Jun. 26, 2007 - The Dutch Weekends Get Underway

Despite the less than encouraging weather forecast for the weekend and perhaps (more particularly) because we had already booked the crossing, we set off on Frday night on the 6 pm ferry out of Dover - Calais bound!

After the usual drive through France, Belgium and into Holland, we arrived on board Emjaytoo at 9.45 pm.  Having already eaten on the ferry going over, all that remained was to unpack the few things we had taken, have a cup of tea and climb into our bunk. 

Due to the rain on Saturday, we chose not to sail but wandered around the village to do some shopping and went over to the service centre to find out why the work previously requested hadn't been carried out.  The answer: we hadn't specified when we wanted it doing and as soon as we mentioned it we were put on the worksheet for this coming week.  We had a look at some TVs for sale in the chandlery, decided to head over to the very impressive Mediamarkt in Middelburg (think Comet but 4 times the size!) but finally went back to the chandlery and bought the one they had on sale there.  Somehow Saturday had gone without us even noticing.

Sunday morning, after our usual leisurely start and oversized breakfast we headed off up the Veerse Meer.  The only good thing you can say about the weather is that it didn't rain all the time (quite) and there was plenty of wind.  We went the furthest up the lake that we've ever been, encountering the ferry, lots of windsurfers and a lot of traffic generally - all through the increasing drizzle.  We finally ended up mooring at the same pontoon that we had used 2 weeks ago, but this time had it entirely to ourselves.

By the evening the rain had stopped and the wind had died away to nothing, leaving us to enjoy this idyllic mooring with nothing more than the seagulls for company.  After reading various comments on Scuttlebut about the wonderful attributes of Fray Bentos pies, we finally succumbed and enjoyed a steak and kidney pie with oven roasted new potatoes and baby carrots, before falling asleep in front of a DVD!  Needless to say, the latter had nothing to do with the excellent red wine consumed with our meal.

Monday morning dawned bright and windy but with some ominous cloud formations lurking around. 

When it came to leaving the mooring, the wind was blowing us hard onto the pontoon, so we rigged a spring to reverse against and very, very slowly, with full astern and hard right lock, the bow started to spring away from the pontoon.  It was very satisfying to see a textbook procedure work so well, given that it was probably the only way we were going to get off the pontoon.  Unfortunately, it was slightly marred by Kim not releasing the spring in time, which resulted in us trying to drive away towing the pontoon behind us!

Brilliant sail back, with lots of gybing practice (including a couple of involuntary ones!) and even quite a lot of sunshine.  The ominous black clouds spared us until we were safely tied up back at the Marina - then we were subjected to hailstones, thunder, lightning, howling winds and pouring rain.  But by that time, we didn't care and sat back with a cup of tea.  By the time we came to pack away, the rain had cleared again and we were able to load the car in brilliant sunshine, although we still encountered quite a lot of very heavy showers on the drive back.

After a meal on the ferry and a fairly bumpy crossing, we were back home about 9, ready to do it all again in a couple of weeks.

As far as the "objectives" for the weekend were concerned, we did sort out a mooring spring for holding the boat on the finger pontoon when arriving at the berth and this worked very well, we got the TV, we didn't sort out pumping out the holding tank, but we did get some more practice with handling the boat, so all in all a successful weekend.