Today it is Dutch day, Dutch breakfast with Dutch cheese and a lot of sweet stuff like ‘hagelslag’,’vlokken’,’muisjes’ etc.
We are halfway through the North Sea now. Our watch started at midnight. After two days of hard wind and motoring, high waves and lot of sickness, conditions were wonderful, clear skies, shooting stars and little traffic. At smoko (10 AM break) we had a traditional Dutch food fun: ‘Koekhappen’ (similar to Halloween game apple on a string, but the Dutch use cake!). This altogether was a very sweet start to the day! With all these calories we regained our strength and set sail. It took us a good hour to raise the yards to the starboard side and set the sails. While we were working the wind increased to force 6 and has given us a speed of 9 knots, without using the engine!
Apart from a couple of oilrigs sighted in the distance we have only seen some tired birds that rested on the Lord Nelson. We still hopeful of seen dolphins or other creatures of the North Sea.
With the wind now coming from the southwest, it is blowing us right to Edinburgh where we hope to reach late Sunday or early Monday. It has been great to helm such a magnificent vessel, the fun and banter between the Dutch, German and the Irish has often taken from our concentration and put us off course many times... The cook and duty messmen prepared a wonderful Dutch-Indonesian meal (nasi) and a nice dessert with yoghurts and fruit salad. Afterwards the Dutch gave a presentation about all famous items in the Netherlands: the country is situated under sea level, everybody has got a bicycle, coffee shops, tulips, windmills, ‘building new land in the Nortsea’ clogs, queens day and other ‘specialities’.