The water gushes out into the river with an enormous force. While I wait I heave the boat to, then the gates open and I can sail in.

A metallic creaking sound can be heard as the gate slides into place. There’s a smell of damp stone walls, confined, stagnant. It’s called a chamber and I understand why: right now there’s no way out. It’s just me and the water and I can manage this by myself. I throw two lines up to the lockkeeper, I can steer both using the sheet winch in the cockpit, but I’ve set them up with snatch blocks in the bow and stern, so I can pull in the slack as the boat rises.

But he doesn’t give me a nod of appreciation from above and I have time to wonder whether it will work before the water starts streaming in.

Slowly the water rises and Blue along with it. I pull in the moorings, pulling and pulling. I must at all times make sure that the boat stays up against the wall of the sluice. But the seeping force of the water gushing in and filling up the sluice pulls at Blue, pulls at me. I curse the long keel that makes Blue especially difficult to handle as the water takes hold, trying to force the boat all the way back into the chamber, to throw us toward the gate I just passed through. The line slips on the winch. I lunge forward and grab hold of it again.

The lockkeeper shakes his head up there, swearing and throwing up his arms dramatically in a French manner. I turn away, can’t be bothered to pay any attention to him, concentrate on the lines, on pulling in the slack on the winch.

I don’t make any more mistakes. The sweat pours off me, I concentrate wholly on the lines, on keeping the side of the boat against the sluice’s one chamber wall. Blue is steady now, until the water stops streaming in, until we’ve risen several meters—it must be at least five meters, maybe ten.

The sluice gate in front of me opens, creaking even more, as if it were in the process of rusting completely to pieces. Now there’s yet another chamber and I will have to go through the whole process one more time.

The engine has been idling, and when I can finally sail out into the canal, I put it into gear. The water is greener here—maybe it’s because of the trees growing close together along the shore, the leaves reflected in the surface, or maybe because of the seagrass growing down there. A single blade has come loose and is floating on the surface. I must be on alert for this seagrass—it can get into the backwash inlet and clog it, like hair in a drain.