The evening calm belies the day and night that preceded it.
With squalls throughout the early part of the day, and a constant wind strong enough to blow a dog off its chain, conditions were perfect for doing a nice spot of not much.
There’s a supermarket just across the road, so it was an easy exercise to stock up on provisions between the squalls, but given that simple mechanical jobs can become complicated in a short period of time, we chose to let Mr Perkins slumber in his box until the weather had cleared completely. No doubt because of this precaution, the simple adjustments when we did get to them, did not bring any great complication, although there are still one or two little unsolved mysteries which will need monitoring.
Tomorrow the forecast is for near perfect conditions, which has done nothing at all to solve our dilemma of where we will go next. To our north, the Scheldt Estuary is all that lies between us and the rest of the Netherlands, but it does present challenges at the best of times, which are the only times crossing it should be contemplated in our boat at least. Fortunately a window of opportunity appears to be opening later in the week, and we are in a bit of a bind as to whether we should take it.
The estuary is shallow and has strong currents which kick up short steep waves in even a small amount of wind and the huge number of ocean going ships travelling at many times the speed we are capable of, create awkward cross chop adding to the discomfort and in some conditions, the dangers associated with dropping off a near vertical wave.
Short, light, flat bottomed boats such as ours are not designed to cope with waves and chop and wind, so it would be foolish to contemplate in anything but perfect conditions with a favourable tide, even then the wash from container ships could provide significant challenges at least to the contents of our cupboards.
We are a little nervous, perhaps more than a little, and perhaps unnecessarily so, but having waited for the weather to settle tomorrow we’ll go down to the sea in our ship, gently poke around to see if we are comfortable enough to proceed, or whether a much more cocnservative new plan will unfold.
Today, we’ll just enjoy the conditions we have.
2 comments
Ah, so maybe you're in Terneuzen now? I don't blame you for being nervous about the Westerschelde. It would have to be like a mirror for me to agree to do it, and even then, the big ships make their own waves. Maybe I'll see you after all?
Ahh Val we wish! We skipped Terneuzen, and happily spent three hours on a magic mirror, wondering what the fuss is about!
Post a Comment