This is "Onbekommerd"!

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Urk To Franeker

From Urk we travelled in windless conditions to Stavoren. We tied up in the Old Harbour, as this is outside the lock and we had planned to continue on the IJsselmeer the next day. We knew that Jaap and Feikje on the Jildou would also be in Stavoren and we found them tied up at the 'Eiland', a favourite place inside the lock. We had drinks with them and said our goodbyes for the last time this season.
Yesterday (Wednesday) was again a beautiful day with temperatures in the 20's, warm for mid September! There was a bit more wind, but nothing serious. We left Stavoren, went through the Lorentz locks at Kornwerderzand and continued to Harlingen. It was very nice on 'the Wad' and we were very sad that on reaching Harlingen we had to turn starboard into the harbour instead of port to Vlieland or Terschelling! After the lock in Harlingen (called the Tjerk Hiddes lock), we stopped and satisfied Onbekommerd's thirst with almost 400l of diesel.
Franeker was reached less than an hour later and then 'operation packing up' started. We had a nice dinner at Ike and Marinus' house in Franeker, where we exchanged travel stories from the past summer (they took their boat, a traditional 'Hogaars' to Berlin this year).
This morning we finished packing up and by midday Onbekommerd was tied up in front of the shipyard of Valk Yachts where she will spend the winter, safely tucked away in a hall ashore.
We did almost 1500 nautical miles in almost 300 hours this year, quite a bit although not as much as last year but then Copenhagen is not nearly as far as Stockholm!
It was a very good summer, with no real problems, good weather and for 10 weeks good company from Jaap and Feikje on their Jildou.

This will be the last blogpost this season, but please join us again next year for yet another 'Onbekommmerd' trip!


Monday, September 15, 2014

The wind tunnel fan, Marknesse and Urk

Before I start on 'current affairs', I would like to share just one picture from the DNW wind tunnel we saw on Saturday. There is a ban on taking photographs at the DNW, understandably as there is a lot of very special intellectual property there, which they obviously don't want to share with the competition. Also, the simulation work they do for their clients is clearly confidential.
But an exception is made for the big fan in the wind tunnel. This fan is 12m in diameter and draws 12MW of power at full speed. That is equivalent to 200000 standard old fashioned light bulbs (of 60W each). Or to put it in a different way: to run that fan at full speed for one hour takes as much power as running a light bulb for almost 23 years (that's an old fashioned light bulb).
Here is our group in front of the fan:








On Saturday evening we had a very successful dinner and on Sunday morning an equally nice breakfast. Having rather eaten too much, we one by one left Vollenhove.
Onbekommerd followed 'Ramsdiep', the Valkvlet belonging to Jur and Aafke (who were also part of the Wadden experience in May). They live in Marknesse, close to Vollenhove and had invited us to share the afternoon and evening with them (and use their washing machine!).
We had a most pleasant time with them. Here is Onbekommerd as seen from their back garden:








As the weather forecast for the next few days is very good, we decided to take the 'outside' route to Franeker.

That means we today went to Urk (still through the Noord Oost Polder, where Marknesse is). Tomorrow we'll take the IJsselmeer to Stavoren and Wednesday the IJsselmeer, a little bit of Waddenzee and the Van Haringxma Kanaal to Franeker.

Location:Wijk 1,Urk,The Netherlands

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Valk Yachts Club weekend

Apologies for the lack of blogposts the last few days. Here is some news.

Last Thursday, we cycled around in the area. We came across the settlement of 'Nederland', which warranted a picture:





And we rode along the same canal we travelled on by boat the previous day. That enabled us to get a picture of the canal after all:





On Friday, most of the Valk ships participating in the festivities arrived. At 5pm we had a 'steigerborrel', literally 'drinks on the jetty'.





Today we first went to the DNW, an institute that runs a big wind tunnel where clients (mainly the aerospace industry) can have models of their products tested.
Their main claim to fame is that all Airbus models have been and are tested there, but also other civilian and military aircraft including the JSF.
Especially for technically minded people, it was very interesting to see this enormous installation.

In the afternoon, we went to the 'Orchideeenhoeve', where they cultivate and display orchids. Other tropical flora and fauna (butterflies, birds, carp) are also on display:











Tonight, we'll have the dinner and tomorrow still a breakfast.

Location:Aan Zee,Steenwijkerland,The Netherlands

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Vollenhove

Today we spent two hours navigating the last few miles to Vollenhove.
The trip took us though the Weerribben, a very scenic part of NW Overijssel. The maximum speed in the narrow canals is only 6Km/hr which means you have plenty of time to absorb the surroundings.
Unfortunately, our resident photographer was so engrossed that she omitted taking any pictures....
We got to Vollenhove - where the first 'lustrum' of the Valk Yachts Club will be held this weekend (see the previous post for more) by lunchtime. We are the first Valk Yacht here.
On first impression, Vollenhove lost a lot when - about 70 years ago - it lost it's sea frontage (due to the Zuiderzeewerken, but that's too much to go into here). The town today is pretty much deserted and many other old Zuiderzee towns have succeeded much better in preserving some of their heritage.
As the Valk festivities will only start on Friday late afternoon, we will get the bikes out tomorrow and explore the area. The weather continues to be good, a really nice late summer after a rather 'autumny' August.

Location:Groenestraat,Vollenhove,The Netherlands

Monday, September 8, 2014

From one Marrekrite place to another

After a leasurely breakfast, we left Flakke Brekken and motored to Heeg to do some shopping. It is still very nice sunny weather!
After Heeg, we passed Woudsend and Sloten to end up on an artificial island in the Tjeukemeer, which is the biggest lake in Friesland.
We'll stay here one or two nights and then move on into North West Overijssel (that's another province) on our way to the fifth anniversary celebrations of the Valk Yacht Club which start on Friday night in Vollemhove. A five year period is called 'lustrum' in Dutch, so this is the club's first lustrum.

Not much else to report today, apart that we were just given two cans of (probably) Polish beer. Lyn assisted a rental boat with what appear to be Polish people with landing and tying up their craft (the rear thruster does not work which makes the boat impossible to handle to them......). As a thank you, they brought us two cans of beer, which is very nice of them.



Saturday, September 6, 2014

Back To Marrekrite

After a somewhat lazy morning (but it included washing the salt of the boat and brushing the deck!), we went onto the IJsselmeer to Workum and from there a bit inland to a little lake called the 'Flakke Brekken'. Here we are tied up in the middle of peace and quiet.

On the IJsselmeer outside Workum there was a big junior sailing event taking place. Workum is one of the places in this country where this sort of events in a collection of junior / youth sailing dinghy classes regularly take place. We took our boys, Greg and Sean here to sail Optimists way back in 2001 so seeing all the launching dollies on the shore as we came in brought back happy memories. Now they are 26 and 27 years old repectively.....





We plan to stay at our Marrekrite spot for two nights, so unless we have dramatic events unfolding in front of us on the Flakke Brekken, there will probably be no blog post tomorrow!

Friday, September 5, 2014

Vlieland music festival / back to the mainland

Yesterday, we discovered there is a big music festival on Vlieland this coming weekend. It's possibly called "Into the wide open", but we're not 100% sure about that, although that was the text in big letters in the dunes when we left.
Quite a big and important event, it appears. Our neighbour in the harbour told us that 6000 tickets were made available on-line and that these were sold out in 3 minutes!
The ferries arriving yesterday (the ferry berth is about a KM from the yacht harbour but the ferry passes very close) were packed with people and there were additional ferry sailings too.
As all accommodation was booked out, there were a few 'sleep ships' in the harbour, where you usually find the 'charters' (see the previous blogpost). On these sleep ships, one can rent a bed for the night.
So quite a change from the usual harbour scene!
Around 6pm the 'sound checks' started. The concert venue was quite a distance away, but the electronics did their stuff.... But although we could hear it, it was not that bad!
The festival had nothing to do with us leaving today: that had been planned a few days ago. So after visiting the "Tromp's Huis" museum (small, but nice, especially their collection of old maps of Vlieland) and some last shopping, we left the harbour around 1 on the incoming tide. The visibility was not that great, but one could comfortably see the ships nearby and any marks needed for navigation. Plus we had the AIS and even the radar.
Not a breath of wind the whole way and before 4pm we were at Kornwerderzand. Going through the lock was effortless (although it was quite busy) and as we were quite tired we opted to stop in Makkum which is just a few miles beyond the lock.
So we are back on the IJsselmeer. We'll probably enter The Frisian inland waters tomorrow, either at Workum or Stavoren and take it from there.

Location:Workumerdijk,Wûnseradiel,The Netherlands

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Life on Vlieland

We have now spent two nights on Vlieland and will stay for another two.
Although Vlieland - in contrast to Schiermonnikoog for instance - can be reached at any tide, the arrival and departure of boats is still largely governed by the favourable and unfavourable currents that the tides bring with them, which makes for an interesting daily flow.
What - in my view - is unusual is that the harbour here is almost full. Mid week in early September that is unexpected. Of course the very nice weather is a contributing factor. In the high season, during the school holidays, it happens that the harbour is actually closed to incoming craft, at the moment that's not quite the case, but I estimate over 95% occupancy.

There are quite a few 'charters'. These are old Dutch sailing vessels which can take between 20 and 40 guests. They are normally chartered to groups, always with a skipper and usually another deck hand cum cook. This time of the year the groups are exclusively teenagers between 14 and 17 years old, apparently on a 'bonding exercise with their school. All of them are German, it's the same in the pre-season in April/May. This business would be dead in the water were it not for the German guests. They are no problem, roam the harbour during the early evening hours (continuously looking at their mobile phones like teenagers everywhere) but when it gets dark they retreat to their vessels and are quiet.

Yesterday, a big old ferry-like vessel came in, carrying about 2000 bicycles (we counted / extrapolated them). It took all afternoon to offload all of them. We think these are surplus bicycles from Terschelling (the island next door). Now that the season for cycle rentals is drawing to an end, these seem to be stored here on Vlieland. Those are a LOT of bikes! And the offloading process was pretty inefficient, one bike at a time...

Yesterday we cycled (on our own folding bikes) around a bit and saw some signs of autumn approaching: mushrooms!

And the waves at sunset yielded a very pretty picture.

Here are some impressions:





















Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands

Monday, September 1, 2014

The old and the new. Vlieland.

You may remember that a few days ago we travelled on the ship that used to run the ferry service between Harlingen and Terschelling, the 'Friesland'.
Today, on our way between Kornwerderzand and Vlieland, we were overtaken by the current ferry, also called 'Friesland' (Doeksen, the company running the service does not appear to have an enormous amount of imagination).
Here are the two ships:








As far as we are concerned, the new one looks like a floating shoebox. The old one is a real 'ship'.
But maybe we are showing our ages in coming to that conclusion.....

Anyway, we had a great trip to Vlieland, which is quite busy considering it is September and therefore the end of the season.
We'll stay here for a few days, the weather being an important factor in the decision of when to move on.

Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands