Our sketchy plan for this season is to explore a bit more of the southern reaches of the Schelde Delta, maybe even daring to tackle the strong tides and busy shipping of the Western Schelde. Perhaps we'll even manage to sail to Antwerpen...
For now, we are happy with a trip to the Veerse Meer. This is a narrow arm of the Delta which was once open to the North Sea. In old days, Veere was an important port where wool from Scotland arrived to be sold to the weavers of Flanders and beyond. Now the Veerse dijk has tranformed the Veerse Gat (as it was known) into the Veerse Meer, a tide-free, salt-water lake popular with yachties in all sorts of boats, from Gin Palaces that moor in quay of the old town to be looked at, to dinghies raced by kids.
The weather forecast anounced NW moderate winds and sunny. Low water in the Oosterschelde will be around 5pm, so we may even be able to time our passage so that we reach the point when we turn from towards the open sea to away from it just as the tide is turning.
Negotiating the Keteen was unnerving as usual. Each time the Kramer lock opens, an armada of big ships comes out, each one with a different idea of how to avoid the yachts, leaving us to scatter in all directions as fast as we can. We only had two close misses, not too bad...
Once in he Oosterschelde we part ways with the shipping. Just as well, because here we had to beat into the NW wind for a while. At least we had the tide with us and the wind running against the tide was not strong enough to cause any difficulties. We reached the turning point a bit earlier that expected which may have to do with the fact that we cut a good corner of the no-entry area. We were not the only ones doing it. From there it was again sailing down the freshening wind. We reached the Zandkreek around low water and it was a really narrow strip of water that led to the lock. Not knowing if there was sea room at the end to maneuver we decided to motor. It turns out that there is plenty of room in front of the lock. A couple of locals on big yachts obviously knew that because they sailed past us at great speed.
After the lock, in The Veerse meer we were really into the wind. It was getting late and cold as well, so we just motored the last bit to Kortgene marina where we left Mekicevica for the week under the attention of a very friendly harbour master.
