Netherlands Trip - Ijmuiden      17th June:

Farewell Amsterdam

    After a swift food shop in the local Albert Heijn up by the ferry terminal, we readied the boat and slipped our lines. A kind chap, who kept his yacht in Levington marina, helped us out of the berth - a fair breeze was pushing Duonita onto the pontoon.

CTVrede Terminal on the Noordzeekanaal

    The journey up to Ijmuiden was uneventful, and the passage through the sea-lock was painless. Indeed it was entertaining watching a large cast of crabs clinging to the lock walls, silently observing us whilst they munched whatever crabs munch. Amazingly no waiting involved at all. Was Holland trying to get rid of us?
    Spilling out into the salty harbour, we quickly sped to the fuel pontoon inside the entrance to Marina Seaport. Blast, a family had beaten us to it. Rex skilfully gilled the boat about until the pontoon was free. It took around 80 litres to fill the tanks. At 2.95 Euros/litre …. Ouch!

Duonita in Marina Seaport

    Once berthed I marched off to the marina reception. We needed the Marechaussee to stamp our passports before leaving the country. In the past the marina reception has kindly called up the Marechaussee and persuaded them to drive across to stamp them. The lady on reception today was decidedly unhelpful, and just gave me a phone number to ring. OK, not a show stopper I thought, I have called them several times in the past and they have obligingly driven out. I called, and the fellow on the other end of the line (or the ether nowadays) told me to walk around to the office.
    "But it is a 58 minute walk," I protested.
    "Yes," was the curt response.
    "Would it be possible for you to drive across by car to the Marina Seaport?" I whined pleadingly.
    "You would have to email us, then we can consider it based on how busy we are," he replied.
    I took that to mean NO. Great, Rex did not want to endure an hour walk there and an hour walk back. Public transport was not an option, so we agreed to get a cab. The driver was quite good, he had done this trip before and knew exactly where the Marechaussee office was, and he would wait and bring us back. A bargain we thought.
    On our drive to the office, we mentioned how we were staggered by the price of diesel at the marina. He was equally staggered too.
    "You paid 2.95 Euros/litre," he mused as he pointed to the price at a petrol station. "There you can buy diesel at 1.95 Euros/litre." We steamed in silence at that illumination.
    Soon we reached Sluisplein, and he knew exactly where the entrance to the immigration office was.
    "It should only take a few minutes; I'll wait for you," he said.
    We entered the office. A large Perspex screen divided the room. On one side sat a solitary harassed official, crouching behind four computer screens, reading the screens and scratching his head, the top of which was the only part of him visible to us. Silence reigned. Five people sat on a mix of uncomfortable chairs on the public side of the screen; a mixed bunch but all united by a sense of losing the will to live. We soon gathered the modus operandi. The official could only cope with the individual floating at the top of the queue, everybody else had to pipe down until it was their turn. This had the makings of a good John Cleese script. After 5 minutes, one captive gave up, threw his arms in the air and stormed out.
    After an age, a middle-aged bloke with a mop of salt and pepper hair (perhaps black when he arrived) was summoned to the Perspex screen. A document was passed to him, and he was asked to check it. The fellow gave a blank look; neither English nor Dutch were languages he understood. He picked up the document and handed it to one of the seated individuals, a younger fellow of middle-Eastern extraction, dressed smartly in a blue suit. It soon became apparent that the middle-aged man was applying for a visa, and the suited chap was his legal representative. Crikey, I thought, if all these guys were applying for visas, this is going to take all night.
    I went off to advise the cab driver, telling him he could just go if he preferred.
    "Just tell them you need your passports stamped," he shouted.
    I returned to the land of the living dead, but there seemed no way of getting the young official's attention. "WAIT! " He was still sitting with a furrowed brow, wading through the visa application.
    The cab driver suddenly walked in and remonstrated with the official who just shrugged his shoulders, "You will have to wait your turn."
    At last, the visa application was completed, the suited representative paid a sum of money, and as he and his client left, he moaned loudly, "Two hours for a visa application!"
    Meanwhile, one chap appeared at the doorway. "Visas?" he asked, then threw his hands in the air. Two more suckers entered the office too and took seats for the doomed.
    One of the seated individuals, a young chap, jumped up immediately; obviously the next in the queue. He was on a boat and just needed his passport stamping.
    He left in a few minutes, to be replaced by an Oriental looking fellow. He handed his passport over, and in broken, unintelligible English muttered a boat name and pointed vaguely out of the window. The young official was at a loss with this, and called in a colleague. The colleague strode into our waiting room, God's anteroom, and yanked the Oriental guy to one side and demanded to see his passport. His passport was obviously well out of order.
    "This is an official document," shouted the new official, stabbing at the passport with his finger. "Why have you got handwritten notes written in Arabic inside it? It should contain nothing but stamps. What boat are you on?" he demanded to know.
    The Oriental man uttered a blurred response which was lost on the official. When asked to repeat it, a slightly different muttering was uttered.
    "Write it down, please, so that I can search for it," spoke the official through gritted teeth. This was going from bad to worse, and the Oriental guy was now in deep water.
    Meanwhile, the young official had our passports and completed forms covering boat and crew details. In a couple of minutes he appeared in hell's waiting room, all smiles, with our passports. "Did you ring earlier?" he asked.
    "Yes, I did. You asked us to walk. My captain can't walk that far." The official smiled, a sickly, sweet, Boris Carloff smile, and gave a lame excuse that all officials were extremely busy.
    By now, we couldn't care less, we just wanted to escape this funnel web spider of a waiting room. Our cab driver brought us smartly back to the marina, and collected a handsome tip; it was worth it.

Ijmuiden Beach

Shells, Cuttlefish Bone and Razor Clam Shells

Zandvoort Way in the Distance

    Sufficiently calmed down, I took a stroll across to the beach, a vast expanse of sand and shells stretching for miles. To the south I could see Zandvoort in the distance, home of the Dutch Formula 1 circuit, that Dan, Oliver, my grandson, and I had visited in February 2024. To the northwest I spotted the DFDS ferry returning to Newcastle. The beach was littered with sea shells of every kind. Kite surfers flitted across the waves with ease. I stood at the waters edge, my senses enhanced by the sight and sound of breaking waves while my nostrils sniffed the saltiness of the air.
    In the evening we visited Het Zandhuis again. We chatted with the owner, Herman, over beers. The tall ships race would be passing through in a couple of days. We discussed how life in Holland is much the same as in the UK. AI is accelerating in its mission to make its presence felt, the art of conversation has declined as more and more human interactions are replaced by anonymous interactions through phone screens with distant realms of software. And everything has become politically correct in both countries; comedy of old is often stuffed into cupboards.
    The food and beer were good; our last square meal in Holland.
    As we were about to leave, Herman said this would be his last year. He had been running the restaurant for 17 years, and business is not all that great, so he was going to acquire the shop next door. Good luck to him.
    We returned to Duonita, noticing that another Westerly Konsort 29 had berthed alongside us. Two young Dutch fellows were on board; a third crew member would turn up at 08:30 the following morning. Their intentions were to sail across to Lowestoft (the nearest point in England for the Dutch), and then return to Holland. Their craft was a different design, with no pilot house, but probably more sleeping space. The engine had been replaced, as well as the mast; a previous owner had crashed into a bridge.
    We wished them good luck and fair winds.