Kiel Canal, Germany - 25 Aug 2000 Traversing the Kiel Canal
	Black Watch having just entered the Kiel Canal We entered the Kiel Canal, Holtenau, at 1.45am. It's 105 yrs old, built in 1895, and 98km long traversing mainly farming land, the occasional small village and acres of electricity generating windmills! After 7 hours of transit through the canal we tied up at the Brunsbüttel lock. We were through by 10am to continue on the last leg of the jouney to Dover, 356 NM. Kiel is in north Germany, a port on an arm of the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein at the eastern entrance of the Nord-Ostsee (or Kiel) Canal. The city has been a major port since the 10th century. In 1284 Kiel became a member of the Hanseatic League. In 1773 it came under Danish rule, and in 1866, as part of Schleswig-Holsten, it passed to the control of Prussia. In WWI the city was the headquarters of the German Imperial Fleet, and in WWII its naval base was heavily bombed by the Allies. The Kiel Canal is an artificial waterway in north-western Germany, linking the North Seas and the Baltic Sea. The canal extends in a north-eastern direction across the state of Schleswig-Holstein from Brunsbüttelkoog, near the mouth of the Elbe River, to Kiel, on the Baltic. The canal is very level, and only has locks at its ends to accomodate North and Baltic sea tides. Constructed between 1887 and 1895 and subsequently enlarged, the canal is about 97km (60miles) long, 102m (335ft) wide, and 11m (36ft) deep. The canal shortened the distance between the North and Baltic seas by about 322km (200miles) and eliminated the difficult passage around Jutland. It was internationalised by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
	Traversing the Kiel Canal My photo albums of the Kiel Canal

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