May. 7, 2009 - Teamwork

Having originally planned to have a long 4 day Bank Holiday weekend, we ended up postponing our departure to the Saturday morning after Kim had to cancel Friday’s holiday due to work commitments. In order to get the best out of the Saturday we took the 6.00am ferry to Dunkerque. That meant getting up at 4.00am!  Didn’t seem like quite such a good idea when the alarm went, but worth it in the end!

Having got the boat sorted, we headed round to the fuelling jetty to have a go at pumping out the holding tank. But there were too many boats there, so we abandoned the idea and set off towards Veere - destination Middelburg.

The weather was cloudy with some spells of sunshine and a reasonable breeze – 10 to 14 knots. After an hour or so of short tacking down the Veerse Meer, we gave up and put the engine on. The tacking was fun for a while, but was hard work and with a VMG of only 1.5 knots, too slow.

Had the lock at Veere to ourselves and motored down the canal to Middelburg in glorious sunshine, albeit a bit chilly. Arrived at Middelburg to find the Spijker Brug open and the Havenmeester calling us through to the inner harbour with the choice of rafting alongside or going between piles. Since we were expecting to go alongside the Havenmeester’s jetty we had all our fenders down, so a hasty switch in plan was instigated and following some athletic leaping about the boat by Kim and skilled helming by Wendy we neatly slid between a set of vacant piles with only inches to spare. Whilst rafting up can be fun and sociable, it is definitely more private to be on your own.

After a quick walk around we returned to the boat for a nice meal and an early night. Well, by this time we had been up 18 hours.

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Sunday morning was a very leisurely affair as we did not have to rush off anywhere. After breakfast we went for a longer walk around Middelburg. It started off quite cloudy, but by lunchtime had brightened up considerably. Wendy has acquired a new photographic interest – Dutch Front Doors and took loads of photographs. Well Middelburg does have a lot of front doors!

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 We had looked at the pilot book to see what time the Spijker Brug opened and it said every hour on the half hour, but with a five hour gap between 11.30am and 4.30pm. However, having watched it open a couple of times after the supposed gap we wrongly assumed that the pilot book was inaccurate. Anyway, we slipped out of the box expecting the bridge to open at 3.30pm, only to be disappointed. Fortunately quite a few boats had left during the morning openings, so we were able to go alongside the visitor jetty whilst we waited for the next opening. Which occurred at 3.15pm!

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Back up the canal to Veere and straight into the lock with no waiting around. This is the lock we had a lot of trouble with last year on our previous trip to Middelburg. We always like to go port side to in the lock, but when heading back into the Veerse Meer there is a horrible offset in the lock on the port side. So we had decided that in future we would always go on the starboard side. On this occasion there was only one other yacht in the lock – on the starboard side and right in the middle of the wall leaving only the port side vacant (it is a small lock!), unless of course you raft up to the boat already in there! Which was precisely what we did and it made for a very easy exit.

We then headed down to the Haringvreter for an overnighter. This is the biggest island in the Veerse Meer and Kim visited it last year with the boys. There were only three other boats there, so it was very quiet. We had a really nice long walk and saw the horses and the deer, later watching an oyster catcher and crested grebe fishing their supper from the shallow water around the island.

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First thing next morning there was no wind and the water looked like glass, with brilliant sunshine making for a superb photo opportunity.  Coincidentally, we have both quite independently chosen this shot as our wallpapers.

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The wind then filled in and we had a really good downwind sail back to the marina. After all the brilliant teamwork and excellent boat handling by Wendy, our arrival at our finger berth was not so clever, but you can’t have it all your own way and at least we didn’t hit anything – it just wasn’t very clever. Wendy did the turn into the berth expecting the wind to swing the bow round, but it didn't so we landed up at 45 degrees.  It's all very different this year as there is now a boat in the space next to us so not all of our old "tricks" work, but with sailing there are always lessons to be learned for the future!  Next time Wendy is going to treat it as going between piles and - hopefully - all will be well.