June 4th 2019
Today we left Enkhuizen to anchor in … Enkhuizen. A whopping 1,1 nautical miles further is a nice secluded anchorage in a bay next to the Zuiderzee museum. We had seen it earlier, but it had been so overcrowded during the holiday weekend that we didn’t even bother to try. But all the holiday makers have gone back home, so hopefully it won’t get too busy today.
There were only 3 other boats in the little bay today, enough space to allow us to anchor as well. Everything went according to plan this time. The anchor was set on the first go, we activated the anchor alert app the moment we released the anchor, and we had a perfect position. Not too close to the others and not too far away from the shelter of the embankment.
It was a glorious day. Nice and warm, no wind at all, the perfect weather to enjoy life at anchor. From our cockpit we had a good view on the museum. Funny to look at all the buildings from a different angle. It almost looks as if we were watching the past from our cockpit, were it not for the humans in their brightly coloured branded clothes.
We had a barbecue in the cockpit, and were about to go inside because the wind was picking up and it started to get cold, when an idiot was anchoring almost on top of us. We called out to him to ask what he thought he was doing. The wind direction was going to change, and then revert back again tonight, so we urged him to at least give more anchor line so we wouldn’t get entangled during the night. Why do people do that? There was enough space elsewhere, but he had to anchor just one boat length away. The sun was setting, the wind started to turn and the other boat was really getting too close for comfort. Should we lift the anchor and relocate? What if the other boat would start to drag and dislodge our anchor? What if he would hit us during the night? The guy in the other boat obviously wasn’t concerned at all. We saw him extinguish the lights to assumedly go to sleep. From what we could judge in the dark, we both had just enough space to turn around our axis. So technically it shouldn’t be a problem, if we both wouldn’t start dragging. But since we are so inexperienced the whole situation was quite disconcerting.
So again a sleepless night at anchor…