It is probably someone's law that the contents of you sailing kit expand to fill whatever size bag you have. In an attempt to keep me one step ahead, Claudia gave me a large bag for Christmas. This replaces the Jack Holt sail bag, that we got with a set of sails for Gull 550 in 1970-something! Where is Gull 550 now?
One of the reasons for moving my blog over to Blogger is so that I can point to one particular post in the past. For example, Tillerman’s Simply the Best request invites me to choose my own best post of 2008.
This year I’ve gone back to dinghy racing after a gap of more than 25 years. As I wrote somewhere on my blog about it “...doing what I have rediscovered is the one thing I enjoy doing most of all”. But to send you there to re-read it I have to say:
click here: www.scheepstimmermangroningen.nl/files/archive-may-2008.html
then scroll all the way down till you get to May 9th. And having got there you can’t even leave a comment.
So as of December I’m blogging here, still the same mixture of work, family sailing and barges. Happy New Year, wherever you are.
The harbour in Zoutkamp was frozen over but the ice cream parlour was open and the sun was shining. We have turned round, as the risk of getting frozen up in Leeuwarden was too big to take. If we had wanted to see the New Year in in town we could have stayed in Groningen.
While tied up here on Boxing Day we keep a weather eye on the forecasts. There seem to be two schools of thought. One says, more of the same, temperature around freezing, not much warmer, not much colder. The other warns of five or six degrees below at night and just below freezing during the day. If this were to happen we might well get frozen in before reaching Leeuwarden. Can we afford to take a gamble on getting through. If we lose we’ll be going to work and school by train from Leeuwarden Station when school begins in January. If it freezes harder the first ‘Elfstedentocht’ [Frisian Ice skating marathon] in years will come past our frozen barge. Come to think of it that might be worth waiting for.
We stopped at Dokkumer Nieuwe Zijlen for Christmas so that we could cycle to Claudia's parents this afternoon. Here we've just got back - the bikes are still lying in the grass - having flown home with the wind behind us and the setting sun in our faces. You can just see Claudia's new Christmas hat and scarf.
This morning we motored to Zoutkamp, where we bought bread and lamp oil to keep us alive and alight over Christmas. The on towards Dokkum. We waited an hour for the lock keeper, then moored up above the lock for the next couple of days.
We’ve left Ekko and Sasja with lots of painting, wiring and plumbing to do on the ‘Cinclus’ and Peter with a kitchen to finish on his own barge [‘Leven is Strijd’ - Life’s a Battle]. We started the trusty DAF and smoked out of Groningen. Here we are stopped for lunch at Wetsingesluis on the Reitdiep. This afternoon we pushed on through the mist and drizzle to Electra where it’s really dark in an out of town way. An early night for us all, I think.
Rowers from the Hunze club pass Op Hoop van Zegen where the Noorderhaven meets the Reitdiep. I spent a fair bit of Sunday scrubbing the hatch cloths. Cold, wet work.
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
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