On Baltrum

Baltrum is a very small island. In fact, we walked around it in 2 1/2 hours today. Lyn remarked that it was the first time we walked around an entire island!
When you arrive, you have to report to the harbour master. That's normal. Except that the harbour master is also the air traffic controller of the island's airfield. So you report to...... the control tower:

Walking on the beach, there are of course lots of birds:

And from the Eastern side you can see the next island, Langeoog, very clearly. We'll go there tomorrow.

Finally,there are stunning sunsets (today at 21:54 !):

On Juist

We had a nice three days on Juist. Around the harbour on this car-free island, life is completely governed by the tides: from about 3 hours before to 3 hours after high tide, the harbour is accessible, otherwise it's 'dry'.

So the ferry only comes and goes at high tide, and the the taxi-stand is 'maned':

In between tides, the little dredger tries to keep the yacht harbour somewhat accessible:

It's a great place to walk and that's what we did:

And on the beach, you find interesting shells. These are called 'razorblades':

This morning, we set off to Baltrum, skipping Norderney in the process as it has cars and we 'don't do cars' this week.
The passage between Juist and Norderney was a bit hairy with some heavy seas. The boat handles it fine, and so does the crew, but the contents can sometimes get a bit thrown around when you are inside a 'washing machine'.
In the crossing between Norderney and Baltrum, we passed a famous resting place for seals:

We'll spend the next two days on Baltrum, an island so small you can walk around it in less than 3 hours. More to follow.

Greetsiel and Juist

After leaving Delfzijl, we travelled through the Eems and onto the German 'Wad'. This is tidal water, so you have to take the varying water depths as well as the current into consideration:





We got to the lock at Leysiel:





We dropped about 2 m and then motored to the old fishing town on Greetsiel. It's a very picturesque old village, which still has a small but active shrimp fishing fleet:









It has also been discovered by tourists and understandably, the place is now full of fish restaurants and souvenir shops, although fortunately all done in pretty good taste. It still is a pleasant little town and at night quiet descends.

This morning, I took the bus to the regional town of Norden, to acquire a SIM card for the iPad. After I got back, we decided to move on to the island of Juist (Greetsiel is still on the mainland). Although it was cloudy and rainy, this seemed the best way to go, as the forecast for the next few days shows quite a bit of wind and it's better to be stuck on Juist than in the rather boring town of Greetsiel. So when the tide allowed, we left, passed through the lock again, and crossed to Juist. The weather was not great, with visibility poor due to the rain. With the help of GPS.it was however easy navigating. After tying up, after 7pm, we were pretty wet:






It now was time for well deserved drinks and a meal of asparagus, as they are in season.





Thanks for cooking them, Jet!

The next few days we plan to spend on Juist, before moving further East along the German islands.

Location:Hafen,Juist,Germany

Groningen and Delfzijl

We left our quiet mooring 'in the wild' and motored up the Princes Margriet kanaal and the Van Starckenborgh kanaal towards Groningen. Usually, these canals are very busy with commercial traffic, but as it was a public holiday it was relatively quiet. The canalside was very pretty:





We spent the night in Groningen and the following morning went shopping at the market. Dutch markets have lots of stalls selling cheeses, fruit, vegetables, fish and meat. This in addition to items of clothing and haberdashery (I love that word!).









We are planning ahead for a few months outside the Netherlands and one thing that has not been planned by the EU is gas bottle connections. So we need sufficient supplies of 'Dutch gas' to survive a few months. In addition, the somewhat over ambitious safety regulations make it more and more difficult to sell gas bottles, with the result that it is not so easy to find a retailer on the water. After a bit of phoning around we located one in Delfzijl, which was our next stop.

Once we had the gas bottle (we now have two, with a total of 21 kegs of propane which - from experience - should last 14 weeks) we went through the lock onto salt water:






In the yacht harbour, we met Hans and Jet, with whom we'll spend the next few weeks on the German Wadden islands.

This is their boat, the 'Waterbufvel':




(Hans and I went to get diesel).

We spent the evening planning tomorrow's trip, to Greetsiel on the German mainland:





I am not sure when next we'll be able to update the blog. Up till now, I have used the 3G facility of the iPad to do these posts if there is no WiFi available, but I need to get a German 3G card to do this from tomorrow. It is not clear if a 3G card can be obtained in a small place like Greetsiel. We'll update as soon as we can though.

Location:Handelskade West,Delfzijl,The Netherlands

The end of the DeltaLloyd regatta and back to Fryslân

The DeltaLloyd regatta ended yesterday. It was a busy, but fun week. Probably the best weather I have seen for a regatta for a long time, resulting in all races being completed to the time schedule.
I have already shared a picture of my working environment, this was Lyn's office:






We twice had Olympians on board, a real privilege!





The South African 470 crew of Asenathi Jim and Roger Hudson (including 'manager' Dave and Roger's fiancé Lucy).





Dutch 470 skipper Lisa Westerhof (having a rest) with parents and in-laws.


The prizegiving was part of a big party, which also included the 'send- off' of the Dutch Olympic and Paralympic sailing team:





This morning, still in fantastic weather conditions, we left Medemblik to go back to Fryslân (Frisian for 'Friesland'). We are meeting our friends Hans and Jet on Tuesday in Delfzijl (which is in the Groningen province) to start our trip to the German Wadden islands.
As it is a long weekend as well as stunning weather, it is very busy on the water. We went into Fryslân through the lock in Stavoren. The wait for the lock going into the province was not bad, about 20 minutes. But the wait for boats going the other way must have been several hours:





If I had collected a Euro for each boat we saw today, I could singlehandedly solve the Greek crisis!

Is this really a boat?





After a long day on the water (over 7 hours), we are now tied up along a canal. There are quite a few boats spending the night here, but now - at 9pm - the passing traffic is dying down and it's nice and quiet.





Tomorrow we plan to get as far as Groningen, then on Tuesday only a short stretch to Delfzijl.

DeltaLloyd regatta - ISAF World Cup

Like last year, we are both involved in the DeltaLloyd regatta, which is one of the ISAF World Cup regattas for Olympic and Paralympic classes. With several World Championships in the Olympic classes just having finished, some as late as last week, and the final ISAF World Cup event starting at the Olympic venue, Weymouth, in 2 weeks time, the entry is very much down on last year. But it still is an exciting buzz to be here. Lyn runs the logistics of the press office, including getting the photographers allocated to boats on the racecourses, I am again the 'speaker', on the PA system, keeping everyone on shore up to date on what happens on the racecourses.
What is really interesting this year is the use of IT in race management, results processing and tracking. In effect, the races are managed and recorded by computers. Each boat carries a GPS tracking device which sends its position to the computer on shore at a rate of several times per second. That gives an accuracy of less than a metre. From 5 minutes before the start until after all boats have finished, one can see the entire fleet on screens, but also on the Internet. Look on www.deltalloydregatta.org and click on 2D or on 3D tracking! But the computers also log the mark roundings and the finish of the boats. This way, the results are posted on the Internet automatically some 15 seconds after the last boat has finished. The race officer can of course override the computer's 'decisions', but so far, after up to 8 races on 6 courses each, this has not yet happened! In addition, there is hardly any paperwork. No finish lists in triplicate.....

The whole thing is a worlds' first and there is a whole back office staff of the company that does this, Swiss Timing, to make improvements and new functionality as the regatta goes on. In 65 days, at the Olympics, the same technology will be used and we are some of the guineapigs helping developing it!





Back office staff






Tracking screen. Green for boats, orange for marks etc.






Race management. What is the race status for every class on every course.

It was a great and very pleasant surprise to us to see these people here in Medemblik again:





From left to right, Roger Hudson, Asenathi Jim and Dave Hudson. Asenathi and Roger just last week managed to get a very coveted Olympic qualification. There are only a limited number of countries that can qualify to send a crew to the games in each sailing class. In the men's 470 class, it is 28. The battle for these places is fierce, and only one year after starting to sail 470's competitively, Asenathi and Roger gained such a place. We now all hope that SASCOC, the South African Olympic committee, will allow them to go. It appears that the South African contingent is 'oversubscribed' and it would be an enormous disappointment if the fact that money is channelled into parties for officials instead of spending it on athletes ends these guys' Olympic dream!

Location:Vooroever,Medemblik,The Netherlands

Makkum and Medemblik

From Bolsward it was only a very short (5 nm) stretch to Makkum, but we enjoy the quiet mooring in Makkum so we decided to stop there anyway.
Although Makkum is very small and has not got a lot to do or see, it's still quite pretty:





And it's got pretty white ducks too (and clean water, you can see its feet!)





As we are assisting as volunteers at the DeltaLloyd regatta again (Lyn in the press office and Hans as 'speaker'), we had to cross the IJsselmeer again to Medemblik. Today the conditions were supposed to be good, but the visibility was a lot less than predicted. Especially in a few rain showers, we were happy to have the GPS, as one could see nothing but 'soup' around. We even used the radar to help look out for other vessels.
Medemblik however was exactly where it was supposed to be and we are safely in our berth for the week.
The weather has cleared up nicely and we have had the roof open this afternoon. Also dinner outside in the cockpit, but there is no picture of that.







Medemblik has a wonderful regatta centre.




There probably won't be too many posts the next few days, but we'll try to keep you updated a few times.
We plan to leave here next Sunday or Monday, weather dependent.

Location:Vooroever,Medemblik,The Netherlands