Back in the Netherlands, Delfzijl

Although the forecast was still not ideal, with a mention of 5 to 6 Bft, we decided to go and 'see for ourselves', go through the bridges and locks and 'taste' the river Ems. If it does not taste nice, there is a yacht club harbour in the outer harbour, possibly with some waves and therefore not entirely comfortable, but perfectly safe!

Emden is a difficult place to get out of: we had organised the Kesselschleuse and the three bridges after that beforehand, so that was easy.
Next comes the railwaybridge. This only opens a few times a day on a tight schedule and when we came past on our way out in June it did not open at all as it got stuck because of expansion in the warm weather.... So with some trepidation we arrived for the 13:50 opening and....








So that was good!

Next came the big sea lock, where waiting times between 15 minutes and 4 hours have been recorded. This time it was an hour and a half, which was actually perfect as it meant we were 'released' onto the Ems just when the tide was starting to run.
And the wind? No more than 4 Bft.... So we had an incredibly easy one hour trip to the entrance of the a Delfzijl harbour channel. About 45 minutes later we were safely tied up in the harbour of the 'Neptunis' yacht club.

Tomorrow we'll go through the lock and on to Appingedam. There we'll do some shopping in the 'Albert Heyn' supermarket.
And we can't wait for Dutch herring.