Hamburg VII

Germany

Tusday July 2nd to Wednesday July 3rd

July second, Tusday. We leave the Netherlands and I invent the North Sea Stew recipe. The gas stove makes it possible to roast peppers with open flame. Blackened and then peeled pepper is a classic. A bit spicy stew makes a good a costal sailor's evening meal.

Rendezvous

The red box

Sailing feeds and gives room to imagination. Gazing the horizon and minimalistic scenery is joga to one's mind. Our well exercised heads were useful in pondering the Tuesday night mystery. We were passing a gas drilling platform when a ship arrived. With great effort and expense it delivered a box far out to the sea. What was in the box. Why was the box red and not blue? Did it contain spare parts or a ton of roasted peppers? A well relaxed mind comes up with plenty of alternatives.

Courier disappears to the horizon

'Hello there', said the seal

At sunset a seal swam to ponder the mystries of the world with us. They are naturally curious here and may follow the boat. Since it was nearly windless we had to motor and our busy schedule did not allow a long conversation. We could have talked more. Maybe the seal would have known the secret of the mysterious red box?

Sailing the coast of the Netherlands is like from a text book. The strong tall lighthouses are at exactly the right distance from each other. At all times you see at least two, unless there is fog, of course. We had a compass to take bearings to the blinking lights. That allowed us to locate us on the map. Now that everyone has GPS we did this mostly for nostalgic reasons. A plotter shows a continous "you are here" red dot on an electronic map making modern navigation deceivingly easy. Our location based on the compass bearings were never more than 1,5 nautical miles from the satellite positioning. At 10 miles from the shore this is good enough accuracy.

Sailing lights of another boat followed us through the night. At sunrise we entered German waters together. There was a local border patrol boat to greet us. We raised a cup of morning coffee for a greeting between all of us. At least I like to think we all did. I did.

Germany

From England to Finland 2013