Delfzijl, by the way, should be pronounced "DELF-tzeyl" according to all the rules of normal Dutch pronounciation, but the locals say "delf-TZEEL." Zijl is an old word for "lock" (as on a canal, not something with a key) and the North German equivalent is -siel, pronounced "SEEL."

I thought it would be pushing our luck to stay on where we were into the week, and I discovered that the other marina in town not only had a berth for us but ws significantly cheaper than the one I had considered, so on Monday morning we cast off and went through the

There was also the matter that Carl wanted to go to Amsterdam to spend a little time witih Stan and Ken, friends from Boqueron, before flying home. Since the Delfzijl station was closed for renovations, that seemed to mean a trip to Groningen, the provincial capital, where I could both buy his ticket and exchange money. So on Tuesday I took the short trip on a train.

I accomplished both goals, but found the world has changed since we were last in the Netherlands. Instead of tickets there are smart cards with a chip in them; one puts money on the card, and then checks in at a machine before boarding a train and checks out again at one's destination, and somehow the electronics figure it all out. Americans like to believe they have an advanced civilization, but sometimes I am not so sure.

Carl is a good shipmate and a great friend, and we were sorry to see him leave. His departure also marked a significant point in our adventure; we were now in Europe, on our own, and we didn't yet know what we would make of it.

Just across the canal is the little town Farnsum, now pretty much incorporated into Delfzijl but still with its own recognizable center. We unfolded our bicycles and rode through the town, enjoying its church and windmill. Our berth is on an old piece of the Eemskanaal, now no longer a through route, and Farnsum is on the way to the new locks and the wholesale house Datema, where I made a couple of trips to buy charts.

In commemoration, the Delfzijl town fathers commissioned a statue of Maigret, and it stands in a small park at the edge of the canal.

We learned which bakery suited us best, and which butcher had the best sausages. We also learned how to shop and which supermarkets had the best selection and prices.

We found a very pleasant Italian restaurant and had a good meal there for not too much money. I enjoyed watching the traffic in the harbor and the activity in the shipyards that were just next to our marina.

It turns out that a young man named Jan Brons developed an internal combustion motor at about the same time as Rudolf Diesel, and the display was at the site of his former factory, now a museum, in Appingedam.

There were also boats, many of them powered by Brons engines, some of them familiar from our Delfzijl neighborhood. One category that was new to us is what one might call miniatures. By that I don't mean models (there were those, too), but small, maybe 15-20-foot, versions of full-sized tugboats, with room for one or two people. Of course, they also had antique engines.

A group of radio-controlled model tugboats was running around in the canal as we arrived, and they were also fun to watch. These were mostly big models, maybe 30-40 inches long, of very sophisticated modern tugs.

Some of the engines on display were running large machines. We saw a reciprocating sawmill, mounted on a skid frame with its own engine, that was fun to watch as its blade went back and forth and the log carriage advanced by very slow degrees. I would like to have it on Chebeague, where we have plenty of pine logs for it to saw out.

We bought burgers and beers from one of the organization booths providing food, and then it started to rain so we went into the museum to see all the engines on display there. One notable example was connected to a screw-pump and had spent its working life in a pumping station for one of the polders, as the diked off areas where the water has been pumped out are called.

We talked to some of the exhibitors, and to some of the boat people, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Eventually, however, we decided we had seen about what there was to see, and so we headed off to see the village center and the church.

In fact, without knowing it, we had wandered into the Appingegdam "Shantyfestival," an annual three-day fest of groups singing sea chanties (loosely defined). We never got a count of the groups, but there must have been more than twenty, from all over.

We found a schedule and saw that a group called the "Chanting Lads" were due to perform at a place called "Joey's Bar," and although neither the bar nor the group had a very Dutch name, the place was close, so we thought we would try them.

The bar was very pleasant, with the bartender's nephew (about 3 years old) "helping" him wash glasses, and the Chanting Lads turned out to be excellent, singing in good, close, multi-part harmony.

We rode happily back along the canal in the late afternoon, just a little tired and well-contented with our lives.

Barbara went to one of these sittings and announced her intention to learn Dutch, and from that time on the morning coffees became Dutch immersion classes for her. Her spoken Dutch did indeed improve.

The bodies had been left at peace in the graveyard, but the stones were put back in their former position at the new higher level.

Termunten is a tiny village, with a small yacht harbor and its own lock, and the usual rows of immaculately-kept brick houses.

It also has a beautiful church, built in the 13th century but largely demmolished in the 19th and 20th. The church, like many others hare, stands on a little hill, called a wierde. These hills were built up originally in what was mostly more-or-less salt marsh to gain some dry ground, both for people and for animals. There are still several towns around Groningen with names ending in "-wierde."

We rode back from Termunten by a different route, by back roads with fields on one side and modern chemical plants and ships loading on the other. We have consistently seen industrialization and agriculture right next to each other, with apparently no disadvantage to either.

This country is all peatbogs; the peat was dug out, dried, and used as fuel for heating. The whole area is criss-crossed by small canals originally dug to move the peat out to market. We were almost always either driving along a canal or over a bridge.

It all made a wonderful day, with the unfamiliar Dutch scenery whisking by us between stops, and at the end of the day we had a delicious dinner at a little restaurant next to the marina in Termunterzijl.

After our trip, Coen and Marianne were off to their vacation house in the Pyrenees, but Coen's place was taken by Henk Kemminck, another retired merchant officer who is a pillar of the regional Protestant Church establishment.

We also managed to work on the boat a little; we lowered the dinghy and put the engine on it so we could run it in the fresh water and flush the salt out of it. I changed its oil, and then washed, deflated, and stowed the dinghy below. We still have the little rowing pram available, but we won't need the dinghy while we are in the canals.

We also did some entertaining; staying in the same place for a while, we met people, of course, and one evening Aldert, from Wyvern II, our next-door neighbor, came for a beer or two, and later Bob and Janice, from the only other American boat we have seen since leaving the US.