Baltic Trip - Vlissingen      27th - 29th April:

27th April
    After our baptism of fire, we awoke to glorious blue skies and a leisurely start to the day whilst Alan checked the current forecasts. Looking at forecasts is never good, in fact they are usually downright depressing. The indications were that the wind would be from the NNE, directly where we were trying to head, and they would be up to Force 7; grim indeed. In addition, the forecast stated that the conditions would last for about a week. The prospect of us hanging about for a week loomed ahead.
    We mulled this over as we ate a late lunch. The problem now arising was the likelihood of us not reaching St Petersburg on time to meet up with Dan. We concluded that with the wind being from the NNE, we could make a dash across to Vlissingen in southern Holland, and then either make our way along the Dutch coast or travel through the slower inland waterways.

Port of Felixstowe

    We slipped our mooring around 17:30 and motored out into the open seas off Felixstowe. In anticipation of the rough conditions, we put a reef in both the main and genoa sails as we headed off to the Rough Towers. Progress was slow, only 4 knots into the teeth of a Force 6 gale, occasionally Force 7 with gusts of up to 30 knots. Once sufficiently out, we altered course to head down to Vlissingen. With the wind on our beam, we picked up speed, sporadically reaching 7 knots which is quite good for Kiitaja.
    The seas really were shocking, and the boat was lurching about like a roller-coaster. We pushed on through the long night, the crashing of the seas on the boat being matched by the crashing and banging of unseen objects within the boat (the interior of the boat was almost dark to improve our night vision). Fun and games were had crossing the busy shipping channels, packed with ocean going vessels plying through in packs at a fair speed.
    At one point a huge wave managed to flex the floor of the wheelhouse, which resulted in a table top springing loose and hurtling across the cabin, fortunately missing Rex by inches and also the windows at the opposite end of the wheelhouse. That could have been very nasty. Both Alan and Rex were ill by now. My mind was taken off sea-sickness when I received a blow to my coccyx; that stopped me dead for a while, cursing profusely. One of the many waves breaking over us managed to force an entry through the door jambs soaking Alan in the process, and more alarmingly slopping salt water all over the wheelhouse floor. The danger here was the engine and batteries were sitting directly below the floor tiles!

28th April
    Dawn thankfully arrived and the world was a grey expanse of confused heavy seas. I grabbed what sleep I could and awoke to the relative calm of the Dutch seas on the approach to the Westerschelde. We followed a circuitous course into a small marina in Vlissingen and a welcome respite after the nightmare 22 hour crossing.
    After a relaxing brew, we took stock of the boat. A Danbuoy had been wrenched off and washed overboard, and one of the door handles was almost off. Internally there was no serious damage, but we knew we would have to inspect under the wheelhouse floor to see how far the sea water had spread, mopping up what we could and removing as much salt from the floor tiles as possible.
    To relax and wind down, we went to the marina clubhouse and enjoyed a couple of beers and a very pleasant meal. The folks there were friendly. Suitably fortified, we returned to the boat, where Alan turned in for the night. Rex and I had a stroll into the town and back to help our meal go down. Sleeping in a stationary boat was bliss that night.

29th April

Convoy Leaving Vlissingen

    In the morning, we took advantage of the shower and laundry facilities before making repairs to the door handles, heaving up the wheelhouse floor for inspection, washing all the floor tiles on the pontoon, and mopping up the sea water around the storage areas in the wheelhouse; tedious but essential tasks. Meanwhile Alan checked the weather forecasts. With Force 5-6 over a few days predicted, and the wind on the nose, sailing up the coast would not be an option, so we decided to make our way up through the Dutch waterways, making further decisions as the weather developed. After further deliberations, we decided to slip our stay in St Petersburg by a week. This required Vladimir shifting our marina booking, and Dan having to alter his leave and travel arrangements too.
    So we bade farewell to Vlissingen and headed up the canal through a series of cantilevered and swing bridges, with the occasional lock. The route passed through delightful avenues of trees with scores of cyclists speeding along the banks. From afar, one such bank appeared to be a mass of white, which on closer inspection revealed itself as a herd of hundreds of sheep - for some reason I had never associated Holland with sheep, but there you go. Soon we were travelling in convoy with other vessels through the pretty town of Middleburg, past Veere and then into the Veersemeer, at one time open to the sea but now closed off as part of the water control system. The lovely, shallow meer weaved its way east to the Oosterschelde.

Cantilevered Bridge

Veersemeer

    We tied up on a pontoon near the lock which would provide entry into the Oosterschelde, with the wind howling past us at alarming speeds. The water was rather choppy, so much so that Alan got up a couple of times in the night to try and quieten the squeak of ropes rubbing against Kiitaja's toe rail. However, his efforts failed miserably. The only way to cure the problem would be to have custom made cleats which raised the ropes above the toe rail.
    The wind growled all night long, indeed Alan had observed wind speeds reaching 30 knots, and rain poured in torrents. I was finding it difficult getting back into a normal sleeping pattern after the North Sea crossing, and I was still awake at 4am. This wouldn't be the first or last time.