We mainly spend the May holiday in the Veerhaven in Rotterdam, which already feels a bit like we're just 'living on the boat' as we plan to do in 1.5-2 years time. The Veerhaven is located in a beautiful part of Rotterdam and is a great place to lie. This time extra cozy with the Mar-Jolie as neighbours!
We leave on Good Friday in the afternoon for Willemstad and spend the night at anchor at Volkeraksluizen. With a delicious dinner and the evening sun, this is a good start of a week's holiday. How wonderful the boat life is.
We decide to make a stop in the Veerhaven on our way to Amsterdam. The wind is still too much against us to sail on. Once there it feels good to stay longer because at the end of the week the wind is again against us to sail back and we don't feel like the standing mast route. Well, from here we can also go to work; Toine two days at Ajax and me on Wednesday at Rabo in Utrecht. Easy to reach by tram and train.
In the end we stay for 6 nights. We have a great time shopping, chatting with the neighbours, eating out and watching football on TV (when Toine is in the Arena on Tuesday night). Eline is regularly learning for her final exams. On Tuesday Thorold comes by for a day. And so the week flies by.
On Friday Eline goes home again and the three of us leave with the aim of sailing back to Bru via the sea and the Haringvliet. Now the weather is still lovely and the next day the wind will blow harder with a big chance that the bridges won't turn then. It's a nice trip, especially the last stretch of sailing on the Haringvliet towards the bridge. Until we find out that we should have requested the bridge opening at 8pm at least 4 hours in advance 😢.. tomorrow morning at 10am it turns again. We decide to make a nice detour through South Holland; via the Spui, the Oude Maas, Dortse Kil and the Hollands Diep we arrive 4 hours later at the place we would have been if the bridge had turned. We now go on as far as Bru and have three fast lock gates where we are the only ones in the lock. And so on Saturday morning at 4am we are back in our box in Bru. The rest of the weekend we 'live on the boat' in Bru.