The bad weather had arrived. Well, bad…it was heavily overcast but the temperature was still very mild. A good day to refill our long shelf life food supplies like coffee, sugar and such, which are always heavy to carry. But halfway to the supermarket the clouds dissolved making way for Mr. Blue Skies. It turned out to be a nice and sunny day again after all.
It’s really remarkable how inaccurate weather forecasts are. And since our live is governed by the weather, it can be a bit annoying sometimes. We planned to work today and get the groceries because it would be cooler and overcast. Of course we’re not complaining now the weather is better than forecasted. But if the weather is worse than predicted, or if the wind is coming from a completely different direction, we are less happy about it. We’re hoping that the forecasts are wrong again for the coming week. The predictions are not so favorable for the coming days and we might want to move on again soon. If not we might have to prolong our stay in Makkum. But with the weather you’ll never know.
What’s the matter with this weather? We have rain yet again. Are the weather gods angry with us? Is it climate change? To find an answer we bought the Enkhuizer Almanac, which has been in print since 1595. Almanacs like these were commonplace in the past. It was one of the few means of information people had about religious festivities, dates for markets and advise on the right time to do certain things like sowing or harvesting your crops. The oldest complete almanac found is the Babylonian almanac, dating back to 1500 BC. The Greek had them as well and the practice survived through the ages. In early medieval times the first ‘modern’ almanacs appeared, and some like the Enkhuizer Almanak have survived till this day.
The contemporary Enkhuizer almanac has the usual calendar with all the festivities, moon phases, and tide tables, but it also gives a prediction for the weather that year. Turns out it wasn’t angry weather gods or climate change. The almanac had already predicted a cool summer. So they’re sort of right, although they might have forgotten to mention the rain.
We woke up by the drumming of the raindrops on the hatches. It’s supposed to be July and high summer, but this seems more like autumn. We even had to fire up the heater this morning because of the cold. Plans to anchor somewhere today were quickly abandoned, the hatches closed, and we settled in the saloon with a steaming mug of coffee. As we said yesterday, the weather is very decisive for what you’re going to do. And today the weather has decided that it is a good day to work, and to stay where we are. Who are we to argue.
Today it has been exactly three months since we left Stellendam and started our journey. It seems like a lifetime ago while on the other hand the days have gone in a flash. We have experienced and learned so much in the last few months that now seems like a good time to evaluate.
The first thing we realized is that there is a huge difference between a vacation and perpetual cruising. You can’t hurry a journey like this. We were rushing in the beginning and tried to visit as many places in the shortest amount of time, which made us very unhappy. It was hard to shake off the attitude of a tourist who only has 2 weeks to see the whole of Europe. We’ve realized that we have all the time in the world, and now we’re moving slower. It not only feels much better, but we have time to see and experience things and time to work. Before we slowed down we hadn’t even time to reflect upon what we’ve seen and done, let alone write about it or make movies. Now we also have time to work on commission and earn some money. And that was the plan to start with, to earn money along the way to support our travels.
The freedom of living in a mobile home is fantastic. You can live in all the big urban cities for a while, and when you’re done with the hustle and bustle and are in need of some peace and quiet you head for a remote anchorage somewhere. If you don’t like it somewhere you leave, and if you do like it you stay as long as you like.
We have also come to realize that you need very little in life. When we left we thought we hadn’t brought enough stuff, now we know we have brought too much. We can’t buy much new stuff either, because for every new item we want to buy we need to throw something away, otherwise there’s simply no space. You also don’t need much money, especially if you avoid marinas and stay at anchor most of the time. But even the total fee for the marinas you pay as a visitor (which is way more than if you are a regular berth holder) is less than the rent we paid for our house.
To live self sufficiently as much as possible is very liberating as well. We generate enough energy with our solar panels to power all our electric tools and batteries. We grow micro greens like been sprouts and alfalfa on board so that we always have fresh veggies. We also make several alcoholic beverages, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, and make our own tofu and bread. It would be great if we can be even more self sufficient, so we keep adding to the list.
Every day is full of surprises. You might meet an amazing person, discover a beautiful spot or learn something new. Your world becomes bigger, and you learn a lot about your environment and most importantly about yourself. And that everything is always completely different, is at the same time the difficult part of perpetual cruising. Sometimes life throws curve balls at you, and you just have to deal with it. These can be technical issues like when your engine won’t start and you are drifting towards a shallow spot, or when the heater won’t work and you’re cold. But sometimes it’s just plain overwhelming that everything is different and nothing is familiar. We people are creatures of habit after all.
The journey is more important than the destination. Yes it’s a cliche, but there lies a whole world between just quoting the proverb or truly realizing what it means. And we’re just starting to grasp what it actually means. We still haven’t left the Netherlands, whereas when we started we thought we would be in Sweden by now. Although we keep saying to ourselves that ‘it’s all about the journey’ sometimes it feels a bit like we haven’t reached our goals. But it makes us happier to travel slower now we’ve realized no one is pushing us. There are new experiences every day, even if you stay in the same spot for two weeks. Besides, the Netherlands is beautiful as well. There is so much to see here, why would we rush past it all to get to St.Petersburg without having seen Enkhuizen or Edam, or without having anchored at the Braassemermeer or the IJsseloog?
One thing we’re still struggling with, is the weather. The weather is very decisive in how you spend your day if you are a perpetual cruiser on a sailboat. No wind? You’re stuck. Too much wind? You’re stuck. Rain? The solar panels won’t work and you don’t have power. Too much sun? You can’t do very much because you can’t escape the heat. We’ve learned that fighting the weather and stubbornly do what you’ve planned is a recipe for disaster.
But whatever happens, and whether we can continue this lifestyle or not, we’ve done it. In stead of talking and dreaming about it we have untied the lines and are now living our dream. And although it’s not all fun and games, we’d rather regret the mistakes we’ve made than regret the missed opportunity.
Although the day started sunny and warm, soon the clouds came in to spoil the fun. Oh well, maybe the less tropical temperatures are nice for a change. We made use of the relative coolness to get some work done and watch the wildlife.
A still ominous looking sky after the worst of the storm had passed
We were woken early by the racket the wind made. Captain Fluffy was a bit alarmed by all the noises and the howling wind. He was restlessly pacing back and forth, eyeing the roof hatches anxiously. Apparently there was a loud clanking sound that he couldn’t appreciate. When we checked to see what was causing the clanking sounds, it turned out that the radar reflector had come undone. One end was dangling free, bashing against the mast. Nothing to be done about that now. We have to wait until the wind subsides before we can fasten it again. Because in order to repair it, one of us has to climb the into mast. And that is not something you want to do when a storm is raging over. Hopefully the reflector doesn’t blow off completely before the end of the storm, or maybe we should hope that it blows off because we would be relieved from the noise and the dreadful job of climbing the mast…
Tomorrow and Monday is Pentecost, national holidays. That means stores will be closed, so if we want to get fresh veggies and bread we have to do groceries today. Around three o’clock in the afternoon the worst of the storm had passed, so we ventured outside to do our shopping.
On our way to the supermarket we saw snapped of branches everywhere. And we were not the only boat in the marina that had suffered damage; one had a torn genoa, and another a torn spray hood. In the commercial marina a whole tree thick as three grown men had snapped in two. According to our wind speed meter we had gusts up to 42 knots, that’s 9 Beaufort. All in all we’re really glad not to be anchored somewhere…
We had to repair the hatch today, a piece of wood had broken off when we opened it this morning. Of course a prepared sailor has everything aboard for emergency repairs. Not that we are that prepared, but we do have montage glue. An hour later the hatch was as good as new again.
In the meantime the wind was already picking up, but our mooring in the middle of the city was quite sheltered from the wind. How sheltered it actually was, we only noticed when we went out for a walk. A row of buildings separates the Oosterhaven from the open waters of the IJsselmeer. When we left the shelter of the buildings to have a look at what was happening at the harbour entrance, the difference in wind strength was enormous. We could hardly walk upright. We watched the boats moored in the Buitenhaven for a while. They didn’t have the protection from the wind that we have in the Oosterhaven, and lay bumping and jolting against the bulwark. The storm is going to hit us tonight, and after feeling the wind force which isn’t even up to speed yet, it probably was a wise decision to move back to the marina.
Our morning view was still looking pretty agreeable, no sign of thunder and rain.
We both had a poor night’s sleep. Every sound woke us with a start, but fortunately nothing had hit us during the night.
In contradistiction to previous weather forecasts, the wind was going to pick up and the barometer had already dropped significantly. A bad weather front was moving in, with thunder, hail and gusts of wind. Not a good day to go sailing. But should we go back to the marina then? The spot where we were anchored was relatively sheltered from the wind, and the gusts weren’t going to be too severe tonight, so we decided to stay. We were a bit worried about the idiot who was still moored close to us. But if the wind predictions were correct for once, we would end up parallel from each other, so he couldn’t cause much harm.
The weather in the afternoon was still relatively agreeable, but after dinner rain and thunder made their appearance. The wind was howling, the groaning caused by the constant strain on the anchor chain was getting louder and the rain slashed against the windows. There were so many discharges that it almost looked like a sunny day. If a thunderstorm passes over and you’re anchored in a boat, it makes you feel quite small and vulnerable. We sat in the saloon, too anxious to sleep, watching the force of nature at work. On top of that the anchor alarm went off. Not because we were dragging, but only to notify us that the battery of the iPad was low. We were already a bit tense, so the fright of the alarm didn’t really help.
You can imagine that we had yet another sleepless night…
