Near Kortegene there are many trees on the margins, creating areas of nearly no wind. It was almost like morning sailing in the Adriatic, a constant search for wind, often being trapped in calm spots. Further West, there are less trees and we could get moving.
The other thing with Veerse Meer is that it is narrow and busy. You come across yachts that are definitely too large for these waters. Some are on the way from the Westerschelde to the Oosterschelde via the canal from Vlissigen to Veere. Others just belong to people who have too large yachts and then sail them in waters more adequate for dinghies. To make matters worse some of these people have no idea of the colregs, as we found.
When we reached the last turn of the Veerse Meer and had to turn straight North. At this point the North wind was blowing practically unhindered from the North Sea. We turned back to more sheltered water, put a reef in in the main, and prepared to beat up the narrow channel. Compared with the beggining of the previous season, the crew is much more experienced in these situations. The new rigging is also performing wonderfully, so even if we had to do fast tacks and sometimes had the rail in the water it was fun... to a point. The wind continued to get stronger and after a while, with the church tower of Veere in plain view, we gave up, turned down-wind and headed for one of the public pontoons to collect our wits and revise the plans. We decided to head for Oranjeplaat harbour, a couple of hundred meters downwind and call it a day.
We still went sight-seeing in Veere, only on foot...
From the shore we could appreciate how hard it was blowing and later checked the website of the Dutch Metereological Institute (KNMI): we had been beating in a narrow channel into 6 Bf wind!
On Sunday morning the North wind was still blowing hard and we had to get out of the most southern point of the Veerse meer. Remembering the adventures of Saturday, we decided to put two reefs in the main. It turned-out to be too cautious: we were hardly moving and even with a tiny head-sail we had too much lee-helm. Finally we took out the second reef and could finally get going. Approaching Kortegene, where there are trees along the water we even had to let out the full sails to cover the last half-mile to the yacht harbour.
