The Route

Team 4!

Thank you guys & girls!

Looking back at a fantastic adventure with much wildlife (seal, otter, bottle nose dolphin, common dolphin, porpoise, puffin, shear-water, gannet, razorbills, etc), top scenery (e.g. fluorescent sea off IJmuiden, Dunnottar Castle, kyle of Tongue, Suilvan mountain, loch Nevis, Sky, Mull, the Mull on Kintyre, east Dunmore, Falmouth bay, moonlit night in Fastnet), tough sailing, smooth sailing, poker nights, too many drinks, town excursions, crab dinner, uno nights, calm nights at anchor, wild nights in squalls and many many fun dinners. Thank you all!

This 'production' was made possible, and much fun, thanks to the efforts made and logistic nightmares endured by: Charles, Frits, Jan-Willem, Joost, Matthew, Pieter, Scott, Rene and Robert. Thank you for coming along, for helping to keep the boat in top condition (NOTHING broke!!) and for taking on all challenges (the weather, your skipper..) in good humored way.

Pretty much the same great many thanks to the ladies: Ann, Hettie, Julia and Sophie. Plus special ladies-thanks for coming along on the ride, upping culinary standards, spotting wildlife and being excellent co-skippers, jetty-expedition helms-woman, navigators and 2nd co-captains.

And now back to work....

p.s. Anybody in for a south-coast dessert in May or June next year? :)

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Uitgekleed!

The adventure is over or parked for the winter. We cleaned the sails and equipment, got all the salt off the boat, dried everything and had a brief spell enjoying Falmouth.
Falmouth is nice, lifely with a real boating scene: sailclubs, fancy restaurants and all. They also have a big maritime museum here. It is as different from the gritty Scottish and Irish scene (excl. Dublin) as you can have it. The bay is very pretty with about 5 rivers running into it and many boats moored.
We hauled Hartendief out of the water yesterday and crew 4 (Rene, Pieter and Matthew) took the taxi this morning at 4 (!). We slept on the boat while when it was already parked on the hard which invoked a scene described by Pieter about Russian sailors stuck on their ship in midwinter Petersburg unable to sail.. It is surely more classy to sleep on a boat when it is in the water :)
The marina here is fantastic with shops, all facilities thinkable. A good place for the winter.
Next year we hope to use Falmouth as starting point for our family vacation and than have a last leg of our round Britain adventure for a last crew to take here back with me. From Falmouth to the Netherlands is about 350 miles of coastal sailing and that should be a wizz compared to the tough bits we went through.

Falmouth

We sailed 185M in 28 hours!! Rene and Matthew tuned Hartendief into a
thorougbred, somewhat overpowered :), wave surfing race horse and
broke the speed record with a new record of 9.7kn. Tough seas and many
showers kept us on our toes and generally slightly cold and miserable.
Highpoints were Dolphins (5+), an increible moonlid night with a
moon-rain-bow, stars and surfing the waves. Max wind reached 35 knots
only once with most (gusty, squally) wind between 20 and 30 knots
(5-7bf).
The sun is coming out and will hopefully allow us to desalify and dry
ourselfs and the boat.

Dunmore East

Supercute village at the entrance of the river Suire (south ireland)

Definitely worth spending a summer holiday. Beautiful beaches, palm
trees en lovely thatched houses.

Now It is a stormy and rainy day and we are waiting for a 'hole in the
weather' as we call it. already waiting for days now...Tomorrow 4 O'
in the early morning we wil finally leave for south england. a 200
Miles and 40 hours on the ocean in stormy conditions and part of the
famous fastnet track.
Chears

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