Netherlands/Berlin Trip - Hoorn      26th July:

Traditional Costume in Roode Steen

    What a change this morning, blue sky with puffs of white cloud and a hint of a breeze in the marina.
    I was out on deck when a chap walked over to the covered information board near our boat, a little dishevelled looking in his well-worn clothes. The fellow must have lived on board a nearby boat, which had a small wooden raft attached to it on which a coot had built a nest, and bowls of seeds were strategically placed on deck for a pair of pigeons.
    The chap was peering under the roof of the roofed covering above the information board, quietly talking to himself. An agitation was apparent in his manner, and spotting me, he walked over and started chatting in good English. "The nest up there," he said, pointing up inside the covering, "has young in it, and the mother has deserted it. I don't know if I should rescue them." "Probably not a good idea," I replied, "it rarely works out." My mind went back many years to when I was a child, and finding fledglings on the ground, had tried to look after them with no success.

The Shantymen Kaap Hoorn

    "The mother was a young bird, only born earlier this year," he continued. The bloke was most concerned, and wandered off clearly upset by the loss. He reappeared half an hour later, overjoyed. "The mother has returned," he burst out, with sheer happiness on his face, and off he went. Perhaps these birds in the marina were the only friends in his life; I'll never know.
    Rex managed to expertly extricate Duonita out of the awkward, cramped mooring, and in next to no time we were in the Gouwzee. The wind was much more apparent out here, a Force 4, and directly behind us, so with just the mainsail up, we ran with the wind heading almost directly north. It was a delightful sail, passing Volendam and Edam on the way, joined by multitudes of other sailing craft bobbing about as we crossed the Markermeer to the Hoornsche Hop. However, the temperature dropped dramatically at one point, so much so that I was forced to don a sweater.
    We dropped our sail just outside Hoorn, and slowly edged our way through a channel to a visitor's pontoon in the massive Grashaven Hoorn Marina complex which held 800+ vessels. As far as the harbour master was concerned, we could stay where we were on the pontoon for the whole four days we planned to be there.
    Rex needed a nap, so I went into town, expecting it to be shut on Sunday. On the contrary, it was heaving with people, and all the shops were doing brisk trade. There were also many market stalls in some of the main thoroughfares. The main square, the Roode Steen, was also full of stalls, with a sprinkling of folk in traditional dress, and to cap it all a group of about 20 Dutch men, The Shantymen Kaap Hoorn, all singing English sea-shanties in perfect English. The group have been performing since 1995, and can sing in Dutch, French and Russian too. They guys were superb, and attracted quite a large audience, many of whom were snapping up their CDs.

Selection of Doorways

    Unbelievably, I came across a shop that sold vividly coloured towels of a decent size, and bought three just in case another one went missing. On returning back to Duonita, Rex was still in a coma, so I returned back to town for another look around, though as luck would have it, most of the time I was sheltering from the rains in coffee shops.
    We both returned to the streets of Hoorn in the evening for a quick look around and sustenance. Sad to say we got back to Duonita like a pair of drowned rats. The wind was getting up again, and boats were starting to rock about erratically; a total contrast to the sweltering days of Dordrecht.