant from the front of Sun Chi and the Farmers market on Wednesday. 

Church in the center of town, hard to get a decent photo, a carnival has all it's trucks around setting up for the carnival.

Between Reite and Turnhout - 4th August 2025

Sharing an incident that happened this morning at 11:55 we saw a barge up ahead, in the middle of the canal, all normal, they tend to move over to the starboard side when there is a boat heading their way. You can see by the photos below there is not that much room if a 6-meter-wide barge is heading towards you in the middle. This barge, "Christian" didn't move to the starboard, he kept drifting to the port side of the canal, our side. About now is when we call him up on the VHF, no reply. I grabbed our horn and blasted the horn 5 short blasts at least twice (5 short rapid blasts or more indicates danger, disagreement with other vessel intentions) Martin kept trying the captain of Christian on the VHF. Thanks to the quick thinking and great boat maneuvers by Martin reversing trying to get out of the way. Finally Christian turned to starboard it was still touch and go, when a large barge turns, the stern swings the other direction, in this case on our side of the canal. The whole incident may have only been less than a minute, but it was the longest minute. The worst part, when Christian passed us there was no one at the helm.

The Canal where the incident happened.

Martin putting this into perspective.

The canal is maybe 20m wide at the most. He is 6m wide, give him 3m between him and the other bank, I am 3.5m wide and give me 1.5m on my side to the bank and that leaves 5m between us or so we normally aim for. He's doing about 10kmh and we're normally doing the same. Fully loaded he's about 350ton of steel, we're about 7 ton of fiberglass.

Imagine you're driving up a mountain with a sheer rock face on your left, there's a semi coming down and he has strayed on to your side covering half of your lane.

At pretty much the last minute he wakes up and drags the wheel over and the cab misses you but now we're looking at the trailer taking time to react.

Slam on the brakes and hit reverse while watching it still come towards you and the gap between the trailer and the rock face still narrowing, oh yeah, make sure that when you're reversing you don't hit the rock face.

Safe arrival drinks, Damn right!

Safe arrival drinks with a late lunch 3:00pm, Martin still not a happy boy.

Christian driving passed the marina we are in; he is going back with a full load so most of his boat is under the water.

Christain again, this photo is a week after the incident, this is Christian empty and what we saw coming towards us.

This photo is to show how close we get to the side when a commercial passes us.  

And how close they get to us.

Commercial heading our way, this one is looking.