Mother & son
We sailed for Texel on Saturday. Both Heleen and Aram came with us so we had plenty of crew.
The forecast was for fine weather with SE3-4. We made good progress at first but, as the land heated up, it cancelled out the breeze and we were becalmed for long periods and failed to make it by nightfall. Given the settled off-shore weather, we were able to anchor off the fine sandy beach and marvel at the sunset over supper. As we expected, a land breeze sprung up over night and Tony, Aram and Dan were up to set off at 4:30am while the rest of the crew slept on. We had an excellent sail to Den Helder where we dropped Heleen and Aram ashore before sailing on to Oudeschild on the island of Texel.
Texel is the one Dutch Friesian island that Ynskje and Tony did not get to visit in 2012, so this has put that omission right. Having arrived by 8:00am we had a relaxing day catching up with ourselves. The next day we set off on bikes to the main habitation Den Burg for lunch and then cycled along the NW coast. This is some 15 nm of sandy beach backed by high sand dunes and is a major holiday destination with many camping places nestling in the dunes. We took the fine cycle path all the way to the northernmost habitation De Cocksdorp, where tea, appel gebak met slagroom and poffertjes were taken. It was then a long ride back along the dijk against the wind.
The winds over the next few days, when not blowing near gale, will be from the east – not what we need. So we have decided to go ‘indoors’ i.e. through the canals from Harlingen to Delfzeil and thence to the German Friesen Islands.
Aram made a short video of his and Heleen’s time on board and is included below. Thank you Aram!
That’s the news for now.
Tony, Ynskje & Dan