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Northern Light - Katwoude/Amsterdam



Sunday 28th June
My cousin James Jacklin, and I, flew from Stansted to Amsterdam arriving late morning. We then proceeded to get ripped off by a charming taxi driver for the 27 miles to Katwoude, just North of Amsterdam on the Markermeer. On arrival, the recently acquired Halberg Rassy 40 looked immaculate, having been fully cleaned and polished as pre-agreed with De Valk , the agent. The process for buying a yacht in Holland is very ordered, and once you sign the contract you are committed to buy subject to survey. The seller on the other hand is obliged to remedy any shortcomings exposed in the survey to the satisfaction of the buyer, unless the cost exceeds 6% of the contractual price.

The next morning Rick Nesham, an experienced sailor from the East Coast, arrived by taxi, and rather irritatingly paid euro 60 for his taxi compared to our euro 90. Still I suppose, in mitigation, the rate at 1.4 is pretty good at the moment!

We set off under power at 10.45 in a northerly direction from Katwoude up the Markermeer, and three hours later into the Ijselmeer. 17.00 saw us through the Den Over lock and past the swing bridge. We passed Den Helder at 19.00 and headed out into the North Sea leaving the island of Texel on the Starboard side. The barometer read 1040, and was rising. There was no wind, and the sun was still quite warm. As we proceeded in a NE’terly direction, James, as the youngest member of the crew, checked the long sandy beaches of Texel through the Binoculars for nubile young ladies and claimed to have spotted a couple - this is rather worrying as we have only been at sea for 10 hours!

I called Pene on the mobile to give a progress report, and discovered that our rather wilful spaniel Pascale was well, having just returned from the vet minus his testicles - I reckoned at this point that I had left for the baltic in the nick of time!




Photo - 23.00 off the Fresian Islands

04.30 on the next day saw us off Ameland, and although we had seen a couple of porpoises and lots of seals, the main attractions for me were the many flights of Eider duck which seemed to be heading rather surprisingly in a Southerly direction. I always thought that they went North in the Summer to feed!

We arrived off the Weser to find enormous slicks of orange coloured polution in the sea, along with a very pungent fishy/formalderhydy smell which was quite unpleasant.

James obviously had a terrier like penchant for anything electrical, which was very useful as it meant that I could just aim him at any problem such as the idiosyncrasies of the chart plotter, or the in-boat stereo. This meant that I didn’t have to trawl through instruction manuals, which is not my forte. Anyway as an old salt, so to speak, I had been gently advising him not to rely solely on the sat-nav, but to use other pieces of technology such as the echo sounder, and even the old fashioned eye ball!

Well at around 18.30, with the skipper at the helm, we suddenly went aground with a thump. There was about an hour and a half of ebb left, but with the use of bow thrusters and engine power we managed to get off before being stranded. I then looked around. We were 20 miles from Cuxhaven, in the outer reaches of the Elbe estuary. There was no land in sight  in any direction, and we were between two large starboard hand navigation buoys a mile apart, leading one up the Elbe. I don’t think that we were more than 100 yards off line. Imagine my surprise later  that day whilst flicking through ‘Riddle of the Sands ‘ to find that the ‘Dulcibella' had been stranded on the same sandbank, namely the Neuwark Sand, 120 years earlier.

Despite my embarrassment , I felt that I was in good company!

We arrived at Cuxhaven at 21.15, just in time for a slap up meals in the yacht club which was served by a charming Fraulein, who for some extraordinary reason liked going to Northern Ireland on holiday!!





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