A TOUCH OF THE BLUES - THURSDAY 17TH JULY - SAS VAN GENT TO WEMELDINGE

We have a friend who accidentally sailed around the world, and today is a perfect example of how that can happen to anyone.

Completely in line with the forecast we had a nice day ahead of us, perfect weather, twelve kilometres and a sea lock filled with big ships to go until our destination, so there was no sense in starting early, after all that’s our plan for tomorrow to catch the incoming tide.   

There were only a few butterflies at the great lock at Terneuzen while we worked out how to fit six ships and four pleasure boats in it when clearly it was only designed for six ships and two pleasure boats, but the friendly skipper of one of the ships took our lines and we had a four thousand ton floating bollard and not a care in the world while the lock did it’s thing.

Sticking to our plan, we departed the lock and choofed off for a few kilometres toward our destination to get some sort of idea what we might be in for in the morning into the startling blue stillness.  We’d arrived a bit early to catch the tide so progress was slow, but when not one of the hazards we’d been concerned about presented themselves, and with the tide slowly turning in our favour, we simply kept going.   

To be clear, if millponds had ships passing at thirty kilometres an hour, this was a millpond.   To be even clearer, even on a millpond it’s not particularly easy to estimate how quickly ships travelling at four times our speed, are closing and while there was never a chance of an accident, it was reassuring to hear Shipping Control calling a tanker to enquire whether they’d seen us crossing their track, through the magic of AIS referring to us by name to be perfectly clear.  

Dave and Ria, utilising the same magic were watching our progress live on the internet from somewhere in the north, hilariously updating us on our progress presumably in case we weren’t paying attention, capturing screen shots of each near death experience for the benefit of future generations.   

Now, here we are, on the other side of the Schelde quite accidentally weeks from where we thought we’d be, in a bit of a daze as we contemplate what our next move might be.