Hellevoetsluis - Day 1: Volkerak In The Rain

Saturday started with a shy sunshine. The weather is a bit unsettled and metereologists are burning the circuits of their supercomputers trying to produce consistent forecasts.
We motored out to the Grevelingen lock and to the Krammer lock after that. After the Staande Mast Route, passing locks lost all the excitement of early days and everything went smoothly. However it seems to be a rule that it will be raining each time we pass these two locks.
Once on the Volkerak we hoisted sails and kept to the north side, mostly out of the shipping lane. At some point, you can't avoid the lane on this side and either cross to the south side (and cross again later) or follow on the port side of the lane for a little while. As it was quiet, with not much shipping, we decided to take the later option. We even sailed for a while in the middle of the shipping lane giving way to yachts coming the opposite direction. All went smoothly, except for the weather: It just kept on raining! As we were approaching the Volkerak lock, we decided we pretty much had had enough rain for one day. The wind was also picking up, making the sailing a bit more demanding. So we called it a day and headed for the small harbour of Ooltgensplaat.
At this point, the Skipper decided to try a new trick and douse the main before rolling the genoa, instead of the other way round. It turned-out to be a bad idea, with not much water between the yachts coming out of the yacht lock on one side and the large ships coming out of the commercial shipping lock on the other side. So after going to and fro a few times struggling with the manouver, I applied the old rule: if you don't succeed at first, try doing it the way your wife told you.
The entrance to Ooltgensplaat harbour is well hidden, and you feel that you are just sailing into the trees and either your mast will be entangled in the branches, or your keel will be in the reeds, or both. But you take a sharp bend, go through an old lock, and suddenly you are in a fairly spacious harbour with some very large, classic boats around you. How the hell did they come in?

First-Mate perfectly blending with the environment at Ooltgensplaat.

Ooltegensplaat is a typical small town of these parts, with the old harbour as the centre of life. The old town hall, now transformed into a restaurant is very impressive.

A very nautical detail on the old town hall.

The rain persisted and it got even worse during the night. We tried-out a prototype of a cockpit tent made out of a square tarp with bungee cord at the ends. Even this primitive version adds a lot of comfort to life aboard in rainy weather, and served the purpose of finding-out what the final version should look like.