We are currently boating in Europe on our Dutch-built boat named Abacus. This link will take you to our last 15 years of travels and boating throughout the world. Our current travels around Holland have been amazing with future plans to head towards France, Belgium and beyond.

Jonathan's and Jeannie's New Life on a Barge in France

Ayanna is a 57ft Dutch Barge by Piper boats Ltd and was launched on the River Thames a few days before Christmas 2022. Ayanna has been a longtime dream of ours. Our plan was to take her across the channel to the European Waterways, but due to Brexit, we decided not to get her.
A couple of years went by and we still yearned for the dream of owning our own Dutch Barge and could see that other boat owners were managing to cruise Europe, albeit with a bit more bureaucracy, so we decided it is now or never.

‘Bluegum’ is a Dutch style barge built by Piper Boats of Stoke on Trent in 2012. She was launched in 2012 by owners Trish and Mark who moored her on the River Thames before sailing her across the Channel to France where they have also cruised through Belgium and Holland.

After living on a 42 foot trawler for almost 5 years and completing the American Great Loop, we bought a 1928 21 meter Dutch Luxemotor to cruise the canals of Europe during the summer months.  Winters in Florida are much nicer, so we will be there for the winters.  Pat updates the blog with pictures and history of places we visit for our friends and family back home to enjoy and stay in touch with our adventures.

 After living on our narrowboat and cruising the UK waterways for several years we thought it's about time we followed several friends who are now cruising in mainland Europe.  We are having our boat shipped over to France in spring next year (2019) and intend to start our European adventures with a couple of years in France.

We're Howard & Whitney from Western Canada, who sold everything in 2022 and fast-travelled through 74 countries in four years before buying our barge in 2026 and renaming her "Change of Pace". Our CalmCanals.com site is designed with an interactive map showcasing the blog posts and videos about our travels, letting people quickly zoom in on a location to learn more about it.

Hi, we're Tim and Karina from Australia, via the UK, US, Greece, and most recently, Belgium. For four years, we were fun-employed boat bums living aboard our trawler, Matilda, which is now for sale.   Today, we're residents of Belgium, and we've started a new adventure. We purchased a historic barge constructed in 1907, and we're reinvigorating it as a hotel to run cruises in Belgium.   We have two adult children living in Edinburgh and Tokyo. We love travel, adventure, good food, good company and lots of boutique coffee.

Tales from the Diary of a Ditch-Crawler

by Robert RS Cowley

These are some of the stories of our five decades of wandering the waterways of the UK, the near continent, and the bit in between. They tell of ordinary and extraordinary events, they offer opinionated views, and information about living and cruising aboard our historic craft.

“With that boat?”

That's a question we often get when we talk about our travels on the European waterways in our Dutch Tender 32.
We have traveled from the Mediterranean Sea to Kiel and from Paris to Poland. Our home port is near Rotterdam (NL).
We show that 'small can also be beautiful' when it comes to the boat we use for these trips. With our videos, we share beautiful landscapes and our experiences, which we hope will inspire you.

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things, we hope you enjoy sharing this journey with us

A personal diary of our travels in a 60’ Piper Barge, from the River Thames and around Europe.

For those of you new to cruising the canals and rivers of Europe, this blog is about our continuing journey, warts and all. When we started our cruising life we thought that it would be much like travelling the countryside in a motorhome sightseeing all that Europe has to offer. Well, it turned out to be much more than that. It was the people we met, and that boatie camaraderie that made this lifestyle so enjoyable and unique. We now have lifelong friends that we met on the waterways, that we’ll have till we finally sail into that big marina in the sky. 

This is the good ship Gratis, an ocean going sailing yacht, based on Joshua Slocum’s famous Spray.  At  15m by 4.5m by 1.5m draft and 20T, she has served us well .  A safe refuge on our one year long passage from Australia to Europe.  Now with mast in Storage, Gratis and her crew are cruising the inland water ways of Europe  Travel with us through our blog.  

Don’t forget to say G’day anytime.    Bob & Karyle

I suppose this is starting out mostly for family and friends to keep up with our travels and adventures as we explore The Netherlands with our barge, but also to make new friends and share the wonderful history of this special barge, Janine.

We?  We are Doug and Melissa, two Americans who purchased the Dutch barge Janine in September 2017.  

Passionate sailors! We own 2 and a bit yachts in Melbourne Australia, an international 8 metre built in 1947, a Farr designed ocean racer and the ‘bit’ is an Etchelles that I own with some girlfriends. We built a Piper boat to cruise the canals for the European summer months, then back to sail in Australia for our summer.

Michael and Joan Collins sharing their exploration of the French Waterways with friends, family and other boaters aboard the retired charter boat Juniper.

 Instead of settling down and waiting to get old in just one place, we’ve devised a plan that includes exploring the waterways of France on our new boat, Karanja. And as Verne doesn’t do winter, we’ll spend the rest of the time between Singapore, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand – and whatever other interesting places beckon.

With the experience of sailors straight from the Swiss mountains Peti (Peter) Polin and Lucy Schuler went out to buy a 30 years old project in Holland. 4 years of work and a quick learning process turned the project into a nice an handy little cruiser. Then 10 years of cruising, mostly on inland waterways between Bordeaux in France and Dziwnòw in Poland, northern Holland and southern France turned the rookies into passionate boaters.

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La Vie en Rose - A Piper 49

With the prospect of (a slightly) early retirement in 2019, we began searching the internet in 2015 for a suitable motor yacht from which to explore the inland waterways of Europe, as part of our 5 to 10 year retirement plan.  

The Lady M is our 13.2m SK Kotter - she is a comfortable Dutch-built steel hull aft-cabin motor yacht built in Sneek in 2002 and first launched in 2003.

Join Marianne and Tim as they purchase and begin to travel in their Luxemotor Lionel d'Anton.  Tim does most of the commentary while Marianne has a Facebook page of pictures. 

Maria is a 1931 Dutch Luxe Motor and our travelling home. Since 2019 she has carried us—Mike and Karen, Kaz to friends—our family, friends and Oscar through the waterways of France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The website brings together Maria’s history, technical details, photographs and our journeys from 2020 onwards:

This website gives some background and history about our 21.7m 1925 Steilsteven Moondance, as well as a blog with lots of photos about her refit and our cruises on the rivers, lakes and canals of Europe.

Don and Cathy Jo's Continuing Adventures on the Waterways of Europe with the Dutch Barge "Oldtimer"

Mary-Jane and Michael Houlton arrived back aboard their boat Olivia Rose in March 2020, four days before France went into lock-down due to the Coronavirus. This blog is about life in France under lock-down - or at least that is where it begins. Hopefully we will get back out on the water this year and then it will be a blog about life on the move once more!

Op Hoop van Zegen was originally built in 1907 and converted in the 1950s.

Steve and Maddy are taking her into the next stage of her life on Bristol Harbour with a full refurb.
 

 "We embarked on our journey with Quaintrelle on 24 June 2014 and after a year of daily tweets, switched to writing a blog.  It's an informal, picturesque record of the next two years cruising the UK canal network, the move to France and two years cruising the French system.  It was designed to let friends and family keep up with our adventures, so, I hope, contains an element of entertainment as well.  Although we became landlubbers in the winter of 2018, Quaintrelle is still part of the family and used for holidays.  For us the blog is a valuable record of our very happy years spent living on the water." 

Pete & Maria's second home in the Netherlands & Belgium for several years. 

Jim and Ivette aboard Suavemente.  Follow us while we are cruise the inland waterways of France, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium during the summers, or hibernate at our home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.

TYR was built in 1955 by the shipyard Bröhl in Mohndorf on the Rhine for the operation as a passenger ferry on the Rhine between Wesseling and Lülsdorf near Cologne, 

 We are Americans living in Spain in winter and live aboard Viking, a 12 meter Dutch steel Motoryacht (1998) six months of each year.  Viking has carried us almost everywhere in the Netherlands, from the tiny Wegea to Rotterdam's huge ships.  We sailed the 600 km to Berlin, as well Flanders, Wallonia, much of northern France and south to Saint-Jean-de-Losne.   Paris appeared on our port and starboard before we entered the gorgeous Champagne region on the Marne.  In 2022 we made it to Châlons-en-Champagne when the VNF announced closures left and right for lack of water.  I write about these journeys and ones via land, as well as boating related and other artwork in acrylics, watercolor, and ink.  Click on 'blog' on the menu and then look for the boat related entries.   

VLINDER is a luxury motor ship measuring 25 x 4 m, built in Holland in 1924.
VLINDER was originally a cargo ship, intended for the European canals and rivers.
In 2000 it was lovingly converted into a houseboat in Belgium.

Martin's blog is here

We have been sailing almost all our lives. Motor sailing started with the rental of a Doerak. Living in Den Bosch, we bought our first motorboat, an IJlstervlet (6.90) meters. This was followed by a Pikmeerkruiser (10.50 m) and a Smelne cruiser (13.65 m). We once had a photo of a Luxury Motor hanging in the kitchen cupboard. That seemed like an unattainable dream that has now become reality. We mainly sail in the Netherlands. The name is deliberately with a V. We will explain that when we meet.

 Winter 2016-2017 in Ligny-en-Barroil