Oosterhout - 13th June 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €18:00

Electricity: €1:00 per 2kW

Water: Free

Shower: 50 cents for 3 minutes 

WiFi: Crap

Nice marina with plenty of trees around and seats looking out to the marina, it was a shame the seats were in the sun in the afternoon.

Town on the other side of the canal.

Breda - 12th June 2025

 Marina Facilites: 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €15:00

Electricity: Free if you are in the right position or have a very long cord

Water: Free

Shower: None

Very busy waters through the day with all the little hire boats going past. Night it is nice and quiet.

Today was the first hot day 29° we are hoping summer is here to stay.

The end of the canal, they are working on extending but only for the hire boats.
In the background is the other marine closer to town.

The marina we stayed at, very close to Jumbo and Aldi.
(Staying further in to town (after going under the bridge) would've been better.

 

Water sports' t Lamgat, Goudbloemsedijk - 11th June 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €15:20

Electricity: Free 

Water: Free

Shower: Free

Has a restaurant very close and we know it's open for lunch. When we got there about 3:00pm they said they were closing up but we did have a "Safe arrival drink".

A long way to the town if you are walking but a good spot to stop on the way to Breda.

We did plan on taking the bikes off the boat if for no other reason that spaying WD40 on the chains. They definitely need it. However, we must have got distracted so it's still not done.

Oudenbosch - 9th June to 10th June 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €19:40

Electricity: Free only because they a doing maintenance on the dock, will go back to a coin

Water: Free

Shower: Free, great shower unlimited water and pressure, you control your own water temp as well, only thing is it's a long walk to the shower with a manual ferry. 

Welcome pack from the Harbour

New docks in the making

There are little people all over town, this is the only one we found

Dinner out, 3 course dinner chef's choice. This is the first course, it's going to be a long dinner,
and it was, 2 hours. When we usually order a main meal we are out within an hour. 

W.S.V de Dintel at Dinteloord - 7th June to 8th June 2025

Marina Facilites: 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €15:00 per day

Electricity: Free

Water: Free

Shower: Free operates with a push button and you can control your own water temp.

WIFI: 

Free use of bikes, they are needed, it's a long way to walk to town.

One day it will be warm.

You can see the sun on top of the clouds, it's trying to get to us.

6 week summary (highjacked by internet access discussion)

 

While we've been in Belgium we've used Lyca Mobile for internet access and that's been pretty good. Bit of a painful process specially for Belindas phone which needs a physical SIM. We have a hotspot on the boat which is using a 5G e-Sim capable phone and mine is the same.

Usual story is the introductory price is really good for the first month and you have to sign up with an 'auto-renew' plan although you can cancel at any time. EUR15 for the first month unlimited in BE, 35G/mth elsewhere in Europe. Second month however is back to the normal price of EUR40/mth.

For the e-Sim, when you download and install then you need to go online and activate it handing over passport details and selfie. Then you get access.

When we crossed the border into Netherlands that's where it started to go pear shaped. Shall we say, less optimal. Instead of unlimited we are down to 35G and there's no way of knowing how close you are to that.

I've now come across Odido in the Netherlands. I can install the SimWallet app from the Google Playstore and then tick a box and download a data only e-Sim, hand over the credit card and then I'm good.

EUR2.50 for unlimited data for 1 day, speed is 100M/20M, or

EUR25 for unlimited data for 30 days, speed is 100M/20M or

EUR20 for unlimited data for 30 days, speed is 20M/1M

Their definition of unlimited is the first 20G per day is at full speed and after that you are throttled to 1M/1M for the remainder of the 24 hours.

Oh yeah, only available in NL.

This is how we're going to continue in Netherlands for the next 6 weeks or so but I wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of thing becoming a lot more common place.

Think about no phone number, that's ok, we use no end of dedicated apps that don't need a phone number, true portability.

No manufacturing of physical sims or the packaging. No distribution, no sales margins.

No activation and handling of personal details, that's all been outsourced to Google and Apple.

I land at the airport, connect to the airport wifi, download the sim and then I'm off and running.

Back to why we turned back inland.

Weather mainly and needing to spend a bit more time doing some work.

Tholen - 5th June to 6th June 2025

Marina Facilites: Jachthaven WSV De Kogge 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €20 plus €1:19 per person per day 

Electricity: Pay with coin not sure we didn't bother.

Water: Free

Shower: Free operates with a push button and on the end of the dock not at the Harbormasters office like most are.

WIFI: excellent

Our Marina, Sun Chi is about where the arrow is, all the way at the entry of the marina. The building on the right side is the Harbormasters office.

Terneuzen Outside Marina - 2nd June to 4th June 2025

Marina Facilites: Jachthaven Ternezen BV 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €26.74 a night pay via an App
Electricity: Pay using the App, not sure we didn't plugin

Water: Pay using the App, not sure of the cost we didn't need any water.

Shower: Free with timer button, 5 minutes shower. Timer resets in two minutes.

WIFI: excellent (passable ;-) ) which is why we are back, Martin has 2 meetings on Wednesday.

Markets on Wednesday

Old lock no longer in use

On our way to Tholen we saw a barge being towed and pushed by two tugboats with a big thing on the barge near Yerseke, Netherlands

Changed our plans, instead of going up along the edge of the islands in Zeeland we've looked at the forecast for the next fortnight and it's pretty rubbish so we're heading inland, hence returning to Terneuzen.

I've also solved the NL internet problem, more on that later.

Breskens - 31st May to 1st June 2025

Marina Facilites:

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €28:00 a night pay via an barcode
Electricity: Electricity comes with berth if paying with the QR Code not sure if you have the APP

Water: Free

Shower: Free, unlimited. Container converted with 4 shower rooms, long walk from the visitors' berths.

Wi-Fi: bad (unusable)

Large marina

Long walk from the visitors berths to the mainland

Lovley walks on the promenade, on the walk we come across De Bootique a sporting goods store but what they don't mention is half the store is a Chandlery, a great surprise. Further on the town has a decent size Jumbo (supermarket).

Beautiful Sunset, still a lot of clouds

Terneuzen Outside Marina - 30th May 2025

Marina Facilites: Jachthaven Ternezen BV 

Berth: for a 10-meter boat €26.74 a night pay via an App
Electricity: Pay using the App, not sure we didn't plugin

Water: Pay using the App, not sure of the cost we didn't need any water.

Shower: Free with timer button, 5 minutes shower. Timer resets after a couple of minutes.

WIFI: excellent (yeah sorta. ~ 6M up and down)

On the way out of Ternezen (inside marine), we went back to Navimar with Sun Chi and purchased a new float switch for the grey water tank.

Float switch, soon we can stop remembering to turn the grey water pump on and off.

Installing the float switch, no room under the floor to straighten up. Good job Martin.
We will be living with buckets in the sinks for the next 24 hours, to give the Sikaflex time to dry.

Boats are getting bigger - ship on the way to Antwerp Belgium

Green line is Sun Chi, Yellow line is a Commercial Burge we are used to on the canals, the blue line is a container ship, you always know when one is passing through because Sun Chi will start to rock with the water movement