Which is My Boat?
Before we turned in and went to sleep, we had become 12 boats alongside in Yrseke, we were as number 3. How will this work when leaving? Who will leave when? In what order?
We had calculated to leave at 8.00 to sail with the tides, but nobody seem to take notice. Our alarm clock went off at 07.30, we looked out and what did we see? Nothing. Just fog. Everything was white. We could see our direct neighbours to starboard and port, but not any further. I assumed there were still two to starboard, of which the closest was the HR 31 and 9 to port. But I could not see them all.

Now this fog really put all our calculations into jeopardy! MacMillan said nothing about "fog over tide", only "wind over tide"! There was not much to do, since no life seemed to exist on any of the other boats either, yet. So we had breakfast, which was also nice.

After a while, some life could be heard around us and the fog had slowly turned into mist. I asked the closest neighbours about when they would leave and they just answered "oh, we don't know, we are on holiday.... maybe later". - "But what about the tides?", I asked, whereby he replied that here, in the Osterschelde, there was not much to take into account, sometimes you had tides with you, sometimes not...

This took the "adventure" dimension out of our tidal sailing. In any case, we had the mist to think of in first place.

At 10.00 Karolina went ashore to have a look at the visibility, which had improved still more by now. When she came back, she climbed onto the first boat. The owner of this powerboat had for long given up cleaning his deck. All the foot-steps resulting from climbing people had to wait until it was time to depart. Instead, he was just fishing from the cockpit. Karolina said something about "a lot of traffic over your boat…", whereby he just agreed, looking at his fishing rode.

On the next boat, Karolina immediately felt at home and went aft into the cockpit, knowing exactly where to place each foot-step to get there quickly and efficiently and was just about to enter through the companionway, when she wondered why we had a female guest on board standing brushing her teeth in our boat?! Had Leon invited a girl? Why does she not say hello or present herself? After a couple of milli-seconds, Karolina suddenly became very aware of here fatal mistake! Yes, this was a HR31, but no, this was not REGINA and not our boat! Our boat was the next one, a HR 312 and not this familiar HR31! The woman looked very surprised...

"How was the visibility?" I asked Karolina, when she at last had found her family next door, but there was only a short "better" as an answer, with her face more reddish than normal.


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One of the many Oyster-Farms in Yrseke, Port in background