Artic Adventure Part 12 - cutting corners saving time

South of Denmark lies one of the busiest waterways in the world. It's the Kiel Canal and it links the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.

It's only 61 miles long, but it will save you 250 nautical miles of travel through potentially nasty waters. I say "potentially nasty" waters because I can't confirm that the North Sea is anywhere near as rough as the movies and news reports would lead you to believe. On this trip we transited the North Sea 7 times and each time it was flat calm. Dead calm. Boring in fact. Real estate may be all about location, oceans are all about timing.  Summer is a good time to go boating in the North Sea (if you're into gambling with your life). 

The hype

The reality (in July)

The first Kiel Canal was opened in 1784 and was called the Eider Canal (built by the Danes).  100 years later it was enlarged by 9,000 German workers.  It took them 8 years of shoveling.  Oddly, it is fresh water - which makes no sense as it links together two oceans. The reason its fresh is that they used a large part of the Eider river to cut down on digging. The side effect cruising through fresh water for ocean ships is a free killing of any organisms clinging to the hull. Equally surprising is that each end has locks you have to transit. 

If they didn't have locks, a big storm could cause one helluva slosh through the canal. Locking is always fun on a ship.

Unlike the Panama Canal - you only go through one lock.  That means there's no need for "mules" to pull/guide you through.

The canal isn't large by today's ship standards.  Only a couple of cruise ships like our "little" Prinsendam are small enough to squeeze through.

674 feet long,  39,000 tons, 740 passengers

The Kiel Canal is busy.  Approximately 50,000 ships and boats make the trip each year (as opposed to the Panama Canal which sees around 14,000 ships per year). One reason for the increase in traffic is cost.  You can take a yacht through for 55 euros (the Panama canal will cost you several thousand). For most ships there is a speed limit (around 7 knots) depending on your armament. 

German battleship Scharnhorst transiting during WW II.  She worked up to full speed (35+ knots) and managed to wash an impressive amount of water out of the canal.  With 8  8" guns no one tried to give her a ticket.

Along the way there is always something to see.  It feels like you riding on a big truck through the countryside.

Deer

Can you imagine the pucker factor for the captain and the helmsman of the Scharnhorst running this waterway at close to 40 MPH?

Fishing farm

herring

A real sailor wouldn't have cranked on the engine.

pristine mooring bollard

mooring bollard after my buddy Mike docked there

Ferries are way more fun than bridges

   

 

There are, however, some low bridges

Which required the Prinsendam to lower her antenna mast

After we cleared the bridge it refused to return to upright (it was low on hydraulic fluid)

Big steel foundations for offshore wind turbines

An unexpected treat. This is Lurssen - one of very few worldwide boatyards to specializes in mega yachts. 125 years in business

This is the 2009 yacht "Global" undergoing re-fit.  220' long. The hatch partially open on the side is a garage for jet skis and shore dinghies.

18 crew,  37,000 gallons fuel.  Rents out for $1,250,000 per week. (and you can't even water-ski behind it) 

I never did figure out how (or if) these signal towers work.

Comin' through

Not all transits go as planned.  This accident occurred in 2011.

This is something you don't see often.  It's extremely important for navies:

coming into view (side canal to main channel)

This is a ship degaussing station

If you're into physics and want to open up a can of worms - look up degaussing (or deperming, or wiping) a ship.  The facility above essentially tries to wipe out the major magnet properties of a steel hull ship. This can come in handy if you're trying to avoid setting off a mine.

Bergen, Norway

Some places in the world are just plain fun to visit, even if they don't offer up exotic things to photograph. Welcome to Bergen.

Bergen is Norway's second largest city, yet the number of visitors from cruise ships (300 ships visit each year) exceeds the population. It has one of the more odd histories you'll come across and it's surprising it continues to exist at all.  As far as I can tell, Bergen has the biggest history of burning of any large European city I've ever visited. History records some 15 major fires starting in 1198 to present. A couple of them burned 90% of the city to the ground. The fires started from;

Civil war
pirate invasions
pissed off merchants
drunk sailors
Bruce Kochsmeier (inside joke from my La Jolla childhood) 

I took one of the ship's tours to get a feel for the place.  According to our guide, the problem with fires got so bad that during the renaissance no candles or lanterns were allowed. My guess is that there were no nearby quarries for digging up better building materials.

This is part of the rebuilt Hanseatic merchant area - now a world heritage site

Bergen does have a cool funicular. 

You can see the railcar on the slope near the top

If you're unfamiliar with the term funicular - all it means is a railway that is so steep the rail-car wheels can't get enough traction to move.  They rely on a cable system to hoist them up and down.

The tunnel varied from smooth walls to raw blasted rock. Unlike Disney - this rock is real. You can see the pullie uppie/downie cable in between the rails

The view from the top is worth the ticket price.

Bergen has a huge seafood market. Restaurants all over the place.

This is a live King crab.  It's at least 2 feet across.  I spent 15 minutes trying to get a good picture (didn't work)

Eidfjord, Norway

Eidfjord is tiny village in Norway (less than 1,000 residents) that would be ignored by the world except for one thing - getting there is incredible.  It lies at the end of a breath-taking fjord. 

Crossing the fjord is the Hardanger bridge.

The Hardanger bridge seemingly appears out of nowhere, crosses the fjord, and goes nowhere. Look for the road connecting to it.

The Hardanger bridge is just one more example of why the Norwegians are considered the some of the finest civil engineers in the world.  Below is a picture of where the road goes;

Driving on it must be quite the experience - pop out of a long tunnel onto a bridge crossing a stunning fjord.
As we passed under, the captain announced that the Hardanger bridge has the longest center span in the world (4,298 feet). That isn't exactly true.  While it is 98 feet longer than the Golden Gate bridge center span, it pales compared to the center span of the Akashi bridge in Kobe, Japan (6,532 feet).

By 振 - originally posted to Picasa as 明石海峡大橋, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11526396

No matter, it's still quite fun to duck under.

The construction of the bridge is awesome, but the reason to build it appears a bit daft to me. The bridge cost $350 M to build - not very much until you find out that it is only two lanes wide (plus a bike path - God love 'em).  Why build such a bridge for only 2,000 cars per day? The Golden Gate has had up to 162,000 cars cross it in one day.  No idea.