Aug. 24, 2008 - Breezing To Bruinisse

Set off on Saturday morning with Julie & Trev for a week's cruise to the Grevelingenmeer. After stopping off in Goes to get provisions, we arrived at the boat Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the day chilling out. Kim was able to pick up the small outboard for the tender which we had got the the marina to service.  The annual Protest Wakeboard contest was in full swing, so our evening was also accompanied by music and singing.

Wendy plotted us a course from the marina to Bruinisse, although was slightly surpised when double checking on the chart plotter to find that the course to steer took us via Llanelli  - a quick check of the waypoints entered, indicated that she had put in the degrees west instead of east.  Needless to say, much laughter ensued!

We made an early-ish start and set off on the approx. 18 mile trip to Bruinisse.  The winds proved stronger than expected and had us on a very broad reach/run making much faster progress than expected.

We stopped at the lock waiting pontoon for an hour or so whilst we had lunch and the entered the lock. It was pretty quiet - only a few boats. We went port side to as usual and got a bow line on. Then it all went wrong! We failed to secure the stern line in time and the stern blew off. The next thing is we are broadside across the lock. We could not get back along side without the boat ending up facing the wrong way. So rather than reverse out we waited for the lock to go in the opposite direction and returned to the Oosterschelde side, span round and re-entered the lock - much to some people's surprise. This time it all went to plan and we finally tied up in the larger Bruinisse marina at about 5.00pm. 

After a "Mythos", we walked into the town to find a restaurant. On the way, Julie stopped off to check her mussels!

We went in the De Vrienden Van Bru restaurant as recommended in one of the pilot books and had a superb meal.