Texel

The 4.5 hour trip from Vlieland to Texel was relatively uneventful. We had carefully planned the departure time in order to have the current with us for all but the first mile or two, which meant that we managed to average close to 7 knots. The wind was light, but unfortunately the visibility quite poor: although there was no fog, we never saw land (until maybe 15 minutes from our destination) and we had to follow the channel markers carefully and use the GPS. The AIS also worked fine and we could easily see all the fishing vessels around us on the plotter. Our visibility on the Internet, via AIS shore stations does not seem to work all that well, some of our followers are complaining! I don't think there is much I can do about it, but I'll try to understand that feature a bit better.

Before going onto Texel tomorrow (we'll take our the bicycles), I still owe you the story about West and East Vlieland. Over 300 years ago, the main village on Vlieland was called 'West Vlieland' and obviously it was situated on the West side of the island. Now all the Wadden islands, the Dutch as well as the German ones, are slowly moving towards the East. This is caused by erosion by the sea removing sand from the Western shores and sand being deposited on the Eastern sides. This also happened on Vlieland, and halfway the 16th century West Vlieland disappeared into the sea and East Vlieland was built as the new village on the island, which it still is today. Two plaques at the village hall remind us of this:









Although generally the weather was not very agreeable during our stay on Vlieland (too much of a very cold wind), we enjoyed our stay there.

These little ones were shopping for beach spades and buckets in the village:





And we set up the music studio for Lyn:





During our trip today we saw 'charters' and fishing vessels:







And on arrival the sun came out so that we could have a nice walk after dinner:





How's that for a typical Dutch picture!

We'll stay here for a few days, probably until Sunday. In the meantime, only blogposts when we have something specific to show or tell.

Location:Laagwaalderweg,,The Netherlands

Short update

Yesterday, I wrote about the big rescue operation that had been going on to find the missing crew member from a fishing vessel. Today we learned that the crew member in question did not fall overboard at all, but concealed himself and left the ship unseen when it docked in Harlingen. He then travelled to Belgium where he apparently was found. The police will be questioning him to find out what happened and why. The fact that he seems to be 'of no fixed abode' only increases the suspicion.

In the meantime all is well on Onbekommerd. It has been blowing hard today, but nice and sunny at the same time. People have been sitting in the sun and out of the wind, sometimes with shirts off which looks very strange to us from South Africa in what still is cool weather. But to each his own, we say!

Tomorrow, we'll do a 'proper' blogpost, with pictures.

Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands

Happy Easter!

I am writing this blogpost on Saturday evening and as tomorrow is Easter Sunday, we wish all our readers / followers a happy Easter!

It was a relatively eventful day, today. It started when we noticed that the rescue boar had left the harbour. A look on Twitter (I follow the KNRM, the rescue service) showed that there was a big operation under way with up to 10 rescue craft plus helicopters and fixed wing 'planes to look for a crew member of a fishing boat who was missing when the boat got into the harbour. As there was a 3 hour period in which he could have fallen overboard, the search area was massive. I followed the movements on the AIS. After a few hours, the search was called off: with water temperatures of about 8C plus the fact that the man had not been wearing a life jacket, there was no chance that he could have survived. A sad occasion indeed!

We went shopping for our Easter meals, the shops were busy especially the bakery as the Easter breakfast / brunch is an important meal here. Here is the inside of the shop and one of the decorations:








After lunch we went for a good walk through the forest and the dunes. Of course you also see the sea every now and then. If you look carefully you can see a square rigger approaching from the sea in this picture.





The last few days the harbour has been pretty quiet with maybe 15 boats. But just before supper it looked like this:





Not quite full, but getting there. It is still quite windy (the neighbours say they measured a gust of 32 knots) which may have put some people off. Although the wind is quite chilly, it's nice out in the sun.

Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands

Change of weather

It was a good decision to cross to Vlieland yesterday, because today would have been unpleasant. With a 20-25 knot wind, cloudy and cold conditions and rain later it was a far cry from yesterday when we had our pre dinner drinks in the cockpit with the sides up. Now the heater is on!

But of course work goes on and the customs ship came and went and the coast guard does maintenance on the buoys:








We did some work and read quite a bit. Nothing much to report.

For a description plus link to 'our' AIS site, please look at the comment Sean posted on yesterday's post and my reply.

As said earlier, we are here for 6 days and quite possibly no blogpost tomorrow.

Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands

Vlieland

We had a great night's sleep on Onbekommerd, the bed here is by far the most comfortable of the places we regularly sleep! On waking up, I switched the heater on, it was 5C in the cabin. Once the temperature became acceptable, we had coffee in bed (luxury!) and then got ready for the day. Our friend Marinus (he and his wife Ike live in Franeker) dropped by and after a visit to the local bakery we set course via Harlingen to Vlieland.
It was a near perfect day for our first 'crossing' of the season: sunny, light winds, just a bit cool but overall still pleasant enough to have the back doors open. We got through the Tjerk Hiddes locks with little delay and as we had planned the tide nicely it was just a 3 hour easy trip to Vlieland once through the lock. Here are two pictures, one leaving the port of Harlingen, which is quite busy, and one of one of the buoys in the Vlieland approach:








Vlieland is still relatively quiet although it will certainly get more busy over Easter. We plan to stay here until after Easter (so probably no daily blog posts).

From now on, there will be another possibility to follow us. We have installed a 'gadget' called AIS (Automatic Identification System). Without going into the detail of this (Google is your friend if you are interested), it is a bit of equipment which sends a ship's details concerning position, speed, course and some other stuff through the VHF. At the same time it also receives this information from other ships that are equipped with AIS. All big ships have a legal obligation to operate AIS and more and more smaller ships have it as well. With some wires and software, the AIS information can be included on the plotter on our laptop so we can now 'see' a lot of ships around us. Of course when you see them with your eyes this is a bit superfluous (well, not really as it also predicts collisions or close calls), but the real benefit comes in poor visibility. We got the idea to install AIS when we were surprised in the fog between Bagenkop and Laboe last year. You could hear lots of people talking on the VHF, wondering if they were on a collision course with a big ship they could not see. The plotter gives us the name and the call sign of the 'target', so you can call them on the VHF when required. Or they can call you. So the real purpose is safety.

But there is more: the AIS signal is also picked up by shore stations and there is a website that shows the AIS vessels on a map in (almost) real time. So in theory you can 'see' us on that map. Now there are a few ifs and buts: 1. We need to be within VHF reach of a shore station (if we are not, we can see other vessels fine, but you can't see us) and 2. Our AIS must be active. When we are 'en route' it should be active, but once we have no speed, the shore system 'looses interest' and you can't see us. And if we are tied up and want to conserve power, the AIS is one of the items to get switched off. So there you have it: you might be able to see us.
The website concerned is www.marinetraffic.com. In the right top corner is a search box, type in 'onbekommerd' which should take you to our 'homepage' (I am going to upload a picture of Onbekommerd tomorrow). Sean tried it earlier today and it worked for him, but a while ago I could not 'find' us...... So please try and let us know!
There is also an 'app' showing the same thing for iOS (and very likely for Android too).

So far for now, more later!

Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands

Back on board!

The trip from London to the boat in Franeker is not all that far, but it takes quite a bit of time and effort. After getting up at 5:30 (BST), we took a bus, an underground, an aeroplane and 2 trains to get to Franeker mid-afternoon. The worst was a 1 hour wait at Amsterdam airport for our luggage, that's more than the 45 minute flight!
Anyway, when we got to Valk Yachts, the shipyard where Onbekommerd was built 24 years ago, she was waiting for us. We unpacked the bags and Valk kindly lent us their van to go to the shop to do the initial provisioning.
We treated ourselves (as per 'tradition') to dinner ashore, tomorrow cooking on board will start.
The plan is to cross to the island of Vlieland tomorrow. The forecast for that is good tomorrow, much better than Thursday or Friday. We'll then spend Easter there.
Now it's bedtime, no pictures today I am afraid, that will come tomorrow.
We'll also tell you about our new 'toy' then, something that will improve our safety and make it easier for you to follow us!

Location:Tuinen,Franeker,The Netherlands

Almost back on Onbekommerd

As we are on our way back to Onbekommerd (we plan to board her tomorrow afternoon), I thought it would be a good idea to kick off the blog. Mostly to see if everything still 'works' (I use the 'Blogpress' app on the iPad and sometimes app updates cause strange problems), but at the same time to give a very short update on the past six months.

Lyn was very busy whilst we were in Cape Town, the practise (thijsse.co.za) was busy from the moment we got back in October until we left last week. And on top of that, there was training and therapist support for Eureka Learning Systems (eurekalearningsystems.com). My own input was mainly to do the administrative work so that Lyn could concentrate on the essentials. Greg was very busy with the Brother Bees honey business and I assisted a bit with some process engineering issues as well as the paperwork required to put together the systems for a food business. So no, we were not bored in Cape Town!
For weekend relaxation (and to keep fit) we joined the Peninsula Ramblers, a hiking group that operates mainly in the mountains around Cape Town. Here are a few pictures we have taken on our hikes:

















On Tuesday last week we left Cape Town to 'follow the sun' and we are currently in Kew, South West London. We spent some time with Sean (and his girlfriend Nikola) here. Also did the 'pilgrimage' to Lyn's favourite sheet music store, Chappel's of Bond Street (which is not in Bond Street but in Soho), had a nice two days visiting Lyn's cousin Dave and his wife Jenny and Dave's parents. Today we took a walk through some of the London parks showing the last of the nice flower displays (with spring being early after a very mild winter, these are already 'on their way out')

Tomorrow morning we fly to Amsterdam and take the train to Franeker where Onbekommerd will be waiting for us. So if all works out (and we manage to get data loaded on the Dutch iPad SIM, tomorrow's post will be from afloat!

Location:Leyborne Park,Richmond,United Kingdom