A quick trip to England

Back to the North Sea

It was late June and high time to get out on to salt water again. We had spent two months (March-April and then again May-June) in Makkum for some boat maintenance and mods and, nice though Makkum is, it was time to get moving again. We should note that in between these stops in Makkum we’d taken a break out on the Wadden Sea for sea trials of our new rigging and sails. During this time we’d visited Den Oever, dried out on the mud flats on the Amsteldiep, spent some time on the islands of Texel and Vlieland, and then based ourselves out of Harlingen for a few weeks. That had all been fun but now it was a month later and time to go a little further afield – to the North Sea.

England was close, just a 24 hour hop from Makkum with the right winds. So, we hatched a plan to pop across and spend a week or so there before returning to the Netherlands in time for Frederieke’s mother’s 87^th birthday. Birthdays are enormously important In the Netherlands and can’t be missed: we had been invited and that meant we were expected. There would be cake and coffee. Of course, we were happy to oblige but this gave us a limited time frame for the trip.

Throughout spring the weather had been less than perfect (when not downright miserable), but on June 25 it seemed to be cooperating and the forecast conditions were pretty reasonable for a North Sea crossing. This would be North Sea crossings numbers 4 and 5 for us and the outward leg would be our first east to west crossing. The winds were predicted to be 5 to 15 knots ENE, the swell and waves negligible, and the temperatures a balmy 25° to 30° C! Once at sea it would of course be cooler, but still, after a rainy, windy and cold spring, this seemed more like it.

This time we are three

This trip was going to be a bit different to our previous trips on Yuma: this time we would have an extra crew member, Bart, a kindergarten (!) friend of Frederieke’s. Bart is a man with a love of sailing who has sailed extensively on on tall ships and the bruine vloot (traditional dutch sailing barges). Not surprisingly his response to our invitation was immediate – he was in! There was a lot of texting back and forth in preparation, including a link to a news article about a humpback whale that had recently been spotted off the Dutch North Sea coast. David and Bart have a history of outrageous success with effortless wildlife spotting so, of course we were going to see a humpback on the Dutch coast! No matter that they are as rare as hen’s teeth on that coast.

The afternoon before departure, Bart came aboard, his duffel bag stuffed to the brim with delicious Groningen dry sausages, all ready and eager to immediately cast off the lines and head out to sea. But patience is a virtue and he had to exercise a bit of that kind of virtue by waiting until the next morning. To hide his disappointment Virtuous Bart shouted us to a delicious meal lockside at the Hotel Prins before we crawled into our bunks to dream about a warm and peaceful trip across the North Sea.

Our plan the next morning was to catch the tidal current in the Wadden Sea from Kornwerderzand, south through the Marsdiep and then out into the North Sea. This is a strong and long current and going at the wrong time would mean a tedious hard push against it. That would be silly. Thus, we needed to get through the Lorentzs locks the next day at 12:30 in order to catch our sleigh ride south. Happily, everything went according to plan; we cleaned up, fueled up, and at 12:30 we were through the locks and sailing away.

With the beautiful weather it was busy on the Wadden Sea, and it was wonderful sailing! Sun, breeze, and a strong current: in no time we were spat out of the Wadden Sea into the North Sea at the Marsdiep doing 8 to 9 knots over the ground.

It couldn’t be true, could it?

We had not yet cleared the Schulpengat, where we could turn out of the Marsdiep and west across the North Sea, when it happened. David and Bart were in the cockpit when David got a glimpse of something big briefly rise up into the air and then a big splash. It was a quick glimpse, was it a dolphin not far off the bow or something bigger further off? Perhaps a porpoise, or a minke whale? Now all three of us were on deck, clutching our binoculars, trying to catch another glimpse. The tail appeared again, and no, it couldn’t be true…it was white underneath, and then there was a long fluke – that could only be the humpback whale! And not just a tail, no, the humpback whale decided to put on a real show as it swam towards us and then passed about 100m away, breaching repeatedly as it headed north. Incredible! It was very small for a humpback so was presumably a juvenile. After about half an hour later the fun was over and the humpback whale disappeared towards Texel. David and Bart had done it again, outrageous success in the wildlife spotting stakes.

After such a treat it almost seemed like we might as well turn around again, it surely couldn’t get much better. However, the weather forecast was still good, and the only warning the Dutch Coast Guard had for recreational boating came just after our sighting and it was ‘watch out for the humpback whale along the coast’. Timing guys, timing. Anyway, we had already survived that particular hazard so our next challenge was to touch England’s shore, even if just briefly. We set our course westwards and prepared for the night.

David’s birthday

It was a quiet night on the North Sea – always the best kind of night when you are on a sailing boat – it was clear, fresh, a nice breeze, a ‘blood moon’ and ‘luminous’ night clouds. According to Bart the latter are clouds with a silvery sheen, which being much higher than normal clouds, reflect sunlight much longer after sunset. Very special!

By the next morning it had gotten cooler. We had a light wind and there were fog patches, from which large cargo ships occasionally emerged. Most importantly, it was David’s birthday and it was to be celebrated on Yuma, on the North Sea! And celebrated it was, with rounds of ‘Lang zal hij leven’ and ‘Happy Birthday’, coffee and an apple pie that I (F) had snuck on board without the birthday boy knowing. Scrumptious!

After the celebrations, the birthday boy, who had been on watch since 0200, went off-watch and straight to bed. It was then easy sailing into Lowestoft where we moored up at the Royal Suffolk and Norfolk Yacht Club (sounds posh, eh) at 1530 after an almost perfect sailing trip.

The faded glory of Lowestoft

Lowestoft proved to be a comfortable marina, with a beautiful old clubhouse. The city itself though had clearly seen better times.

The town had a down-at-heels air about it and those signs of economic hard times were all about; every second or third shop was a hairdresser’s, a tattoo parlour or empty, buildings were in desperate need of a bit of care, and the people on the street seemed bored and listless. Happily though, the gutters and window frames of many buildings had been taken over by breeding kittiwakes, and they at least radiated pride in their nesting achievements as they panted away the heat on their sunlit nests.

The Lowestoft Maritime Museum was certainly a highlight. A tight space, cleverly crammed full of maritime odds and bods that showcases the town’s time as a thriving fishing port and holiday destination. As happened all along the northern European coast though, it turned out that the fishing resource could be over-exploited, and eventually the fishery collapsed leaving Lowestoft without much else to harvest other than the summer holiday makers.

The city is now trying to transform itself into a support center for the wind turbine industry in the North Sea. There is plenty of that just off shore so perhaps there is life in the old girl yet.

Faded holiday glory was more pleasingly evident along Lowestoft’s beach promenade and tourist piers. For some reason in England such piers protrude some 100s of meters out into the sea and are filled with tatty tourist attractions. The ones in Lowestoft, however, were completely rotted out and inaccessible.

On the other hand, the many beach huts, in all kinds of colors, that stretched for hundreds of metres along the back of the beach made for a very cheerful and quaint atmosphere. Despite the cool wind small groups of people were set up in front of their huts, perched on stools, snuggily dressed, fags hanging from their lips, chatting with their neighbours and watching their kids or grandkids playing in the sand. Like the kittiwakes in town they seemed very satisfied with life.

Across the beach, closer to the water, a recently installed sculpture of five decidedly creepy, post-apocalyptic looking, walking men looked back at the happy families with concerned interest, perhaps fear. A lovely contrast.

Anchored at a castle

We had arrived in England without any plans beyond just going there. So when we heard through other sailors that, on a river south of Lowestoft, there was a spot where you could anchor near a castle, we suddenly had a plan. David, a lover of castles, was excited. Together with the crew of SY ‘Spirit of Space’ we assessed the tides and the wind, and decided to leave Lowestoft at 0930. This way we had the tidal current to the south, and we could cross the Orford Haven Bar at high tide.

And so it was that after six hours of sailing wonderfully close to the wind in wind force 4 to 5, we arrived at the Alde river bar on high water at half past three. The entrance wound through the bar and into the river in a slightly unexpected manner but it was clearly indicated, so we were soon sailing contentedly up the river to our anchorage near the village of Orford. This was a first for us, anchoring in a river. How nice and quiet it is without waves and swell! Definitely something to be repeated. And, just as promised, there in the distance we could clearly see the bailey of the Orford Castle.

Things to do in Orford

Unlike Lowestoft, Orford was a beautiful village with lovely old houses, hotels and pubs. And, of course, there was the castle! Visiting that was the first item on our agenda and it certainly did not disappoint. In reality it was just the bailey that remained with the walls having been long since scavenged for building materials. The remnants of their earthworks though could still clearly be seen.

At the top of the tower we had a beautiful view over the river, with Yuma, the Orford Ness peninsula on the other side, and the North Sea. Inside the tower there was a good explanation of the layout and living conditions that would have been experienced back in the day. Strangely enough, with kitchens on three levels, the bakery was at the very top of the bailey rather than in a kitchen downstairs. This turned out to have something logical to do with the position of the chimneys and the emission of heat up chimneys but pity the baker who had to go up and down every day with his sacks of flour and loaves. It was probably even tougher for the poor soldiers standing watch on the battlements in wind, rain and snow, shivering away waiting for their watch to end and all the while tormented by the smell of fresh and baking bread. Murder.

Across on the other side of the Alde, Orford Ness turned out to be a nature reserve with a fascinating history. In the 20th century it was a military area where top-secret research was conducted. This included being the place where radar was invented, being an experimental bombing area and where the stress testing of (non-nuclear) parts of atomic weapons was done. Experiments were also conducted here with ‘over-the-horizon’ radar to spy on Eastern Europe. For some reason during the Cold War all this experimentation apparently attracted a few strange fishing boats with lots of antennas to the Orford coast. These turned out to be Soviet “fishing” boats, just like the ones we observed last summer in the Barents Sea. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose…

Just as much fun as Orford’s relics of war technology from across the centuries was its wildlife. David and Bart could bore the non-birders with a long list of sea, shore and land birds to be seen in the salt marshes, waterways, dunes and grasslands of Orford and its surrounds, but instead will just say that there was plenty to see and that our party had much fun doing so.

An early return to the Netherlands

All this time, while we were having fun, the weather was off playing unsupervised and had started cooking up something that was a bit worse than predicted – there was a large low pressure area approaching from across the Atlantic Ocean. The conditions predicted for the end of the week were beginning to not look as pleasant as we had hoped. Given that we had a deadline for getting back across the North Sea, our preference was to do so before things got too unsettled. So, we decided to bring forward our return trip by a few days. This was a bit unfortunate as there was still a lot to see and do on this little bit of coast, but, there you go.

With what we estimated to be our safe remaining time in England, we sailed from Orford back north to Southwold where we would spend our last night.

Here, we entered a narrow channel into the fishing harbour and then continued up a muddy, jetty-lined channel filled to the brim with fishing boats, yachts, dinghies, and whatever else might float or might have previously floated long enough to get there. This was the Blythe River, a muddy channel that had more of the feel of a second-hand fishing boat yard than anything else.

But no complaints, we had a nice spot and Southwold turned out to be a very pleasant town on the beach with tasty ice creams and passable steak and ale pie.

Another one of those North Sea crossings

We hoped for a return crossing that was just as pleasant as the way over had been, but the weather forecast was already hinting that we were going to have a bumpy trip. The wind was predicted to be variable but not strong: the waves were predicted to be the same, variable but not big. We might have hoped for an easy ride, however, this being the North Sea, what this forecast actually meant was that it was going to be a washing machine: short steep waves coming from here and there and everywhere, nothing big or nasty just plain uncomfortable. Frederieke soon started to feel queazy in that washing machine! Fortunately, she and Bart had a joint watch, and so while he spent most of the time behind the helm she kept a horizontal eye on things. On the opposite watch, David got some alone time and happily fended for himself.

The next day at sunrise the Den Helder lighthouse came into view and then the Schoorlse Duinen, the highest dunes in the Netherlands. Not long after that we made our way into the narrow Schulpengat, where we threw on the iron sail given the strong gusts of wind (up to 27 knots), the counter current, and the heavy stream of traffic; naval ships, working fishing boats, cargo ships and towed barges. With all this heavy traffic at close quarters and messing with our sleepy heads, this seemed like a sensible idea. Once out of the bottleneck of the Schulpengat and into the quieter Marsdiep though we were able to relax back into a fast downwind sail north towards the Afsluitdijk and Kornwerderzand.

At the end of the afternoon we arrived in Harlingen, where we moored at a beautiful spot in the Noorderhaven. What a beautiful port it is to arrive in! You pass through the larger bridge into the tight inner harbour and then under the smaller bridge into the Noorderhaven itself, all this under the watchful gaze of beautiful old buildings. Once tied up we made a few phone calls that quickly summoned the Dutch Customs officers who sorted out our paper work and, bingo, there we were, officially back in the country. We were free to go wherever we wanted, so it was off to Minus 12 for what we considered a well-deserved ice cream after a great trip!