On Sunday, an unusual watercraft passed the Biebrich Castle and entered the port of Schierstein.

Schiltach raftsmen moored their historic replica at the guest berth of the Schierstein water sports club in Wiesbaden in 1921, where they were welcomed by its members with Rheingau wine.

Ralph Euler

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung, responsible for the Rhein-Main section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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On their trip they had previously stopped in Gernsheim.

The 15 meter long and five meter wide raft is made of 15 spruce trunks, all of which come from the Black Forest.

When the raft arrived in Wiesbaden, the crew consisted of seven men and one woman.

The raft is accompanied on land by two teams in cars so that the crew can be exchanged.

With their 360-kilometer raft trip across the Rhine from Baden to Leverkusen, they want to support the UNESCO nomination of rafting as an intangible cultural heritage of mankind.

The wooden construction laid down a week ago with eight people on board in stone walls in the Rastatt district of Baden-Württemberg, as raft master Thomas Kipp from the Schiltach rafters association said.

At the end of April they want to have reached their destination of Hitdorf near Leverkusen in North Rhine-Westphalia with overnight stops and only one rest day.

The basic crew for the entire route is six people, Kipp said.

They had completed an extensive approval process for the trip across the Rhine.

There is a lot to consider on the Rhine: "There is wind here, there are waves here, here is the fairway," said the raft master.

Especially the big ships have to be avoided.

In Germany, rafting - i.e. the transport of wood by water - was included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural assets in 2014 because it used to "play a prominent role in all areas of life in view of the huge need for wood", according to the German UNESCO Commission.

It was operated on almost all bodies of water - from small streams to large rivers.

"The craft and the work of the raftsmen has decisively and radically shaped the reality of life for many people."