So we’ve sailed across the ‘waddenzee’ to Terschelling, lovely sailing. I slept horrible but we had almost 7 hours of good sailing. Going on motor to the Lorentz lock to pass through to the open sea arround 8.30. We arrived arround 09.15 and had to wait in the lock for some other yachts to come in. At about 9.50 we left the lock to the open seas.

Good wind, a nice 4Bft, We’re also nice on time. We could only pass through at 10.15 thourgh the boontjes, so right on time. We had the tide in our favour here, both in hight as in the flow. We went fairly fast and arrived just past 11.00 near Harlingen, where we again, or still had the tide in our favor. At 12.15 was high-tide an the flow was already going outwards here, again the right direction. We had a south-west wind  all the way and passed through the slenk with a good 8.5-8.7knots, quit fun to do. :) We arrived in Terschelling at about 15.10.

On Terschelling it was for me definitly the end of a hot and long day. I only kinda woke-up after some afternoon sleep and a cool breeze at dinner. We found a nice restaurant at Terschelling next to the brandaris. We kind-off planned on meeting our cousin on Terschelling, but sadly that didn’t work out in the end. In the morning we again, sailed off early in the morning with the tide to Harlingen, We left at about 8.40, being only the 3rd out of the harbor it seemed.

This time I slept a whole lot better then the night before, which made me enjoy the trip a bi more. We still had a south western wind which made it a bit more work to get to Harlingen, but certainly no less fun. 3-4Bft was enough to get a decent ammount of speed, and we tried to stat as high on the wind as we could, keeping track of the depth almost constantly. At about 13.35 we arrived in Harlingen, 10 minutes pas high-tide. Right on time.

In Harlingen we still had most of the day left, and since it was blazing hot (it was cool on the water) we slacked most of the day. We walked about arround the city and I shot my last few pictures of kodachrome64 for the trip and mailed the film. We had some icecream, did some shopping, had lunch, dinner. A slow but nice day.

Our next trip to Stavoren would take us back through the ‘boontjes’ and this time we could only leave after 11.00 due to the tide. We left with a friend of my brother at 11.15. The wind changed to north-north-east, which was again nice in our favour. We arrived quite on time at the Lorentz-lock but this apeared to have some failure and we had to wait together with quite a load of other boats until it was fixed. At about 15.00 we finally made it through and we’re back at the ijselmeer again. Still the wind in our back and going well, good weather and about 3Bft. At about 17.30 we found a nice spot in the old harbor of Stavoren.

Stavoren is for me and my brother a bit bit special, about 23 years a go we lived there for a couple of years as young kids. Personally I’ve beed there only once since and then just for a short drive-through. It was rather sureal to walk through the small place, it’s small place and I recouldnised quite a lot of old places. Old memories started to make a bit more sense with the renewed memory of the layout. I was only 4 or 5 back then, now 28. The perspective was off ofcourse. I also re-read the story of ‘het vrouwtje van Stavoren‘, which now seems to have a more obvious link with St Lucia’s flood. I ended the day by sitting on the pier-light and enjoying the evening with wind and water. I’m glad we visited this place and I might cycle there one day (there’s a ferry going from Enkhuizen :).

Today (Thursday the 10th of September 2009), was our last day of sailing, tomorrow at 10.00 (am) we have to return the boat. We had a short bit of sailing from Stavoren to Andijk. The wind was still North-East and about 4-5Bft sometimes going up to 6 according to the KNMI. The waves grew a bit larger the more we got to the west side of the lake, but still nothing really bad. It was an uneventfull quiet trip where we enjoyed the sunny weather and watched a training-rescue-operation somewhere along the way. At 14.00 we got back in Andijk, where we lunched, slacked, had dinner and slacked some more.

Tomorrow morning we wake-up early and leave at arround 9.00, the end of a good week of sailing. We had good weather all week, Always some wind, nothing unsailable. We’ve had different sites, different crews, different places to visit.

I can only say I loved it.

ps.

ah yes, you might want to see some pictures, here’s some stuff I shot with my phone:

So we've sailed across the 'waddenzee' to Terschelling, lovely sailing. I slept horrible but we had almost 7 hours of good sailing. Going on motor to the Lorentz lock to pass through to the open sea arround 8.30. We arrived arround 09.15 and had to wait in the lock for some other yachts to ...