June 17th 2019
We woke to the sounds of birds singing. We slept like a rose, the first time at anchor we have slept so soundly. It was a lovely sunny day, and at 8 in the morning already warm enough to have breakfast in the cockpit. All the people that were anchored here yesterday had left this morning, leaving us all alone in our small paradise.
Anxious to explore our beautiful surroundings, we blew up the inflatable dinghy and hopped in. The IJsseloog is a round island with a small channel running through it like a crescent moon. We were anchored at the north entrance of the channel, so we set out to see if there was an even more idyllic spot to anchor at the south entrance. It turned out the island wasn’t so big at all, and before we knew it we had come to the south end of the channel. No need to move the boat, our spot is by far the most beautiful.
However there was another reason to move. We were anchored slightly far from the embankment, and we felt we posed a bit obtrusion to possible traffic. But when we were rowing back to our boat from the south end of the channel we saw that there was a good 30 meters width from our stern to the buoy that marked the the channel. Enough space left for boats to pass. And we were hesitant to move closer to the embankment, in fear we might run aground again. We tried to check the depth with our inflatable boat, and it was possible to move a smidgen towards the shore. But should we relocate just for just a few meters? The anchor was set firmly and if we would relocate it would take a few hours again to be sure that it would hold. After a lot of indecisiveness we decided to stay put, at least for now. Besides, it was very warm, and rowing is a very physical exercise. The water looked more attractive by the minute, maybe it’s warm enough to swim? Jeroen befell the honour of the first dive of the year, and declared the temperature “very refreshing”.