The North Sea by sailing

The North Sea sailing is now behind. The crew and the boat has now been tested. We arrived to Cuxhaven yesterday evening. The sailing experience was great.

The North Sea Sailing started at 31^st of May from Vlieland. The tide effect was calculated and we started in the early morning. The wind was calm and there was only old waves. The morning was engine sailing towards Lauwersoog.

During the evening the wind started to blow harder and in the end of the day it was blowing 10 - 15 m/s. We arrived to the empty harbour after 10 hours sailing. The next day we decided to stay in the Lauwersoog due to the high winds. In the morning we took a bus to the nearest village Dokkum to explore the countryside of Netherlands.

From Lauwersoog the next stop was planned to be in Norderney. The predicted wind was 8 to 12 m/s from the North – West. Again we started among tide calculations and we got fairly good flow giving 1 – 2 extra knots. As it was blowing couple days from the same direction the waves were quite high. In the shallow waters the waves were at least 2.5 - 3 m; quite a rough experience. Out at the sea it was more steady as the waves were in the height of 2 m. We were able to sail almost the whole day with the good wind. We arrived to the destination at 10 PM and it was getting darker already.

In the morning we changed the courtecity flag to German colours. This was forgotten as we arrived that late. Norderney is also a beautiful island. It is a popular German holiday resort and has a lot of hotels. We got fast snapshot about the atmosphere by biking around. There would be a lot of things to see and it would be easy to spend there one week at least.

From Norderney we started 4^th of June at 9 AM. The expectation was that this will give a good flow towards Cuxhaven. The winds were perfect. We sailed almost the whole day with good back wind with the speed of 10 – 12 m/s. The boat behaved nicely and we gained a lot of good sailing experience. The main surprice was the Elbe's stream during the afternoon. We were sailing with the speed of 7 - 8 knots but the true speed was only 4 - 5 knots. Finally we arrived to Cuxhaven after 12 hours sailing.

Tuesday 5^th of June was our day to visit Cuxhaven centre. There were bikes for free use in the harbour so it was convenient to arrive in the city centre. Weather was ok with some short showers but mostly sunshine. Cuxhaven Castle Garden was worth seeing. Tomorrow we are intended to enter the Kiel´s Canal.