Where is everybody? Nothing here in 4 days?
I'll make up with a good long post with lots of pictures, as promised in the main thread
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/what-have-you-eaten-today.75781/page-2466#post-2499921!
Not much wind on the first day, and mainly from the wrong direction for our goal, a sandbank near the island of Vlieland. Also, the tide was coming in which means we had the currents against us as well.
No way to beat this except by having the motor run along with the sails.
Fine with me, it was a perfect summery day, I'm not complaining about the weather if it's warm enough for a t-shirt in march!
The guests were friendly and willing to help with hoisting sails and coiling lines (after hoisting 5 sails there literally is about a kilometer of lines to be coiled!) so it was a pleasure to work with them.
Nice and easy-going captain as well (I'd never worked with him or on this ship before so no idea what to expect), happy to let me do things my way and trusting I knew what I was doing!
The dogs (my own two and two sleepover dogs I've had for a week) were happy enough with a spot on my vest in the sun, even though they don't particularly like sailing.
Thankfully they were instand friends with the captain's dog too, and there were no issues between his cat and my dogs either!
The traditional beer after the sailing day is done, een 'aanlegbiertje'! The first 'docking beer' of the year, drunk on a sandbank wearing a t-shirt. Doesn't get much better than that!
Our goal for the day was this sandbank. You just sail until you get stuck, some time after high tide, and wait for the water to disappear.
The next high tide was at around 2AM, so at around midnight we briefly started the motor to find deeper water some 200 meters south of our sandbank to spend the night behind our anchor.
Time for walks!
The dogs found it cold and wet and made it clear they wanted to go back on board right after a short run and doing their business.
I agreed, my feet were cold too!
Good thing I brought an extra t-shirt and sweater, I'd forgotten how wet and muddy you are after climbing a ladder 4 times with a wet muddy dog on your shoulder.
We had a beautiful sundown, even when photographed with my phone.
The morning looked magical. Hardly any wind, and in the one direction you couldn't even see where water became air or air became water.
In the other direction we had a clear view of the village of Oost-Vlieland, the only village on the island.
The wind picked up a little when we started sailing, and the same tide that was against us yesterday was now with us.
So we had a perfect sailing day back, no need to use the motor!