Two days ago we 'palavered' (a 'palaver' is the Dutch word for a meeting between skippers to make maritime decisions) with a group of 4 boats about our trip to de Wadden islands. We carefully looked at the short as well as medium term weather forecasts and found that there would be good conditions to go to Texel, the first island on Tuesday (yesterday). Looking further ahead however there were lots of problems: lots of wind on Wednesday, possibly a gap to move on on Thursday and very unstable and windy for a week thereafter. Now we are not in a hurry, but this looked like slowing us down a bit too much and the others had various commitments on shore later too. So we decided to abandon the Wadden plans and head through Friesland and Groningen to Delfzijl and take the 'weather safe' route to Kiel through the Küstenkanal. This is more or less the way we came back last year.
So yesterday morning we set off for a very nice trip across the IJsselmeer, in windless and glassy conditions:
In Stavoren we stopped to fill up with diesel (there is a place there which is known for inexpensive diesel) and to get a full gas cylinder.
Then we continued and spent the night on a jetty just past Grou (in the Doekesleat, which is on virtually no map). Today we'll continue to Groningen and Delfzijl tomorrow.
As it turns out, the weather forecasts have improved quite a bit, but we are now committed to this route. Still pretty cold though....
Location:Hôflân,Grouw,The Netherlands
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