Verwaaid

I don't know a really good English word for 'verwaaid'. It means that it is blowing too hard to leave port. We have seen on the weather forecast for about a week already that it would be blowing today, so we planned to be on Spiekeroog, which is a nice place to be 'verwaaid'.
Last night we still had our dinner outside, in the cockpit of Hans and Jet's boat, the Waterbufvel.





After dinner Lyn and I went for a walk, like we try to do every night. You see all sorts of nice things in the dunes, like this pheasant lady with her chicks:






And then during the night it started blowing, steadily increasing to 30 knots now, around 35 or more in the gusts. For the Dutch readers, that's 7 to 8 Beaufort. At high tide, that's now, the harbour is quite exposed to the Southerly wind. There are white caps on the waves in the harbour, the yachts with masts are under a considerable angle and we are 'rocking and rolling' quite a bit. But it's comfortable on board, Lyn plays the piano and I plan the trip for the next few days and read a bit. We'll go to Wangerooge tomorrow afternoon (the wind is supposed to drop after midday) and to Bremerhaven on Monday, all weather dependent of course. As they say: the skipper with patience always has fair winds!
This picture, taken from Onbekommerd's front deck, does not do justice to the weather conditions, but here it is anyway:

Location:Spiekeroog

Langeoog and Spiekeroog

We spent 2 days on Langeoog. When we arrived, the weather was still OK, we cycled around a bit (excellent island for cycling) and in the evening Lyn set out to take a few sunset pictures:





The second day, the weather was cold and grey with rain on and off. Lyn had some work to do and spent the day behind the laptop. I did a few small chores, cycled to the town to buy bread rolls and read.
This morning started cloudy again, but it was a lot less cold. We left after 12, about 2 hours before high tide and took the longer route to the next island, Spiekeroog. During the 2 hour trip, the sun came out and with virtually no wind, it was textbook motorboat weather.

Lyn steered us into Spiekeroog channel:





Hans and Jet followed us in:





And we met a fishing trawler on his way out:





We're off to see the village now. We really enjoyed Spiekeroog last year and look forward to it. We plan to stay 2 or (probably) 3 nights. Will report back in a day or 2.

Location:Spiekeroog harbour.

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.