True to the forecast, Saturday started dry but cloudy, and several degrees colder than normal for the time of the year. Since we are not that experienced in sailing tidal waters we are not sure if it is better to sail on the Oosterschelde with the tide but in a wind-against-tide situation, or sail against both wind and tide. Finally, we took laziness as our counselor and opted for the latter, otherwise we would have to start at an uncivilized time.
Past the Grevelingen lock, sailing down the Keteen on a broad reach was really smooth. There was some sort of event going on at Bruinisse, and part of it was a rowing competition. That was fun to watch.
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| That's hard work! Get some sails, lads! |
Soon we reached the Oosterschelde and got the first glimpses of the Zeeland bridge. We knew that the hard bit was about to begin, but we didn't expect it to be this hard. We were going against spring tide and a gusty northerly wind that would not keep a constant strength or direction for more than 10 secs It was also very busy and every time that the colregs dictated we had to give way, it set us back a couple of tacks.
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| Getting to the bridge was hard work, but passing it under sail was damn well impossible. |
Eventually we reached the Zeeland bridge, but passing it under sail seemed impossible. We tried different angles but always the wind under the bridge set the genoa back and sent |Mekicevica spinning around her keel. Finally we gave up and motored past the bridge and to Ziekikzee.
