For my Englishspeaking friends

Hello there,

I´m so sorry to keep you uninformed for such a long time. But since we left home, I´m so busy that it is even difficult to keep the German part up to date. Besides that it´s not so easy to find free Wifi.

So, here´s the short form to keep you interested:


We reached Emden with our friends Stephan and Dorothee on a bright and sunny day. It was, as if there´s always summer at the North Sea. We packed all our stuff, and started sailing down the Ems in time. In the evening we reached Borkum, the biggest of the East Frisian Isles. In the night there was a hard and wet thunderstorm, but the next morning we found our way through the Wadden Sea to Juist, a very pretty, tiny island at it´s smallest part just 500 m wide but 11 km long.
We walked on the beach, visited the cosy village. When we came back to the marina, we found our ship looming with the bow to the sky, right side down. Impossible to sleep on. That happens in a tidal harbour where you fall dry. We moved it too a better place. So we all slept well.

The other morning we sailed to the next island: Norderney. Every island has it´s own character, so it never gets boring to hop from isle to isle. Again we explored town and beach being happy that the weather has turned to something like summer again.
On Friday we sailed back to the mainland. We aimed Greetsiel a very popular because romantic fisher town (if there weren´t all the tourists ;-) ).
On Saturday the weather turned bad (because our friends left). We had to stay ´til Monday, because an ugly wind with rain hindered us from leaving.

On Monday, the 4th July we left Greetsiel, because we had to, if we wanted to be in time in Amsterdam to meet two of our three children. And lo and behold the weather got better while sailing. Nevertheless we decided to go the "Staande-Mast-Route" (instead the way over the sea), the interiour way on the channels through the Netherlands where you can go with a mast up. All bridges are flap bridges, which means you can go there, but you also have to wait most of the time.
We needed four days with a 12 hours tour a day to reach Amsterdam where our youngest son Tim was already waiting for us.
This tour was followed by a lovely weekend with Laura and Tim in Amsterdam. We moored in the Aeolus harbour, from which you can reach the heart of Amsterdam by ferry within a few minutes. That´s all for a price of 15,- €/day for four persons!!! After strolling through the city with it´s romantic town canals, interesting places, nice cafes and bars we had a picknick in the beautiful Vondel Park
We decided to visit the beach in Zandvoort the next day because the weather should be fine. And it was: Tim and me even swam in the North Sea.
Then we had to say good-bye to our children. But we´ll see again soon, I´m sure. And: never try to stop a rolling stone, let´s say, we´ve to go on, if we want to reach the Biscay in time...

I hope, you are all fine and I would be glad to hear from you!