An Understanding Friend
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| There is nothing like understanding friends in a difficult situation. We were suffering in a way maybe only few of you can understand. How could we ever describe our thirst for the special feeling of freedom only the infinity of the sea can grant? Who could understand our situation? Not many, for sure, but we do have some friends around with equal values in life. Some of our best friends have, actually. How could they else bear my never ending dreaming, which I have difficulties in hiding? Karolina, our kids Jessica and Jonathan and myself had been lacking the fresh salty sea breeze and the wonderful soft movements of a boat for far too long. And we could only blame ourselves for this. Why did we sell our wonderful Hallberg-Rassy 31 REGINA earlier this summer, leaving us with no boat for almost a year! How would we survive this summer?! Luckily we have our very good friends Jurriaan and Christiene in Holland, equally understanding our situation. Had it not been for them, I don’t know how we would have been able to move from summer to autumn and it is thanks to Jurriaan and Christiene that we were able to borrow their Hallberg-Rassy 312 for 10 exiting days in Holland. We found Zeepaard as described in Oude Tonge, a small picturesque village in Zeeland on the west coast of Holland. We began this first wonderful morning with breakfast in the cockpit. All while boats moved out of the canal of Oude Tonge. We wondered if we would dare to go out there soon too and what adventures we would meet out there? After breakfast, we decided to cast off. Engine started at once and we prepared to take all safety measurements to back out carefully. We put the engine in reverse and gave some gas. But where were the 28 horsepower Jurriaan had so proudly talked about? Maybe we were spoiled with our 3 blade propeller we had had on our own boat to back out? Was it like this with HR 29 DATSY? … More throttle. We finally started to move some centimetres. It was only strange that when I looked towards the bow, I noticed some waves our propeller was making casting cascades of water forward! We were, just as Jurriaan had predicted, stuck in the mud! More throttle. Now the 28 hp really showed their existence, we started to move meter-by-meter digging a ditch with our keel in the mud. Backwards. "Standard practice", as Jurriaan had explained earlier. Having slowly made our way back into the narrow canal of Oude Tonge, we changed direction and continued digging forward with the echo sounder constantly on 0 meters, but at least we were floating now. From time to time we actually had some decimetre under the keel. Jonathan and Jessica were during this time mainly at the nav station carefully watching the electronic chart on the plotter. From time to time they shouted that we should now pass a buoy, which then confirmed exactly where we were. This was much better than any computer game for them! We approached "open waters" and the area shown by Jurriaan on the chart as a good place to "practice". But is was all so tiny and shores everywhere, so we did not really know what to practice... But soon there was something for us to practice on: the locks! . Next |
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