Tutak goes to Holland - Chapter V

So at the correct speed Tutak wandered back down the canal to join up again with the Oosterschelde at Sas van Goes.  Busy with shipping it is and a close watch must be kept on the barges showing big white moustaches.  Those ones are pushing a massive bow wave and can be so low in the water with just the heaps of sand or gravel showing.

We took the Keeten Mestgat north east to the Krammersluizen.  Turning left here would take us into the Grevelingenmeer but that was for another year.  Once through the lock we headed north and near the forbidden waters of a nature reserve.  Little buoys mark the way to a hole in the sea wall that leads to a sleepy place called Oude Tonge.  Prolific wildlife was bumped into and we scraped our way to the haven.

I'm not really a David Bellamy sort of guy so you will have to put your own names to the above.

Oude Tonge was rather nice and we found a Chinese eating house and then went a bar to watch Holland play against some other European team.  We got dressed in orange and came draped in the Nederland's flag.  They didn't realise that I am ginger and thought I had dyed for the occasion.  I was taken in hand by a large farm boy in dungarees who kept me supplied with  beer all night.  I was starting to get worried as he insisted on bear hugging me every time Holland had a shot at goal.  Everyone was getting very drunk and rather boisterous so the crew of the good ship Tutak separately went to the facilities and didn't come back.  Later in the early hours, gates were unhinged, waste bins were upended and fire extinguishers were let off in the Dutch village equivalent of football hoodlums.

Later that day we set sail with sore heads but without a police escort, we had done well.

Now when one goes off sailing it is often not possible to take piccies of ones craft in the elements.  So to give you an idea of what dear old Tutak is like I have included some photos.





Hard on the wind with yours truly waving. Not an "in focus" pic but it was taken with a long lens from 3/4 mile away, sorry.  The sails are Arun and are original, i.e. nearly thirty years old!  So excuse the baggy/saggy bits.




Ok so I didn't have the water sails on here but this is Tutak in all her lightweight finery.  An asymmetric and a mizzen staysail.  Asymmetric sounds fancier than "cruising chute" don't you think?

 


Head on with the chute and mizzen staysail.  The pole has a wee bend I see!

 


There is a story to this one.  I was single handed and it was a fine day and not a lot of wind so I thought I would take to the dinghy in order to photograph the boat.  The autopilot was engaged and I decanted into the dinghy on a very long painter, then the wind picked up and.......

Staying in touch when sailing.

I had a pay as you go sim card with O2 until recently.  I need O2 'cause some of the other networks don't work round here.  I did a tot up of how much I was spending and was rather traumatised when I found it to be around the 140-160 pounds a year mark, not the £60 I had assumed.  One of the ads on another forum pointed me to Tesco's offer of a sim for £7.50 a month including 240 minutes and 5000 texts and they use the O2 network.  Yeah, 5000 texts: if I tried to use them up I would have RSI on the right thumb!  I confess I snapped their corporate hands off and my number was transferred on the day they said so so far so good.  The O2 network was good around the islands and Scotland and the only reason I had to go for a 3 dongle was 02 wouldn't sell me one 'cause my address was iffy as I live on a boat.  Probably something to do with anti-terrorism even though you can get a payg with no address!  I'm not a fan of Tesco but I think they are here to stay but let's hope they don't rule the world and I still haven't got a clubcard so there.

I bought a 3 dongle and added data when I needed it for the 100 day trip and the coverage was good all around Scotland and the UK east coast.  The only dull area being the NW coast of Scotland, it was somewhat intermittent there but locals say it is the same for other networks.  I have just found out that 3 now do a fast dongle with multi user access (15Gb/m) for £15.  That is getting to be cheaper than a land line.

Tutak goes North - vids (Stromness to Cape Wrath).

It took me a long time to realise that I did actually have the facilites to take short videos on my Cannon.  This is one I took when I found myself alive after a few worrying hours out of Stromness and in the lee of Hoy with its attendant down drafts.  I had emptied my sick bucket by now by the way.

It is always amazing how benign the sea looks when caught on film.  Maybe it wasn't that bad and just my recollections.  Most of the waves were no bigger than 2 metres from top to bottom.  There was the odd rogue one that was rather bigger than the rest and slapped one about a bit.

I guess the real problem is a sense of scale, coupled with the fisherman's tale makes it hard to judge from a film.  According to the log the wind speed was averaging around 26-28 knots with the odd gust blowing the tops off.  Tutak was loving it and cracking on very nicely, she needs a blow to get her to lift her skirts and run.