Sunday 25 August 2013

Mekicevica's Crew in Another Boat

After escaping the lousy weather, Mekicevica's crew spent the Sunday trying the curious sport of rafting in artificial whitewater. Yes, there is such thing: near Arras in Northern France they used part of an old canal to build a whitewater stream by pumping water through a circuit of plastic obstacles.
Rafting in artificial whitewater. They are not paddling upstream, just struggling to keep the thing pointing in the right direction.
It was much harder work that expected. Also a lot of fun, even when we managed to capsize the raft and the whole crew of six went tumbling down to the calm waters at the end.
Still not a sport I will rush to take up. At the end of the circuit it connects to one of the French canals. We considered hijacking the raft and making our way to the Canal du Midi, Marseille, and the Mediterranean...

Saturday 24 August 2013

A Failed BBQ on the Grevelingen

After nearly three weeks without sailing, Mekicevica and crew are starting to get the jitters. Moreover, with the end of the season approaching we desperately need to use every opportunity. The trouble this weekend was the weather forecast that kept changing, and our plans changing with it. Finally we decided that even if we got a bit of rain now and then it was worth trying to make a BBQ on one of the islands of the Grevelingen.
On Friday, I set off on my own to sail towards Brouwerhaven. Against the latest version of the weather forecast, there was not a cloud in the sky and it was nicely warm. The only problem was that the SE wind was very, very light, sometimes stopping completely. I almost fell asleep at the tiller.
On one of the occasions that there was some wind, I took the opportunity to practice heaving to.
With all this, by the time First-Mate called saying she was living work, I was only half way.
Here is a story for Top Gear: one Ford S-Max leaves the Kempen towards Brouwershaven trying to beat a 19-foot sailing boat that is now half-way up the Grevelingen towards the same destination. Given  the traffic jams on the Antwerpen ring and the light wind, it was never going to be an exciting race. Especially since the wind finally died completely and I had to motor the last three miles. As I was turning around the buoys to enter the harbour I saw a familiar S-Max coming down the ramp to the water front. Nobody won!
By then it was getting late and the pontoons on the island seemed rather full, so we just headed for the first island with the curious name of Dwars in de Weg (Across the Way) which describes what once sailors arriving from Brouwershaven from the North Sea felt about the island. The SE wind started picking up again; probably just the evening breeze, we thought.
We managed to squeeze into a place, well sheltered from every direction but SE. Then it turned out I had forgotten a bag with half of the provisions. Luckily, I still had wine, meat, and the instant BBQ, so we could have some sort of dinner.
During the night the SE wind started to increase and building up waves that came right into us. It was a very disturbed night that felt like trying to sleep in a washing machine. To make matters worse, in the morning it started to rain. We got up feeling very tired and just motored to the next island - Stampersplaat - hoping to find a sheltered place where we could have breakfast, some rest and hope for the rain to clear. It eventually stopped raining, so we changed the head sail and even considered reefing the main for the expected beat towards Bruinisse. At first we had a nice breeze more Easterly than we tough, meaning we would be able to make it with just a few tacks. Then the rain came back in force and killed all the wind. Soon, a wet and tired crew decided we just wanted to arrive and have a hot shower, so we motored most of the way back. Not a successful trip at all. At least it made us realise that all of this season we had managed to avoid sailing in the rain... and how much we dislike it.

Sunday 4 August 2013

A Mini Summer-Holiday on the Oosterschelde

Wednesday 31st of July: Delivery to Stavenisse
A forecast of sunshine, hot weather and moderate southerlies is too good to miss. So I managed to persuade First-Mate to take Thursday and Friday off and spend a few days sailing the bits of the Oosterschelde still unknown to Mekicevica and crew. To make the proposition more attractive, I even offered to bring the boat to Stavenisse on Wednesday, so that the boring bit of passing the Grevelingen lock and motor down the Keteen looking-out for shipping would be done before she came aboard.
Except for the part when I just missed one opening of the lock and had a long wait, it was not boring at all. Once in the lock, I tried to be creative in finding ways to tie-up single-handed and ended-up making a mess. Anyway the lock was nearly empty, and I used an old skipper's trick: when a manoeuvre goes wrong, keep a straight face and pretend that was exactly how you wanted to do it.

Adding excitement to the day, Yoyo-Ma the Outboard Engine has a range of only about four miles and I was planning to do about seven. Running out of fuel in front of a container ship was not an attractive proposition, neither was stopping to tank in the choppy waters created by a southwesterly blowing right up the Keteen against an ebbing tide. So I had to plan fuelling stops carefully. For the first stop I briefly took shelter in the Bruinisse "vluchthaven" (shelter harbour). After that it got really choppy. I had to admire the couple in a Waarschip 700 valiantly beating in these conditions.
I did a second, last  stop by heading a bit up the Krabbenkreek. After that the tide turned and, although we were then going against wind and tide, the water was much smoother and we made much better progress.
The entrance to Stavenisse harbour is not easy to spot, and only one hour after low water it looked so narrow and shallow I had to keep telling myself that I did get the calculations right and there was about 1.2m of water.
First-Mate joined shortly after I had tied-up at the visitor's pontoon and we had dinner al-fresco getting ready for a few days of sailing.

Thusrday 1st of August: Easy Sailing to Burghsluis
We woke-up under a bright blue sky and light southeasterly wind. Moreover low water will be around 6pm, so that with a leisurely start we will have wind and tide with us on our planned tour to Burghsluis.
Out of the Stavenisse harbour canal, we briefly needed Yoyo-Ma's help to get us out of the way of the shipping and then it was all plain sailing.

We passed under the Zeeland bridge, than in front of Zierikzee and goose-winged into the channel north of the Roggenplaat that leads to Burghsluis. I was told that this northern bit of the Oosterschelde is normally very quiet, but due to the favourable combination of wind and tide it was busier than normal. In the Burghsluis marina the volunteers of the sailing club were doing a great job in coping with the extra number of visiting yachts, and found us a nice, sheltered place rafting along a 22-footer.
After a refreshing plunge in the very clean water of the marina, shopping and shower we headed to Burgh-Hamstede on rented bikes for sight-seeing and dinner.

Friday 2nd of August: Across the Roompot
The wind, weather and tide fairies are being really nice to us: the wind veered to the SW. Without rush in the morning we could leave Burghsluis on a goose-winged run in light wind and with the second half of a flooding tide. It was so quiet we even heard a dolphin before seeing it. Eventually we did have to turn south, but it did not take more than a couple of easy tacks with the tide helping us and we were on the wide part of the Oosterschelde. By then the tide was turning, again helping us towards Roompot marina. The only trouble was that the wind took a lunch break, and we had to resort to other methods of propulsion. We tried motoring but the noise and vibrations were too irritating. Drifting is OK for awhile, but eventually we need to control our course. So I resorted to the paddles I keep in the bottom of the starboard locker for just such occasions. This caused great amusement to the crew of a passing yacht and a seal that observed us with a puzzled look.
Soon the sea-wind started kicking-up and we approached Roompot marina close-hauled.
The Roompot marina is huge and because it is conveniently positioned just after the lock to the North Sea, it is visited by impressive, sea-going yachts. On the whole I found it crowded and a bit intimidating, very different from the cosy harbours of small "Zeeuwse" villages we are used to. It does not even have a town nearby, only a holiday village looking more like the green suburbs of a large town.
The visit to the beach was also a bit disappointing. Or maybe we got spoiled by the Adriatic coast. On the Oosterschelde, before it is deep enough to swim you have to wade for ever in murky water feeling all sorts of shells, algae and other critters under your toes.
But the beach bar was OK! After a beer and shower we prepared dinner on board and went to sleep.

Saturday 3rd of August: Fast Run to Colijnsplaat
From the weather forecast, we knew that the worse weather would be on Saturday. Therefore we planned a short, five-mile hop along the coast to Colijnsplaat.
The announced storms turned out to be no more that a few drops of rain, but the wind was stronger than expected: WSW 5Bf, at times 6Bf. Not too bad since we are heading East, but we must make it before the tide starts ebbing around 2pm. After that the strong wind against the tide will turn the otherwise peaceful Oosterschelde into a witch's cauldron.
We still had plenty of time for breakfast and coffee, and were out of the harbour under sail before 10am. It was windy, but Mekicevica and crew are getting used to these situations. Under reefed main only we made good progress. My usual tactic is to avoid the straight downwind course and potential crash gybes. The few gybes we had to do required careful handling of the course and main-sheet; even then, Mekicevica and crew were thrown around a bit. Finally we approached the harbour entrance on a reach, doused sails and were settled before 1pm, with plenty of time to spare. The display of the sophisticated weather station on the wall of yacht club confirmed that we had been sailing in 6 Bf wind.
View across the Oosterschelde in the late afternoon.
The lazy afternoon was only interrupted by a short run along the dyke. After shower we went for an appetiser of herring, dinner at the Schelde restaurant and finished the day with wine and chocolate on board.
Eating herring the traditional way in Colijnsplaat.
Sunday 4th of August: Slow Return to Bruinisse
Sunday was a bit cooler. The wind was forecast to remain from the SW, which was great news for us. The bad news was that there was not much of it. Out of the harbour with full main and Big Jenny the genoa, we drifted more than sailed towards the Zeeland bridge. Yoyo-Ma again had to be started to give us some sort of steerage passing under the bridge. On the other side, with no shipping in sight, we resumed the slow game of partly sailing, mostly drifting in the right direction. When we got to the shipping lane, First-Mate attentive look-out and Yoyo-Ma saved us from drifting right into the path of a huge ship. By then we were getting short of fuel, so we made a stop at Stavenisse to get some. As we came out again, we found that there was some wind, so we managed to have a couple of hours of relaxed sailing, including another encounter with a dolphin.
This beautiful ship was beating down the Keteen.
Unfortunately the wind veered more and more North and by the time we reached the Krabbenkreek we had to start beating. After a few tacks that because of the contrary tide and the need to avoid ships kept bringing us back to the same buoy, we decided it was getting late and motored the rest of the way. In total, it took us eight hours from Colijnsplaat to the Grevelingen lock. Thinking that last year we did the same trip in exactly two hours...