Jachthaven Rhoon – The Gray Route

Change of plans

Postponed travels due to Corona virus

March 16th 2020

After four months in Rhoon our hibernation has come to an end. We have looked forward to spring, to be able to untie the lines again and to sail to distant shores. But then the Corona virus happened. During the last month we saw the virus spread and it seemed inadvisable to go traveling with a pandemic raging over the globe. And now the Dutch government has issued several safety measures like social distancing, closure of schools, prohibition of contact professions and the advice to stay indoors and work from home as much as possible, it seems highly unlikely that the situation will change anytime soon.

To make matters more complicated, we cannot stay here in Rhoon. We hired a slip just for the winter. The owner of the boat that normally lies in slip spent the winter on the hard for maintenance, but will return here around the 1^st of April. So we have to leave and go somewhere else in the coming 2 weeks.

Instead of sailing north again, we’ve decided to go south. Just a little bit, to Stellendam, our old marina. It occurred to us that it might be prudent to hire a slip and to be sure of a place to stay for the coming year. We don’t know how long this virus will be rampant, and sailing to other countries like Denmark is out of the question anyway with all the closed borders.

Besides, if we would become ill, it is way more comfortable to stay in bed in your own marina, then as a guest in a strange marina without having to worry about costs or if you can stay at all. And Stellendam might be an ideal spot to wait out the storm. It is quite isolated, next to a nature reserve, and if the weather is nice we can go for a short sail on the Haringvliet or the North Sea. So we called Marina Stellendam and asked if they still had a spot available for us, which luckily they had.

It is a bit sad that we have to postpone our plans, but that’s life. You never know what will you will find at the end of the rainbow.

It’s raining again

Our last day in Rhoon

May 25th 2019

Captain Fluffy enjoying a ray of sunshine

Although the day started with a ray of sunshine it was going to rain again. In the afternoon we thought that the rain had subdued, but alas. We were just about to start a hiking trail and fly a bit with the drone, when ominous clouds gathered in the skies again soon to be followed by heavy raindrops.

Oh well. Enough to do inside. Tomorrow we’re leaving again either to Dordrecht, or if we feel like it slightly further to Alblasserdam.

Laundry day

Of chocolate and culprits

April 24th

Although the forecasts for today included heavy rainfall, the day started sunny and warm. We took advantage of the good weather and went for a walk to the town’s centre. Rhoon looks like a little agricultural town, not at all like a part of the big conglomerate Rotterdam, just a few stops away by metro.

We saw a measuring point (Trig point for Federal Triangulation) on the way to Rhoon. The land register puts these measuring points in the ground for the land surveyor. They use these metal marks as reference points with which they can map areas like where the roads, plots and building sites are, or measure any deformations in buildings or objects. We gave a lecture once on geo data (geometrical data about where things are positioned) and a guy from the land register who was in the audience said that they indeed put those measuring point in the ground, but that they have lost more than half of them. They simply don’t know where they are anymore. To find out where they are they had issued a game. If you find one, you can upload the coordinates to a special geocaching website:(https://www.geocaching.nl/overzichtskaart-rd-meetpunten/). But this one is so rusty, you can’t decipher the number anymore.

By the way, the have lost a few hundred border marks as well. Anyone up for a new game, Germany and Belgium perhaps?

We did some groceries, and discovered a lovely little chocolaterie halfway back to the boat. The fragrance of melting chocolate was wafting into the streets. We couldn’t resist the temptation and we stopped there for a coffee and pastry.

There is a washing machine at the marina of Rhoon, and it was high time to do the laundry. Every marina has a different washing machine and a different system, so you always have to figure out how things work first. And doing the laundry in a marina is also different than at home. You set a timer, so that you can be back at the machine when the program ends. It has happened that if you are too late some else comes along and takes your clothes out. That wouldn’t be a problem if they put it neatly in a basket, but it happens that they just dump it on the floor. Sometimes other people even stop the program halfway and chuck your clothes out, because they are in a hurry and think they consequently have the right to go first. And it has even happened that items disappear. Maybe someone was in dire need of socks? That’s why doing the laundry as a liveaboard is planned with military precision.

Another liveaboard in the marina kindly explained the system and warned us for the presence of ruthless people that stop the program halfway. Apparently it also happens in Rhoon.

But there were no culprits lurking about, eager to disrupt the washing cycle this time allowing us to continue without further ado to the drying stage. Some of the clothes like T-shirts we don’t put in the dryer because you don’t want to end up with Barbie sized shirts. And the convenient thing of a boat is that you always have enough washing lines in the form of life lines to hang stuff on. It was however forecasted to rain, so we kept an eye on the increasingly darkening sky. Of course, in the end we still had to rush to get it all inside when the rain finally came before it got wet again…

Not like YouTube

Hauling anchor and a bumpy ride

May 23rd 2019

Anchorage near Hellevoetsluis to Rhoon: 16,1 nautical miles

When we woke up it was still quite windy. It was blowing a steady 18 knots, so we decided to hoist anchor and leave for Rhoon. Now I’m sure that all you experienced salty sailors would do it in a jiffy, but for us hoisting an anchor with wind force 4 to 5 is something to be a bit nervous about. Before our worries concerned an anchor that would break free. Now we were concerned that we couldn’t get it out. In theory you should slowly sail towards your anchor which makes it easier to haul it in. Slowly we eased forward and started to haul in the chain, but keeping the boat from drifting over the anchor is not that easy when the reality doesn’t look a bit like the YouTube ‘how to’ movies with calm waters and sunshine. Despite all the waves and the wind we managed to get the anchor aboard and set course for Rhoon. We had head winds and it was still blowing an average of 18 knots so no sailing today unfortunately.

The Haringvliet is quite broad, and our position now being the lee shore (the side where the wind is blowing towards for all you landlubbers:) the wind waves were creating a bumpy ride. So we were happy to leave the Haringvliet and enter the Spui, a smaller more sheltered water way that lead towards Rhoon.

We passed little towns and typical Dutch landscapes with windmills -the modern versions- and the obligatory sheep and cows.

After a relatively uneventful trip we arrived in the marina of Rhoon. The sun was peeping through the clouds again so we relaxed a bit in the cockpit and enjoyed the remainder of the sunshine.