Tag: Places
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Guernsey, St Peter Port
OK, so for those of you who are unfamiliar with the “sill” I mentioned in the last post, here is what it looks like at low tide: St Peter has an average tide difference of about 9 meters. The sill prevents the water from running out of the marina below a certain level. This makes…
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A yacht designed for uncomfort in rough conditions…?
Well, there are rough conditions and there are rough conditions. And a Journeyman ride over the English Channel after 3 days of 30 knot winds was clearly worse than my definition of comfort would allow. So I consider myself beaten. We actually went down to three reefs even though we only had 24 knots wind…
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Wind wait…
Boulogne is a nice town, the marina is reasonably priced, and the weather forecast looks like beating to windward in strong winds (as usual on this trip so far) but this time in rain: Conclusion: We stay here for a while. It seems the low over Scotland will be moving away during Friday, which gives…
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Boulogne-Sur-Mer: Collateral damage. But, Yay! Fresh croissantes!
As always on the channel, 3.5 knots of tide going one way and 24 knots of wind going the other way creates interesting seas. The first victim on this leg was my beloved tea thermos, bought in Estonia. It took a bit of a sharper fall than it was designed for, and smashed. Next was…
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Scheveningen
Today we took a walk on the Scheveningen beach front. A long walk. Because the Scheveningen beach front is pretty enormous. And on a sunny Sunday in October it is quite packed with people. It even has its own sort of semi-trashy surf village, complete with camping possibilities and some funky homebuilt bars and sleeping…
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You’re in a fishing harbour. Use it!
We were kind of too lazy for cooking tonight, so we went looking for a restaurant around the harbour. But most were closed and the only open one looked very boring. Then we passed a fisherman loading his truck with crates full of nice cod. I asked him if we could buy a couple, and…
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Looking for advice on marinas arount the Solent!
I’m trying to plan our UK South Coast Tour. We will probably go to Newhaven from The Netherlands, and then on to some place in the Solent. But there are sooo many marinas to choose from! So any input about nice places to stay would be welcome!
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Lauwersoog yacht harbour: No yachts, lots of ropes…
So today we are in the Netherlands. We went into Lauwersoog, after some bounces off unexpected sand reefs off the coast. Fortunately I had foreseen this and positioned the keel about 25 cm down, so when we buried the bulb in the sand we could lift it up a bit and back off to safer…
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Morning on Norderney
Moving around the Frisian Islands with a deep draft sailing yacht is interesting. The waters are very shallow, the tidal currents are powerful and the bottom is sand. Sand that moves around. A lot. Even this small harbour has a total of four dredgers! So forget the charts, even if they’re recently updated. You just…
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Leaving Helgoland
I was at Helgoland 10 years ago. At that time the island was a tax-free haven, created to make the it attractive to tourists. The place basically felt like one gigantic duty-free shop in the middle of the North Sea. Now those tax breaks have been significantly reduced, and so has the amount of…