Anyway, the ship was Stiro which is a scrap metal barge from Holland. We followed her in and then kept up with them for the next two locks.
As we came up to the second lock at Herbrum there was a line up of ships waiting to go through so we asked if we could tie up to Stiro and then had a chat with Natalie who is the skipper.
She told us that there wasn't enough water on the other side and they were waiting for high tide. So there we sat for an hour and a half, had a chat, had some lunch and then when the bridge opened we snuck in behind the first boat in the queue.
From here on the Ems river is tidal so we had the current slightly against us for the first half hour and then it was working with us for the reminder of our trip in to Papenburg.
This is us leaving Stiro (boat 3 in the queue) and sneeking past boat 2 to go into the lock with boat 1 in the queue.