Wednesday, 7 August
We left Scheveningen around 8am to avoid strong winds forecast for later in the day.
It was definitely a bit breezier with a slightly less flat sea, but still a very pleasant sail.
The wind was directly against where we needed to go, so we went out and then tacked back down the shoreline and we were still faster than the 3 boats that has left ahead of us and has motored in a straight line to the Rotterdam shipping lane crossing point.
There were several big ships to avoid. Slightly nerve wracking in a growing sea and under sail doing 8 knots. We stalled up to wind to let the enormous ones go ahead. But the port traffic guy told us to go ahead of this monster.
I much prefer leaving these things to stern!
The later weather forecast was for 24kt gusts in the later afternoon and, as we had already reefed once, we decided to play safe and stop in Stellendam instead of pressing on to ZeeBrugge. It seems we haven’t had enough of Holland…or locks.
After going down the channel, enjoying views of seals on sandbanks (sorry too far for a photo) and of Rockanje on the opposite bank – the holiday park that was my first introduction to The Netherlands in 1971 – we arrived at what I can only describe as a Super Lock.
Here we have a lock-bridge-double lock-bridge extravaganza!
All we had to do was call them on the radio and they opened it for us (this included stopping all the traffic on 2 roads) – there was one other survey boat who joined us in the lock.
We filled up with diesel and then had a few issues with the wind when coming in to the marina when the bow thrusters decided that this would be a good time to go on strike. I managed to get them going again (I know I’m amazed too – off and on again if you’re interested!) and David reversed beautifully onto our box/finger mooring.
We were moored by 2 and after tidying La Bamba, we walked
to the nearby bird hide – very impressive!
I then went for an overly long walk to the other side of the lock – walking down cycle paths, as that is the honoured method of transport here, but eventually found a beach
and after despairing of getting one, I finally had a vantage point over the reed banks.
You can’t see them here, but there are spoonbills, egrets, many terns and I even saw what I think was a hen harrier (female)
We ate at the marina restaurant – yummy!
Tomorrow Belgium! 🇧🇪
The bridge is I think the one John crossed each morning going to Europort from Rockanje during the summer month we were in the Bad Hotel before we moved into Den Haag. Summer 1971.