Day 6 Finding a place to stop.
I took the first watch and whilst I was supposed to rouse Alistair at 11pm, I didn't want to leave the helm and in any event I felt OK and let Alistair have another hour.
We had made such fast progress that we had to cross the bottom of the TSS(Traffic separation scheme) which runs parallel to the Friesian Islands at about 11pm (So this is really part of yesterdays blog) and we had boats coming in and out of Ijmuden and going and leaving the TSS and there was I right in the middle of this maelstrom of ships. However, taken calmly and with the use if the AIS receiver onboard I was able to work out which were the danger ships and monitor them. Everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do.. except for one ship that seemed to have found the situation tricky. He came up behind me and was on a CPA (Closest point of approach) of 0.25 miles which is very close. I decided to call him on the VHF but I did a digital call using his MMSI number (This is a digital calling number which means only his radio will get it). He did not answer the call but immediatly turned to port as though to avoid me . This put him in a close situation with a ship going in the opposite direction and as soon as he was even with me he turned hard to starboard still passing very closely. He may have seen this coming and it was not as dramatic as it seemed but if he had turned to starboard to pass me this would not have happened, and it was the correct thing to do.
I woke Alistair as I could see the horizon start to look as though the sun was illuminating it from the other side., which it was but I never expected to see that at midnight! We had a drink and eventually approached Den Helder and it was my time to hand over to Graham. The original plan was to enter Den Helder but we could not as it was the start of the ebb so we had travelled so quickly that our timings we not right for entry.
What's that noise? I awoke probably prematurely to the sound of the mainsheet flogging or something, it was now 5:30am so I had slept for 2.5 hours and I felt refreshed, the boat was now corkscrewing. We had entered the shallow water around the Friesians and we had wind over tide the wind having gone from ESE right around to W. This sets up a load of waves and the wind increased, sometimes exceeding 27knts. We decided to press on for two good reasons we wanted to take advantage of our quick crossing and we could not go in anyway.
We found that the further we went North the later the change of tide so it was a little tricky to find the right location. We decided on Borkum, very safe but not a nice place to be the marina is 7km from the town and there is literally nothing open at the marina, not even a man to collect our money.
The entrance to Borkum is about 12 miles long from the West and when we eventually had to enter the marina channel a passenger vessel was coming out, so we went in circles until he had passed. I then proceeded to take the boat in and my goodness the tide running past the entrance was so strong, I needed all 160 of the horses to keep control . Once inside there was no guidance about where to go so we fund a nice new large pontoon and tied up.
We had made such fast progress that we had to cross the bottom of the TSS(Traffic separation scheme) which runs parallel to the Friesian Islands at about 11pm (So this is really part of yesterdays blog) and we had boats coming in and out of Ijmuden and going and leaving the TSS and there was I right in the middle of this maelstrom of ships. However, taken calmly and with the use if the AIS receiver onboard I was able to work out which were the danger ships and monitor them. Everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do.. except for one ship that seemed to have found the situation tricky. He came up behind me and was on a CPA (Closest point of approach) of 0.25 miles which is very close. I decided to call him on the VHF but I did a digital call using his MMSI number (This is a digital calling number which means only his radio will get it). He did not answer the call but immediatly turned to port as though to avoid me . This put him in a close situation with a ship going in the opposite direction and as soon as he was even with me he turned hard to starboard still passing very closely. He may have seen this coming and it was not as dramatic as it seemed but if he had turned to starboard to pass me this would not have happened, and it was the correct thing to do.
I woke Alistair as I could see the horizon start to look as though the sun was illuminating it from the other side., which it was but I never expected to see that at midnight! We had a drink and eventually approached Den Helder and it was my time to hand over to Graham. The original plan was to enter Den Helder but we could not as it was the start of the ebb so we had travelled so quickly that our timings we not right for entry.
What's that noise? I awoke probably prematurely to the sound of the mainsheet flogging or something, it was now 5:30am so I had slept for 2.5 hours and I felt refreshed, the boat was now corkscrewing. We had entered the shallow water around the Friesians and we had wind over tide the wind having gone from ESE right around to W. This sets up a load of waves and the wind increased, sometimes exceeding 27knts. We decided to press on for two good reasons we wanted to take advantage of our quick crossing and we could not go in anyway.
We found that the further we went North the later the change of tide so it was a little tricky to find the right location. We decided on Borkum, very safe but not a nice place to be the marina is 7km from the town and there is literally nothing open at the marina, not even a man to collect our money.
The entrance to Borkum is about 12 miles long from the West and when we eventually had to enter the marina channel a passenger vessel was coming out, so we went in circles until he had passed. I then proceeded to take the boat in and my goodness the tide running past the entrance was so strong, I needed all 160 of the horses to keep control . Once inside there was no guidance about where to go so we fund a nice new large pontoon and tied up.
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On the way to the marina pub