Just Five Minutes

Back from a sailing trip in the Dutch Wadden Sea. We had many sunny days and enough wind for serious sailing (although it usually came from the direction we were headed to). The Maxima‘s owner and skipper, Olav, is a very passionate sailor and an incredibly calm and kind guy (very much in contrast to last year’s skipper.) We rarely used the engine, almost exclusively for getting in and out of harbours, and got almost everywhere we wanted to “under sails”. On our most active day, the GPS showed 54 tacks. That meant a lot of pulling ropes and turning gears, and in the evening we were tired but happy. The ship is very fast for its class, it got up to about 4-5 knots under most conditions and peaked at about 8-8.5 knots. We outran most other ships (although few were crazy enough to sail in the first half of April), much to the delight of Olav. Regarding our group of people, everyone was determined to “make it work” somehow. Apart from some minor struggles, it worked out surprisingly well. Perhaps I’ll post or link to some photos soon…