From Harlingen, we sail to Vlieland with a strong current in lovely sunny weather. With the perfect wind strength (4 bft) and wind direction (SW), so everything is easy to sail without having to jibe. We sailed so fast that we even caught up with the express service to Terschelling, but it had engine trouble 😅. What a wonderful sailing trip; one out of the book 😊👌👍.

The marina in Vlieland is still almost completely empty while it can be overcrowded here in summer. The island itself is also still very quiet with few tourists 😊. Fortunately, we still pay the winter rate for the first four days, as mooring fees are quite pricey here 🥲 (also subject to inflation??).

We stay exactly one week. It is a lovely island for cycling and walking. So we do plenty of that, in lovely sunny weather, although the wind is still regularly quite cold. We have been here five times before by boat (July 2007, May 2009, July 2012, May 2016 and Nov 2020) but then we were only here for a short time and only cycled around the island. Now we have a lot more time and, besides cycling, we are mostly walking to places we have never been 😄.

The first four days are just the two of us. It is fun to wander around the village and see ferry arrivals and departures. We take a bike ride in the strong cold wind one day and a beautiful walk around the lighthouse the next. In between, we have fun and useful projects on the boat, such as fitting a induction cooktop for two pans (We had those delivered to the PostNL parcel point in Vlieland and could pick them up on the first day 😎). Mira does the laundry and makes a document about sailing in Norway containing a lot of useful information that I have read somewhere or heard from other sailors.

The second half of the week, Harrie and Anja are coming to visit us for two days. They are staying in a nice little hotel in the Dorpstraat. We have a very pleasant time together 🥰. The first day we take a nice walk with lunch in between overlooking the beach. In the evening, they have dinner with us on the boat. The second day we cycle around the whole island. They on rented bikes and we on our own. We have lunch outside in the sun at the Posthuys on the south-west side of the island. Harry knows a lot about mushrooms and birds and regularly points out something to us that we wouldn't have seen ourselves ☺️🦅🍄‍🟫. In the evening, we go out for dinner at a good restaurant and all four of us eat a delicious cote de boeuf 👌😋. Nice to have some quiet time together like this. The last time before we left Eindhoven was a bit rushed between all our duties 😊☺️.

We stay on Vlieland for another day. Toine connects the electricity from the induction cookstove to a separate group with the power wire and socket brought by Harrie and Anja.

We are already getting a bit of a regular rhythm in our non-working life 😃. In the morning, for instance, we always start by reading the news and the newspaper (NRC), followed by all the games in the NRC 🧐. In the evening, we make the sudoko from the NRC, do some reading and regularly watch Eva, a series and/or a film. Mira learns Norwegian for at least half an hour to an hour every day with DuoLingo 😃. And of course, we exercise regularly during the day with walking, cycling, chores, etc.

We keep in good touch with the daughters by video calling about twice a week. This keeps us well informed of each other's doings 🥰❤️.

This afternoon, we will move on to Terschelling. There we will meet Inge, Mark and Tess over the weekend. We are also already keeping an eye on the weather for a possible crossing to Norway sometime next week.