Let’s start quick – the new mast is amazing. Later more on that. So what is this Ijsselmeer? It’s basically a historic basin where the watt sea used to be. Because it is so vast and huge shallow at one point the Dutch decided, why not build a wall “THE DIJK” to make water levels a little more controllable. And since they know what they are doing when it comes to water, the separated the basin from the north sea. What are we left with is a giant body of water with constant water depth between 3 and 5 meter, but basically nothing in it’s way in terms of land structures to the north and very little to the west. So there is a lot of wind and the wave can not really build up huge. It’s a very short and shallow wave… nerve-racking at times but always reasonable. So this thing IJsselmeer and it’s little brother to the south the Markemeer seem like they were build to serve sailing yachts. And yes, it was great fun.
We entered through the locks of Stavoren and took it straight south to Enkhuizen. We were facing some squalls during the sail. Even some lightning – but only in the distance – and more than enough rain. But the sailing worked great. Reefing the “old” main sail works, the jibs work fine on both forestays and since the entire rig is so much lighter the boat does not nearly roll as much in waves as it used to. It was a sweet cruise.
And since we really enjoy anchoring over fancy marinas that cost a lot, we just looked at the weather forecast: Easy westerly winds! Yeah… so we went through the locks down into the Markemeer, as close as we could dare to the edge of the eastern coast (some land protection from the westerly winds) and threw the anchor. Always a good choice.
Next day pretty much the same. Sailing in even better conditions down to Amsterdam, under sail towards a little bay where you can anchor before amsterdams locks. I mean like 30 min boat ride from downtown Amsterdam there is an more or less official anchoring ground. So fucking cool.
And then on the third day our hopefully last canal ride for a long time. Don’t get us worng – it was really nice at times and otherwise we would have never seen the Netherlands so beautifully, neither would we have seen the Ijsselmeer – but running the engine is always a bit of a killer…. That sound of a tractor in your small boat, the smell.
We passed Amsterdam and it’s harbors (pretty damn pretty), were checked by the water police and in the evening made it to Ijmuiden. Those are the locks that protect Amsterdam from the north sea. So huge locks, many of them and the very little lock for sports boats… blocked by a construction. Almost impossible to find. Parking in front of the lock…. adventurous to say the least. The landscape dystopic the lock partners huge commercial ships. All accompanied by the setting sun. It felt like the world was going to end.
But then we came to a super modern harbor especially for sailing yachts. Half empty, nobody there since half of everything is closed due to corona and it was late already. So parking, paying SHOWERING!!! (the first real shower since our second week in Emden at Jan’s place) and then some loooong sleep.
We actually were planning on leaving the boat for the fast approaching winter there since it would have cost a reasonable 800 Euros. But then we checked the weather and it became clear that we were up for a small adventure as season finally after all 😀
Here is the Slideshow of all the Pictures 🙂
