Nothing left unsaid. Saturday 23rd July - V.V.W. Mendonk to Sas Van Gent

At some point during the course of yesterday we realised we weren’t terribly far from where Koos and Val keep half of their fleet, and before we could say “I wonder if they’re home”, discovered they were, informed them they were about to have neighbours and this morning, set off on the high seas in the direction of the Netherlands.

“The high seas” in this case is actually a rather large canal, big enough for ocean going ships to ply their trade. Someone once said quite correctly that the size of a boat is inversely proportional to the volume of water it’s floating in and we really felt quite small as we motored gently down this enormous millpond in company with ocean going container ships.  It may have been only a dozen or so kilometres but it was such a stupendous day on the water that we really could have just kept on going.

To the astonishment of us all, as we closed to secure ourselves beside the good ship Hennie H some sort of jump through space and time occurred. Parts of conversations simply picked up from where we left them four years ago, as though there’d been no interlude, and they continued without pause for breath for the rest of the day and well into the night as well.  

They didn’t stop during Hennie H’s afternoon sea trials.  If there was a lull while Val and Koos popped off for a bit to “clean up” for dinner, (which seems unlikely), no-one noticed.

Perhaps they would have continued without ceasing at all had we all not been of an age where turning into a pumpkin at the stroke of twelve is a very real possibility.