Island Hopping, South Holland Style

Our planned route for the day will take us up the Noord to the vicinity of Rotterdam, where we will try to find a harbour for the night.
The river Noord will be flowing in that direction (North) from ca 1030 to ca 1630, so we had a leisurely start. The "Wateralmanak" (sort of the pilot book of the Ductch waterways) recommended taking a narrower branch of the Noord, the Rietbaan, supposedly more interesting for leisure sailing. We followed that suggestion and discovered that the author of the Wateralmanak has a taste for post nuclear disaster scenery: the Rietbaan is the site of many ship breaking yards, and the landscape consisted of various vessels (including warships) in differing stages of decay.
After returning to the Noord we passed under the Alblasserdam bridge, with comfortable two meters between the top of Mekicevica's mast and the bottom of the bridge.

The skipper trying to look cool after passing under the Alblasserdam bridge. 

These waters are mostly too busy to sail, and due to the short range of Yo-Yo Ma, we are forced to frequent stops for refuelling. We made the first short stop at the Alblasserdam Water Sports Club.
After this break we found the waters wider and the traffic less intense, so we hoisted the jib and sailed up until the junction of three rivers: Noord, Lek, and Nieuwe Maas.
We though we had already seen busy traffic. We hadn't seen nothing yet! Here there is a jumble of sailing boats, motor yachts, long inland waters freight ships, huge sea-going container vessels and various tourist river-cruiser boats. Nearby is the Kinderdijk, a sort of Dutch windmills Disneyland that provides opportunities for many holiday photos and videos. Mekicevica, being the cutest sailing boat, now features on a few of them.
Second short stop, at the Water Sports Club De Lek and on to the last leg for the day towards one of the yacht harbours where the Nieuwe Maas and the Hollandse IJssel meet. With the weather getting bad and the forecast even worse, we opted for a harbour close to Rotterdam, keeping in mind the possibility of spending a day of lousy weather (re)visiting the city. I actually lived nearby for a few years and started to learn to sail on a lake in Rotterdam.

Approaching Rotterdam in foul weather.

We cheerfully entered the harbour of IJsselmonde, only to be told that they don't want any small boats in their harbour. Is that unfriendly or what!? Do me a favour: if you come to these waters don't stay at the IJsselmonde Water Sports Club. They suck.
So we are back on the water, now in pouring rain and lousy mood, going back to where we just came from, to try the harbour in Krimpen aan den IJssel. Hopefully they will not be so snotty there. We never found out, as you can read in the next post.