How to NL

Sailing

The Netherlands has the densest waterway network in Europe. Waterways trump roads and railways in the Netherlands; the government agency responsible for the construction and maintenance of roads and important railways is called the Rijkswaterstaat. To see how important waterways are (navigable or not), just see how they dive the entire A4 motorway underneath this small ditch. (The story is more complicated than this, but.)

Sorry, I do not have much experience in sailing (please excuse me if I have used the wrong nautical term), but here is some minimal information. Very useful, but not obligatory to have on your vessel, is the ANWB Wateralmanak, if you can read at least some Dutch. Part 1 contains all the sailing regulations in the Netherlands and Belgium; part 2 includes useful information like harbour information, and the opening times of bridges and sluice gates. ANWB also sell physical/digital nautical maps and atlases at their webshop and physical stores. (I've seen sailors using ANWB nautical maps; I suppose they are good.)

There is also vaarweginformatie.nl, which gives waterway information (provided to them by various offical sources) online for free. There are also apps that give you waterway information in the Netherlands.

Here are some free waterway maps of Flanders and other countries, and here is an overview map of Belgian inland waterways. You might find OpenSeaMap useful.

The entire coast of European Netherlands is protected by dykes, levees, locks, dams, sluice gates, and storm surge barriers. There are three places that you can sail in from the sea without encounter a lock immediately:

• In the northeast: Estuary of Ems (Eems in Dutch), which forms part of the Dutch-German border. (The Ems itself is entirely in Germany. All small rivers that flow into the estuary on the Dutch side are gated.)
• In the west: Nieuwe Waterweg, which is the exit of Rotterdam. A bit upriver is the Maeslantkering, a storm surge barrier and one of the largest moving structures on earth, and it is usually open. From here, snake your way to, and up, the Waal, and you will reach the Rhine at the German border east of Nijmegen without needing to go through a single lock/sluice gate. (But, check bridge times near Dordrecht.)

  

• In the southwest: Western Scheldt (Westerschelde in Dutch), which is the exit of Antwerp. (Small rivers flowing into it are all gated.)

When going through a lock from the sea into an inland waterway, the water goes down; a pleasant way of being reminded that: oh, I am in the Netherlands.