Friesland for the first time - Hindeloopen

Geography lesson:

We Brits have a habit of referring to this country as Holland. This blog tries to say the Netherlands every time, although it's a bit of a mouthful, because Holland is only part of the country. (Scottish and Welsh readers will sympathise).
We started our voyage through the Netherlands in the province of Zeeland with all the lovely inland lakes. In Hellevoetsluis, Dordrecht and Edam we were truly in Holland, in the province of South Holland, and then Haarlem, Amsterdam and the west side of the old Zeiderzee are all in North Holland. It was called the southern sea because it was named by the Friesians to the north (or perhaps because it was their name for it which stuck).

We have never been to the province of Friesland on the eastern side of the Ijsselmeer but our time has come and on the advice of Aleid we plan to go to a smaller place rather than a larger one first.

Sunday 2nd July – Enkhuizen to Hindeloopen
10.30 am cast off
The wind would have been perfect on Saturday but we weren't ready to go and it's supposed to be OK today too – but of course the wind has shifted. So it's on the nose, and it gets stronger, not lighter as forecast. We sail it anyway, one reef in the main, and we make 3 big long sweeping tacks across the Ijsselmeer. It's lovely to be bouncing along at 7 knots even if for two thirds of the voyage it seems to be in the wrong direction. That's windward sailing!
Bouncing is the key word there: the Ijsselmeer is very shallow, our instrument is showing only 4 metres below the keel, sometimes less, and the waves here are famously short and sharp. Seasoned sailors have told me this is the one place where they get seasick and sure enough it works its spell on me. I'm mostly susceptible in rough water early in the season while I'm finding my sea legs, and usually it's when we're sailing downwind: there's something about the wallowing motion that can catch me out. The best prevention I've found is not to drink vast quantities of wine the night before. Ooops!
I last fine till about 2pm when the deck log records: “Sue pukes in the bucket”. It's not a great feeling I must say, so I'm glad that by this time we are sailing past Stavoren and bearing away slightly straight towards the village of Hindeloopen.

15.20 safely tied up in the smaller municipal old harbour, not the big marina.

Clear what the Harbour Master's favourite colour is.

Harbour master's house


Typical Hinderloopen painting style, applied to the shutters

All roads lead us back to the dyke


View over the dyke - on our way in we counted over 40 kite surfers

Wheee!!! If this sport had been around when Howard started wind-surfing he'd have tried this instead for sure

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 breeze carri
Read more