Apr. 29, 2008 - Great sail - shame about the Belgians!

The weekend got off to a bit of a shakey start when we had to share the crossing (Seafrance) with 12 coachloads of unruly and very noisy French school children (Kim says they should be given a bottle of pop each and shut in their coaches for the duration of the crossing!).  Thereafter things went very well and we were on the boat by 9.30 pm, though it took us a while to unpack everything.

On Saturday morning Wendy made the usual trip to the supermarket, then we tidied up and got ready to set off.  By late morning the sun was shining and it was very warm, which was a pleasant contrast to the snow of only 5 weeks ago.  We hoisted the main almost as soon as we got onto the Veerse Meer and lost count of the number of short tacks as we made our way up.  We couldn't believe that we were getting 7.2 knots to windward off only 12 knots of wind.  Hard work but fun and good practice.

We got to Zandkreekplaat and were thinking about a (late) lunch stop when we noticed there was space on the outer side of the jetty, so instead of anchoring we decided to creep up to the jetty and see how much water there was.  We got to within 2 boat lengths of the jetty and there was still minimum 1.8 m so we rigged some fenders and lines and in we went.  By the time we were tied up we were actually sitting in 2 m of water.  Being fairly well acquainted with the island of Zandkreekplaat we didn't waste too much time exploring !  Instead we retired to the cockpit to soak up the sun and read our books.  As the afternoon wore on, out came the barbecue and we had an excellent evening meal. 

Unfortunately, during the night we were plagued by the slappers.  The wind had shifted onto the stern and we heard every little wave slapping against the hull, resulting in us having to move into the forepeak at 3 am to stand any chance of getting some sleep.

Our departure the next day was hampered by a strong wind blowing us onto the jetty.  We were quite happy about our technique of using a bow spring and springing the stern out, but a brief foray on deck to check things out was taken by the Belgians on the mobo next to us as a sign of weakness and they insisted on taking charge and imparting the benefit of their experience, even to the point of rearranging our fenders.   Short of being extremely rude and then looking really stupid if something had gone wrong, we had no option but to grin and bear it.  However, Wendy was fuming on the helm and the departure was not her greatest hour, partly as a result of being flustered but mainly as a result of having 3 conflicting sets of instructions yelled at her simultaneously.

We got back to the marina in just over an hour and used the time we had left to give the boat a good clean.  It was pleasing to leave the boat looking "homely" again with cushions left out and beds made up, and also to only be taking a few things home with us.  It's amazing how much stuff is loaded onto that boat in the summer. Roll on the next trip - we've got to do at least 11 miles to bring Wendy's total up to 1000!