Day and Night in IJlst

IJlst we weclome Xavier

Picked up Xavier today from Sneek. This lovey young man will be spending a few days with us. Soon after picking him up from the train station we had to move to IJlst to have our gearbox and injectors fixed. Hopefully it wont take to long and we can show Xavier a bit of the Netherlands.

Today we achieved

Today was a bit different then most. Martin saw a boat leaning a bit and then noticed it wasn't moving and one of the crew waving his arms to get someone's notice. Well today that was us, I waved another boat over to help give us a hand, he was a smaller boat and he could get close to the grounded boat. Just as well because the sail boat ground has a draft of 1.2meters like us. We tried to get in close but nearly got stuck ourselves. Took 30 mins but we finally got them out, they were happy and we all continued on our way. It's a good feeling to help someone.

We our now at other island, we took a walk around the island and found a lot of Black Berry bushes, nothing like a snack on the go. achieved

Stavoren

We arrived yesterday, and have had a walk around the village twice, It's a very nice place that is catered to tourists. It has a ferry terminal and a train station.



Dam for the Ijsselmeer

You can see same on the Ijsselmeer, yes it is very windy but there are still people sailing out there. 

This photo shows a boat in the lock, the wind is not making it easy for them.

 The following photos are from around town

 Motel

On the lake

Leaving IJlst with a convoy, 12 boats went through the bridge. I'm glad I'm not in a car waiting for the bridge close. Come to think of it, we waited 10mins for the bridge to open because a bus we due.  

In this photo you can see the bridge is still up with the line of boats that have already gone through.
We are all on the wrong side of the Canal so we can pass the kayaks safely on our Starboard, we have passed all the kayaks so we are starting to get on the right side of the canal channel. 

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On our way to our night spot we had to go across a lake, a very busy lake. It's summer school holidays here and they have the 6 weeks off and some of the kids are on Sailing camp and we got to see how they transport a group of kids, their boats and supplies to the sailing spot. 

IJlst

IJlst is a very pretty city, it has also been one of the Frisian eleven cities since 1268. In winter when the canals froze the locals ice-skated on the canals on what is called 'Eleven City Tour'.

 

Same facts for you:

• 1909 was the first official tour, history shows that people were already trying to skate the route past all Frisian cities in a day centuries age.
• 1997 was the last official tour but every year as soon as the winter starts the Dutch suffer from what they call 'Eleven City Fever' hoping that this year the canals and lakes will freeze so the event will be on this year. 
• Only 15 tours have been organized and gone ahead since it officially started.

Since the ice-skating events aren't that regular they now have a couple of summer version one is with 'Puddle Boards' and one with boats, these event they don't do in one day they have rest stop for night, well we have stumbled on one of the stops when they were in the middle of the boat tour in IJlst. So there wasn't much parking left, we needed to drop in to the mechanic to pick up more gearbox oil so we parked in front of his building where they pull out the boats for repair. Then we saw a park on the side of the workshop and asked if we could park there for the night. Luck was with us and we just fit in the gap.



Hand operated ferry



They had a little trouble starting the motor.

 

A group from one of the Yacht
clubs going for a meeting. 



and their off, no wait, yes they are off

 

Day trip to Grou.

It was a beautiful day, it took one and half hours to get to Grou, walk around town have lunch then back.

For the next 4 nights we will be staying Aldlan-Oost a suburb of Leeuwarden.

The house is where our friends are staying and it has room for our boat.

Off to Leeuwaden

Heading to Leeuwarden to meet up with some friends that are holidaying in Europe and have made a couple of days to see us. But first we need to do laundry and house work, so we are heading into central Leeuwarden because we know there is a Launderette that is waking distance.



We didn't make the bridge before it closed for lunch, so this is where slipped in to get out of the way.

 At 1 o'clock the bridge opened and then we lined up to get through it, we didn't make the first wave, they closed the bridge to let the traffic to go over the bridge because there was so many boats waiting. We were in the second group and there were 2 more groups after us with about 6 boats in each group.

De Greft - our home for 2 nights

We were the only boat at this spot last night, tonight it's Saturday and we have 15 neighbours. I didn't take a photo yesterday because as soon as we moored it started to rain.

This area is a little island which has a café on the other side, so we went exploring the island, on the way we found another Australian, from Melbourne this time.

Martin walking on the path to the café, stoped to look at a boat on the right side on the island

This is a photo showing a boat passing on our left. The island isn't that big, but then it's man made.

At the café waiting to be served.

The café burnt down in winter.

Cleaning up the mess, we found out later that 3 café/restaurants burnt down around the same time, and because no-one is at the isolated site they burnt so much they needed to be knocked down.

This is what the other end of the island looks like, these parking areas are closer to the café.

An old barn.



Used as a storage shed now, you could see the pens for the animals.

Getting busy here tonight.

Office

Today I thought I would share with you our office, this is where we pretend we are working hard.

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Panic - Not so bad

We had a moment last night when we thought why are we here. About 7pm 4 little sail boats arrived with 4 adults and 14 teenage girls, it was a summer camp. Could be a long night.

This was taken last night right outside our bedroom, they covered their boats into tents, ingenious.

This is in the morning, you can see one of the boats have the cover off and the little room inside, can you believe 3 to 4 girls slept in each boat. They weren't that noisy either so we panic for nothing.

Packing up.





Nearly ready to go.

We are waiting for them to move before we start our engine and move, because when we start our boat she blows a lot of smoke and the girls were good last night, if they weren't we would be happy to blast them.