Better Late than Never -Post 2 of 2

The plan was to leave Harlinger the next morning (Tuesday) and sail or use the engine (whichever suited the conditions) and make our way to Den Helder where the Tall Ships Festival was being held. Our estimated time of arrival was 5pm and a fabulous captains dinner was planned for 7pm.

However, our estimated time of arrive was revised throughout the afternoon as we encountered strong head winds. It made for exciting sailing as walls of water would come on deck as the ship crashed over the waves. At the peak of the storm we had force 8 winds (Gale) on Beaufort Scale. Once of the sails tore too. (Apparently it was the last older sail.)

When I was finishing my watch at 6pm our captain would only say we would get to port when we did. The dinner was postponed indefinetly and a snack of more bread, cheese and ham was put out (we ate that for breakfast and lunch everyday). At about 8pm we were still a substantial distance from Den Helder.

I decided it was time to head to bed since at this rate I would have to go back on watch at midnight. At 3:30am I woke-up wide awake and completely confused. I couldn’t hear any waves and the boat wasn’t bobbing up and down like a cork in a bathtub, so I knew we must be in port, but the question was when did we arrive and did we miss the Captain’s dinner?

I decided to get up to have a cup of tea and figure out what was going on. Apparently we arrived in port around mid-night and the captain’s dinner was now a captain’s lunch. After about ½ an hour I headed back to bed and slept until breakfast. Then after breakfast I went back to bed until lunch. I guess the 7 days of being at sea and never sleeping more than 5 or 6 hours at a time had caught up with me. In the preceeding 30 hour period I slept 20 hours.
The ship going up over a wave when the winds were only about 25 knots

And crashing back down the other side of the wave.

The Esprit, one of the small ships involved in the race passing us during the storm.

I had a great time sailing and would return to another Tall Ship event in a heartbeat if it ever worked out again.

I have been home in Canada for 2 weeks now and am starting to get restless. I am ready to start my next adventure in New Zealand. I leave Vancouver on September 27th and will spend a few days visiting friends in San Francisco before heading to New Zealand.

I will continue to attempt to post updates to this blog once my next adventure starts.