Saturday 7 April
As often happens, my crew spent all morning preparing me for sailing off. To be fair, there was more to do on this occasion, as it will be the first time I may be able to sail since arriving in Amsterdam some five months ago, and Skipper had taken some measures to ‘winterise’ me, by removing sails and ropes, and stowing un-needed equipment wherever he could find space.
We left our berth at 1300, and motored down the channel, with industrial land to starboard and a low dyke to port, this land cleverly utilised with a row of wind turbines. Eventually we turned North into open water, still well-buoyed and quite busy with ferries, freighters and the occasional fellow yacht – there are others brave (mad?) enough to be out this early in the season. It was a lovely afternoon, albeit without enough wind to sail properly, but we had an easy first sea passage to Borkum, the Westernmost island in the chain of the East Frisians, that are the beads in Northern Germany’s necklace.
Mate observed that it wasn’t really so different from the canals – a clearly marked channel and similar depth of water beneath my keel.
For her, the highlight of the afternoon was to change the courtesy flag: the four we’d been flying in the Netherlands came down, and were replaced by the horizontal black, red and yellow of Germany, still creased from its packaging.
In port, we ended up in a double berth framed by two very short, very bouncy finger pontoons, which Mate found very difficult to balance on in her current state of impaired mobility. Even Skipper practically had to crawl along them to sort my mooring ropes to his satisfaction. Fortunately there was no wind overnight, so nothing disturbed our slumbers.