Return to the tides

So the oilies, fleeces base layers are all out of deep storage and even though the weather stays fair they were very welcome old friends as the temperatures, particular overnight, were more like the fridge than the tropical oven we have become used to. But we are sailors on the briny sea again and made of tough stuff so its hard to keep the smile off our faces as we get swept along the low lying coast and into the next refuge. Ijmuiden to Scheveningen is our first passage and reminds us just how impossible it is for simple Anglo Saxon tongues to wrap around Dutch words. We slide past some of the busiest ports in the world marking the entrances to the vast European Canal and River systems. Rotterdam alone handles over 120,000 ships and barges each year and most of them seemed to be either at anchor of the entrance or making a beeline for us.. We loved our stopovers in Holland and were determined not to rush through so lingered for a couple of nights in each place whilst keeping a careful weather eye open for any possibility of a westerly blow that would stop us in our tracks.

Next stop Belgium, not my favourite bit of coast but Zeebrugge proved an interesting stop. Perhaps best known for the wrong reasons, it was the site of the heroic attempt to block the seaport in WW1 thus preventing the Flanders U Boat flotilla access to the sea. It was a complete failure but the bravery of the marines and naval crews resulted in 2 Victoria Crosses and a long list of dead and wounded. In the WW2 Zeebrugge was one of the ports packed with barges to carry a Nazi invasion force across the channel to Britain.Operation Pelion was cancelled by Hitler when Hermann Goring’s Luftwaffe failed to bring the RAF to heel in the Battle of Britain - “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” - Winston Churchill More recently it was the site of the terrible Zeebrugge ferry disaster which occurred on March 6, 1987, when the roll-on/roll-off ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized, killing 193 people. The disaster was caused by the ferry's bow doors being left open, allowing the ship to take on water and become unstable, leading to its rapid capsizing. It is still a sobering reminder never to take the sea for granted.