May holiday 2017 - Tour Southern Netherlands

In the first week of the May holidays we make a tour around the south of the Netherlands. The weather is not suitable to go to the Wadden Sea. We will make a round trip from Bruinisse to Cadzand, then to Scheveningen and then to the Veerhaven in Rotterdam. Finally we will pass the piece of land of the Indian Summer and Willemstad via Dordrecht back to Bruinisse. The whole week together with the Indian Summer.

We left on Saturday 24 April and had a wonderful sailing trip from Bruinisse via Hansweert across the Westerschelde to the new marina at Cadzand. A nice place to anchor. The next day, we make a cycle trip to Knokke, a beautiful Belgian town along the coast. With nice shops so we shop a lot!

On Monday 26 April we make a beautiful sailing trip from Cadzand to Scheveningen. Hours in a row with a large wind in clover stand. Wonderful sailing. When we arrive in Scheveningen it starts to rain. We have a nice dinner at the Japanese restaurant and take the tram back. That night, there was a strong wind, so the next day, even though the wind had decreased, there was still a lot of swell.
We left Scheveningen thinking it would be a short, simple trip to Rotterdam. Nothing could be further from the truth. We hoist the sails in the outer harbour and are just sailing out of the entrance to Scheveningen when we hear a strange noise. It turns out to be an anchor that is not properly secured and that rolls downwards. And that in a heavy swell in the surf with sails up. Not pleasant!

In total 40 metres of chain rolls out and we are anchored at a depth of 7 metres. Toine goes forward with the winch handle and Eline and I are at the wheel. I am enormously shocked and somewhat panicked. It's great to see how calm Eline stays and helps me at the steering position. We steer carefully to the spot where Toine is pointing at us and then Toine can pull in the anchor without any problems. That's it, we're done. After that we sailed for more than an hour half wind with big waves towards the Maas estuary.

 

Just before that we hoisted the sails and then we sailed the whole Nieuwe Waterweg through the port area of Rotterdam to the Veerhaven harbour close to the Erasmus bridge. A beautiful trip. The Veerhaven is a great place to be. We always wanted to go here, because maybe in a few years time we will be living on a boat here in winter. It is a small cosy harbour in the middle of the centre. You can walk to any place in a few minutes. We all have to recover from the shock. Indian Summer is also frightened by our anchor adventure. Of course Toine and Harald immediately make an anchor protection. This will not happen to us again! The next day we go shopping. Everyone buys something. Even Toine buys a lot of clothes and nice shoes.

 

On Queen's Day, we left again and sailed further up the Nieuwe Waterweg through the centre of Rotterdam, past Noordereiland and under the Brienenoord Bridge. That only just fitted with our mast height. Then we went on to Dordrecht and Zwijndrecht, via the Nieuwe Maas and the Noord. Max, Harald's brother, passes by in his speedboat and Marinthe and Charley can join him. We also see the piece of land where they are going to build a house. A beautiful location on the water with a view on the old Dordrecht.

We have to wait a while for the bridges and then continue by engine to Willemstad. Because it's King's Day, we can't moor in the basin, but we can moor in the harbour itself. On the last day we sail through the locks on the Volkerak back to Bruinisse. Great sailing, close to the wind. We haven't sailed as far as we used to, but we had a wonderful holiday.