April 13th 2019
After a relaxed breakfast and a refreshing shower we paid our bills, said goodbye and untied the lines. Today we will leave for Willemstad, a small historical town with well preserved fortifications. The fortifications were once built to keep out the Spanish army by Willem of Orange. The fortified city is star shaped, and the seven ‘arms’ of the star are named after the seven provinces that had united against the Spanish in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the foundation of the Netherlands we know today.
What a change in weather, last week when we sailed here it was 20 degrees Celsius and we’re wearing shorts, and today it was barely 8 degrees Celsius, heavenly overcast with chances of wintery showers and we were wearing full sail gear, Russian Ushanka hat and thermo underwear. What a difference a week makes. But when we left the marina the sun peeped through the clouds and the world looked a lot better.
Short trip today, only 3,7 nautical miles to Willemstad. And with the light winds we choose not to hoist the sails. Maybe subconsciously considering our recent experience with light winds and failing engines from a week ago? But we had no engine problems, on the contrary. After her service she purred like a kitten.
The real kitten however wasn’t purring happily. Captain fluffy was just about to jump on the stairs to come into the cockpit when a large towing vessel sped by. These vessels have an enormous wake due to their draft. And just at the moment Captain Fluffy wanted to jump, the wake reached our boat, throwing him off the staircase. We heard a pitiful yelp after which a seriously disgruntled Captain Fluffy turned on his heels, jumped into the v-berth instead and didn’t came out again.
We called marina Willemstad on our way their to ask them if they had a slip for us. They had, and gave us the directions to find the particular slip. When we entered the marina we found out that they didn’t have finger docks. We’ve never docked before without a finger dock. Oh well, there’s a first for everything. It was quite a large slip for our size boat, so although it didn’t go too shabby, we found out that we might have to invest in slightly longer mooring lines. Chances are this won’t be the last time that we have to dock like this. Our mooring lines were just, and really only just long enough.
Willemstad has got two marinas, a commercial one and one run by the municipality. We choose the municipality marina. Often municipality marinas and marinas run by sail clubs are less luxurious, but they are more sociable and quite a lot cheaper. This one was pretty decent for a municipality marina. It had a dock specially for mooring a few hours so you can have a bite to eat or shop in the old city. The sanitary building ran on solar energy and was spacious, clean and warm, something we tend to value.
After visiting the really helpful harbourmaster who loves a joke or two, we went for a walk in the small town. We got our first view of the really picturesque city from atop the fortifications.
First we had to find a grocery store. Marina Noordschans was quite a long way from the nearest supermarket. And since we have enough supplies to survive a Siberian winter, we rather used that than going for a 50 minutes walk to the store. But it’s nice to have some fresh bread and veggies again.
We were quite hungry after the trip from Noordschans and walking around in a supermarket full of food doesn’t really lessen your appetite. So after stocking up and depositing our groceries at our boat we went out to have dinner somewhere in the town. We found a restaurant called ‘De Rosmolen’, which turned out to be a real find. The courses were truly exquisite, and the service swift an welcoming. No we’re not getting paid to say this. It was genuinely good, and it actually has been a long time since we had something so delicious to eat whilst going out for dinner.
After our culinary experience we happily settled for a nice and quiet evening on our boat. Captain Fluffy finally left the safety of the v-berth to join us in the salon and is now fast asleep. Tomorrow we’re going to explore the town.