Rozijnenbollen (Mk 11)

Foreword

I have found a 'White Balance' correction tool on line. It has taken most of the 'Blue Rinse' out of the affected photographs, in the original Rozijnenbollen post, and allowed the inclusion of several which were previously unusable. I hope that you enjoy Rozijnenbollen Mk11. Original Rozijnenbollen deleted.

Rozijnenbollen (Mk11)

A diminutive gaff cutter toboggans in over the Colne Bar.

Her skipper, ipad held aloft before him, seeking the deepest water.

Stargazer has rested for the morning, anchored off the Pyefleet oyster shed. The wind is easing, after yesterday's bruiser blow. Down to a 5 gusting 6. A passage making breeze. We are waiting for the tide to come fair.

Shellfish boats prowl the creek. Clouds scud across the sky. Blue to grey and back. The day chooses its mood. Maybe fierce. A dark squall blows through our anchorage. Maybe friendly. A lull with blue sky. The barometer, on the bulkhead, rises steadily.

Now Stargazer puts her shoulder down. Beating out over the swells to the surf line. Over the Colne Bar, past the Knoll and on through the shallow Swin Spitway. On the bottom of the swells, least depth two meters. I breath a sigh of relief when Stargazer is across.

The wind eases down to a southerly 4 to 5. The day smiles on us. We make long easy tacks between the Maplin Sands to the west and the Barrow Sands to the east. Working our way steadily south. I butter the last of the rozijnenbollen (fruit buns) and make a pot of coffee. My mind free wheels. Cruise memories flit.

Windmills

Deserted, wave washed, shores.

Roaming the open heath of Texel.

The colourful cosy harbour of Oudeschild

The busy trawler fleet at rest.

Strolling the leafy boulevards of Den Haag, in contemplative mood.

The imposing grandeur of the 13th century Binnenhof

The lofty, aspirational, spires of the UN Peace Palace

The ornate splendour of the Justice building

Stargazer forges on, into the afternoon sun. Inexorably, tack on tack, toward the unseen Kent shore.

I make one long board down to the Red Sand forts. Well off our rhumb line, to the east. I'm hoping that the tide will gather us up and carry us south west, into the eye of the wind, down the Medway approach channel.

Our gamble pays off. The tide sweeps us past the wave picked bones of  the Montgomery wreck and in under Garrison point. The breeze lifting (swinging favourably) all the way. Tidally assisted.

On upriver Stargazer beats, in the evening sun, the flood under her. Skimming lightly now. Her sails well eased and bellied to catch the dying breeze. Making 7 knots over the ground. A grand finale to our Waddenzee cruise. I stow the sails beneath the ancient stone turrets of Upnor Castle.

The tiller goes over. Our bow swings in toward the familiar sea wall and its waiting pontoon. The lock gates open. We have a green light to proceed.

Stargazer is home from her travels. A new cruising ground tasted. The Frisian Islands. Gateway to the Baltic.

Shaka

Stargazer hoists sail and reaches downriver with a stately Suffolk barge. The bargee has brailed up the mainsail and I have taken two reefs in ours, despite the apparently benign conditions. The forecast is a southerly 5 to 7.

We're sheltered here by Woolverstone's hill and the wooded shoreline running down to....

.... the hamlet of Pin Mill.

But from there its a rough roistering ride. We beat out to Landguard (the River Orwell entrance) in 25-28 knots of breeze. Beating on out to the Naze (headland and turning point to head south west along the coast) the wind settles to a steady 30-33 knots from the south west . A full force 7. Fully on the nose. In the shallow waters of the Medusa Channel (running between Landguard and the Naze) the seas are short and steep. Its brutal work. Stargazer bucks and rears like a wild stallion. Spray, whole waves, rake aft like bullets. Only when we reach the Bench Head buoy (in the River Colne), 5 hours later, can we ease sheets and relax onto a swooping surfing reach into calmer waters.
(photo from the Waddenzee - too much solid water flying today for camera work!)

We rampage up the Colne channel, making for Pyefleet Creek, our anchorage for tonight. There's a loud clattering noise from astern. I look round. A windsurfer blasts up, skipping across Stargazer's boiling wake. A head appears around the sail. Our eyes meet. Simultaneously our right hands go up. Thumb and little finger raised, middle fingers clenched. The surfers' shaka. A silent, smiling, salute on a wild, windy, day.

Silver Lining

Yesterday's sunny skies are gone.

Plump raindrops begin to fall.

They drive me from Stargazer's cockpit.

My favourite breakfast perch.

Its pretty much as the forecast predicted. We have light winds but with continuous heavy rain. The kind of drumming downpour which makes short work of washing the anchor chain mud off Stargazer's decks. Today's clouds have a silver lining.

I snug down below decks. Spread the charts out, on the saloon table, and study them for anchorages to visit. Stargazer and I must wend our way back to the Medway for the weekend. It looks as if we shall have a good south west breeze to play with.

"The Best Things in Life are Free"

From Stargazer's anchorage, in Pin Mill, I can see the coppice (there are too few for it to be a forest) of masts in the compact, 80 berth, Woolverstone marina.

Woolverstone is where my cruising adventures began, aboard Missee Lee - my first cruising boat. A place of great nostalgic import for me. I haven't been back since setting sail for Poole one spring dawn in 2004....But I have always promised myself that I will return, one day, when the moment is right.

As I woke this morning, I knew that moment was today. In celebration of: Our two North Sea crossings; Our week roaming the countryside of Texel (which, I have learnt is pronounced Tessle by its inhabitants); And our week immersed in the vitality and history of Den Haag. In short, in celebration of a special cruise. The sail up river is our shortest passage of the cruise. One nautical mile.

Stargazer is soon alongside in the familiar to me, but new to her, parkland surroundings of Woolverstone.

A great crested grebe sculls by nonchalantly, as I drink my breakfast pot of coffee in the sun filled cockpit.

High on the bank beside us, a rabbit browses on lush green shoots. The sight brings on fresh pangs of hunger and I fetch the last of the nut cake from Stargazer's galley. Our gift from the kind Haven Meester of Scheveningen.

The tide is ebbing. An egret lands silently and stalks the shoreline. Staring into the shattered, shimmering, reflection of Stargazer's rig.

Up stream the Orwell bridge stands, straight legged, slender and sculptural. The curvature of the deck creates its own, more dramatic, horizon. In place of nature's more low key affair, which has been trampled underfoot by the buildings of Ipswich. 

A canvas on which the sun and drifting summer clouds combine to paint their patterns of light and shade. Ever shifting. An hypnotic tension created from the contrast between the transience of the patterns and the permanence of the structure.

I drift in and out of reverie. Recovering my energies in the calm of the setting. Allowing my body clock to regain its rhythm. Watching the boats come and go. Delighting in the discovery that Sally, in the marina office, will accept no payment for our stay.

Fair Wind

A sea breeze is filling in, as Stargazer sails out past the Scheveningen mole. Today crowded with Saint's Day Anglers.

We beat out with the J boat race fleet, mustering for their start. The gaining tack sends us north, well above the rhumb line of our course. Disappointment soon turns to delight as I realise that, so long as the wind really does turn to the forecast northerly once we're offshore, this is a better course than the one I had planned.

Standing north lifts us above various pieces of fixed marine iron-mongery, the busy Maas shipping anchorage, the Maas junction and the North Hinder marine roundabout (which we will cross after nightfall). All places where many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of shipping are manoeuvering at close quarters. Not places for Stargazer, or her like, to be. Especially after dusk.

The wind falls light about 15 miles out......but, joy of joys, veers north east. I waste no time in hoisting the cruising chute. Stargazer serenely nods and curtsies her way into the sunset. I take the opportunity to cook up one of my 'eat out of the pan' suppers.

Overnight, the moon is trapped behind a veil of thin high cloud, which it back lights with an ethereal glow. There is enough light to be able to handle cruising chute gybes (which require furling and unfurling the chute, up on the foredeck). I decide to carry the chute into the night and through the North Hinder shipping lanes - where, I can already see from the AIS, there will be some ducking and weaving to do.

Dawn breaks steely and grey. By now we're clear of shipping lanes and have only to thread the gap between the East Anglia 1 wind farm and the Galloper wind farm. The breeze is fully in the north now, building fast. I drop the chute. Stargazer shoulders the swells aside, a bone between her teeth, her bow wave cascading magnificently aft - high white and wide. As white and wide as the smile on my face.

A thunder storm produces white out conditions in the Felixstow approach channel. I snatch two reefs in the main, between tacks, as Stargazer romps in alongside a giant Cosco container ship. We short tack, in the shallows, through the docks; then dive off into the wooded seclusion of the River Orwell. At Pin Mill, the trees calm the wind. The sun breaks through. Stargazer sounds in and anchors - 25 hours and 130 nautical miles out of Sheveningen.

My first priority is a full sit down meal eaten at a table on which multiple drinks and dishes may be spread out and sampled at will.

I eat my fresh (from a Den Haag deli) walnut and feta ravioli seated below, savouring both the food and the view over the stern.