Oh, the bells, the bells!

Meeting in the canal.


We're in Enkhuizen in Holland. Been here for three nights now, and there will be a fourth. A southwesterly force 7 is howling through the rig, even though we are birthed in the middle of the town center with lots of shelter. We are sailing on a lake, but force 7 is still a lot. Tomorrow we'll have W force 5, which will be excellent for the 26M sail to Amsterdam, where I suspect we'll stay for at least 4 days. The plan after that is to go through the North sea canal to Ijmuiden and then around the Dutch north sea coast on our way home. We still want to visit the West and East Frisian islands which we skipped on our way here.

Every town in Holland with the least bit of self respect has bells, church bells, but not the kind that goes DING DONG DING DONG. They all go klingkedidonk klang diiiiiiing etc.
They all play tunes. We've noticed it in every dutch town we stopped in, Dokkum, Harlingen, Medemblik and now Enkhuizen. Enkhuizen is the "worst", the day we got here they played for an hour straight without interruption. They have at least three towers within a mile that all play a tune every 15 minutes. Apart from the fact that we wake up to Greensleves at 3 am each morning, we still havn't found a system for when they play what. I guess it's a complicated system.














They are not only crazy about bells, they are also quite fanatic about old boats. Usually they live aboard them and they are kept in mint condition. This old steamer had a nice sound in it's whistle!

The trip to enkhuizen has been somewhat eventful. We set out from Cuxhafen in Germany at midnight to go with the tide and reach or destination in the evening, the following day. The destination was Lauwersoog in Holland some 90M west. There was absolutetly no wind whatsoever as we left the harbour and the night was clear and without a moon, so the Milky Way was incredibly bright. On our way out the Elbe river we stayed just outside the fairway, but apparantly not far enough as the german "Wassershutzpolizei" pulled us over and told us to move further away. They were very polite and friendly though. Just as we reached the Elbe estuary at around 3 am, winds picked up from S and increased to force 4-5 and we set sail. Cuxhafen had been crowded with dutch boats waiting for better weather before going home and as dawn broke I could count almost 30 sails around the horizon, but I know there were more under it. Ingeborg is by no means a fast boat, but comfortable. With force 4-5 we sailed almost upright, doing 6-6.5 knots and almost everyone past us. The only boat that we managed to put behind us was a Tayana 42, HA! At 3 pm the wind died and we motored the rest of the way. At 7.05 pm we reached Lauwerssog, 5 minutes too late for getting into the channels through the lock. It didn't matter though, as we got company from two dutch couples on the boats "Calypso" and "La Touche". Very nice people and we were to keep in touch until we reached Harlingen, where we went separate ways. The next morning we went through the lock and started our "sail" by motoring on the channels, the standing mast route through the dutch inland waterways. We went to Dokkum, a small and very charming town. Just before Dokkum we had to turn around, waiting for a bridge to open and in the narrow channel (a little bit wider than the length of Ingeborg) we got stuck in the mud and had to wait for a friendly motor boat to pull us out. We spent the night in Dokkum, as a heavy thunderstorm passed overhead. The next day we set out for Harlingen, which is on the Waddenzee, outside the channels but inside the westfrisian islands. In Leuwarden, between Dokkum and Harlingen, just as we were to pass under a bridge, the motor died and we were left drifting on the channel in strong winds. It would have been worse if it had happend after the bridge and if it was closed, but it would have been better if it had happened in the middle of the channel as we could have just put her in the mud. Now we drifted towards a rather nasty quay with large mooring poles for river barges. We were lucky though hit one of the poles amidships but managed to get a few fenders in between first. We could then jump ashore and after some hard work pulling lines to trees she was safely moored and we as well as Ingeborg were unharmed. We also got company from Calypso and La Touche. When they saw that we were in trouble they asked the bridgkeeper to keep the bridge open so they could turn back for us. It felt really good not being alone! 30 minutes work had the motor running again, air in the system and when we changed diesel filters in Harlingen we got the explanation. A nut blinding the unused intake (there are 2 intakes on each filter, but only one is used) on one of the filters had come loose and the filter was sucking air.

I have no idea why the Italians are so proud of their leaning tower. In Holland every building leans and they all lean in different directions. Most hoses arte very old. A house built in the 19th or even 18th century is considered to be "new". It's not rare to see houses from early 17th century, or even 16th century. As the boats, the hoses are kept in mint condition and are preserved very well. It really isn't hard to imagine what it must have looked like here a couple of centuries ago.

Harlingen is a nice town on the coast, inside the islands on the Waddensee. The Waddensee is shallow and always changing so you need the very latest charts and navigational warnings. During low tide a lot of the Waddensee is dry and even the fairway is only 1-2 feet deep, so you need to cross during high tide. Harlingen is not tide free and there are no pontoons, so you need to use long lines. It was a really nice place though. We stayed two nights before crossing the Waddensee to the locks at Kornwerderzand before entering into Ijsselmeer. We then sailed to Medemblik, a very, very nice and charming town on the western side of Ijsselmeer. Ijsselmeer is by the way a lake, a man made lake with a dam separating it from Waddenzee in the northern end and another dam separating it from another manmade lake in the south. From there we sailed on to Enkhuizen, another charming but rather big city.

We've been here for 3 nights now, working a bit on the boat. We installed a new holding tank among other things. We've also been listening to Joshua Slocums "Sailing alone around the world" on CD and taken turns reading "Slumdog millionaire" by Vikas Swarup out loud to eachother. Really nice! Tomorrow, hopefully, Amsterdam is waiting!