Sailing on the Ijsesselmeer

  Enkhuizen, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Sunday, May 6, 2007

The girls had a rest day whilst the boys went north to the picturesque town of Enkhuizen. Here we met up with Jan de Vires and his classically renovated wooden Dutch yacht. We learnt that yacht is a Dutch word ("jacht").

Matt and Vince were on their first-ever sailing trip, joined by Adrian. Originally called the Bree Horn, we renamed the yacht the Princess Walter, in honour of our team member missing "for fear of sea sickness". The sea sickness would have nothing to do with a big night on the town on Friday with the Rotarians of Westertoren!

After passing through locks, the boat quickly moved up to 7 or so knots in the brisk wind. Each of us had turns at steering the yacht - Vince to start with, Adrian to turn it around, then Matt to bring it home. Vince also cranked the winches as you can see in this video:









On returning to port, the skipper brought out some smoked eel to finish off the day. Matt and Adrian were polite and tried some. Dutch sailing brought more surprises than we bargained for!