Bringing coals to Newcastle - Wednesday 25th May



Nieuwpoort to Ostend: 10.5 miles, sailed most of the way.


Wierd Beard beers from England



One particular Belgian gaffer friend has always complained that English beer is weak and boring – all it does is make you go to the toilet a lot, or so he says. So at the recent Harwich Ale Trail we made sure we found some good strong interesting English beer for him to try.
Once safely tied up in the Mercator Dock ready for the Festival (which starts tomorrow) out came our contributions from the Wierd Beer Brewery :”Dark Side” at 9.2% is right up Dirk's street but he also enjoys the K*ntish Town Beard.
Let the party begin!

Dirk appreciating a GOOD STRONG English beer - 9.2%

Comments

Post a Comment

We've set this up so anyone can comment - though we'll see your comment before it's published on the blog - please comment away!

Popular posts from this blog

Inland Schleswig-Holstein

Image
Wednesday 19th July to Thursday 20th July - River Eider inland Reasons to take the River Eider route to the Baltic: 1. It's easier to get to from Heligoland (in the right conditions). 2. You avoid travelling (and crossing) the River Elbe with all its traffic and strong current. 3. You avoid the massive ship lock at Brunsbüttel where we have heard of yachts having to wait as long as 4 hours out in the Elbe before locking in. There are some issues with the locks and they are not all operating. 4. There's no commercial traffic, till you join up with the Kiel Canal 5. Once in, it's more interesting to travel along a river with small towns to visit than 100km of straight ship canal. So, Tönning was our first town with its small harbour a feature in itself overlooked by houses and cafés. When the tide went out overnight we didn't see the mud, we just floated in almost no water.  On Wednesday we moved on to Friedrichstadt, just 10nm further on, a pleasant short trip with withi...
Read more

Rigging screws? Hmm...

Image
Sunday 23rd July - guest crew join at Rendsburg. If you believe what you read in Riddle of the Sands (sorry, here we go again) then guest crew joining your yacht in the Baltic can be prevailed upon to bring any number of weird and wonderful items of equipment.  Carruthers brought rigging screws, a prismatic compass, a pound of Raven mixture for Davies's pipe and a No. 3 Rippingille stove.  We thought that a replacement heating system was rather a lot to ask of guests trying to stay within the Ryanair hand baggage limit, and in any case the current heating system is not quite ready to be consigned to the deep. Though Howard does distort its name from Webasto to Webastard sometimes, so it may only be a matter of time. Anyway Pete and Sarah very kindly made room in their bags for our new cockpit cover (now adjusted since its first fitting back in Bergen op Zoom) and a pair of shorts we'd asked for. Pete had also packed a rigging screw which we hadn't asked for, but you can see...
Read more

Eider Canal

Image
Friday 21st July - Eider canal The Nordfeld lock which brings us out of tidal waters for the last time (the Baltic Sea doesn't really have tides) is only a couple of miles from Friedrichstadt and once through it we are in the Eider Canal.  Canal it may be but it looks and feels like a river wending its way northwards and eastwards in big sweeping curves for mile upon mile.  Most of the supposed boaty stopping places from now on (marked on our chart there with a yacht symbol) are tiny: just a few posts by the bank with a few small motor boats in and almost no sailing boats. Süderstapel is an exception and is somewhere we might stop another time to have a look round. Our rather ancient pilot book tells us to look out for a colony of storks near the church and we are lucky enough to see one stork fly over as we pass.  Another highlight spotted on the river bank is a pair of musicians: one playing some kind of squeeze box and one a cello. We throttle back to listen but the br...
Read more