Buying A Trawler Yacht In Holland By Sandra Clayton Imagine sailing through Paris in your own trawler yacht. Or up the Thames to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich where longitude on your GPS reads 00.00°. Drfiting past German castles on the Rhine, perhaps, or tying up in Amsterdam to visit Rembrandt’s house. We did imagine that, and then decided to do something about it. After six years of ocean cruising, my husband, David, and I decided that we wanted to spend out summers exploring Europe’s inland waterways. Ironically, America was largely responsible for this. After crossing the Atlantic from England to the Caribbean we escaped the hurricane season by making out way to Miami and setting off up the 1,000 wondrous miles of rivers, lakes, and canals that make up the ICW. As well as the pleasures of inland waters, we also discovered the true delights of small–town America, only ever experienced before in movies, as a backdrop to some unspeakable crime. And it was in America that we first appreciated the qualities of the trawler yacht. We sold our sailboat last Christmas and during the winter David embarked on a search of the Internet to find a suitable trawler–type yacht for us in Europe as the average American trawler that is able to cross the Atlantic is too tall for most European bridges. To sail the River Seine through Paris and on down the Rhone to the Mediterranean you need a yacht less than 3.5 meters (11 feet, 5 inches) high. To travel the French canals you need a maximum height of 2.5 meters (8 feet, 1 inch). Europe’s inland waterways also require a draft of 1.5 meters (4 feet, 11 inches) or less. What we discovered was that while a number of European boats—including English ones—passed the height, draft, and comfort test, many of them had enormous engines. And while we could afford the boat, our retirement pensions were not up to meeting the diesel demands of two turbocharged 395hp engines. David found a much larger range of what we were looking for in The Netherlands where they have built comfortable steel trawlers for generations. On most of them the arch or mast can be lowered, as can the awning, and the windows surrounding the helm can be folded down level with the coach house roof. In this way you can have full headroom below and a good steering position and still tackle very low bridges. Alternatively, some styles are built with a low profile anyway and little or nothing has to be lowered. Searching The Netherlands Some of the brokers’ information that David downloaded off the Internet was very sparse and did not give a good impression of the boats, but with the money from our former yacht burning a hole in our pockets and a great desire to sort out our future summer cruising at the earliest opportunity, we set off in the spring to have a look. The bulk of the boats in which we were interested were located in Holland, so we book...

Log in or register to read the full article and view pictures.