Sweden-Denmark-Holland, June 9th – June 24th 2001 Although we saw our new sailboat Alegría for the first time on April 4th, it took two more months until we actually started sailing on June 9th. Because my father was diagnosed with cancer, we stayed in Holland for most of the time to be with my dad and his wife Jeanne. He died the day after his 71st birthday, on May 25th. Marcel and I stayed with Jeanne until after the funeral and flew to Sweden on June 4th. It has all been very strange and contradictory to go sailing, living your dream, having a boat called Alegría (“Happiness”), while my father just died. These changes in our life have been very emotional. Although my dad died, I carry him with me in my heart. After our first visit to the boatyard in Ellös, we went to Sweden again in May to prepare our boat for the trip. We drove in a Ford Fiesta to our boat Alegría. When we arrived, we met again with John and Amanda, with whom we have been sailing from Hawaï to Canada in August 1999. They were preparing their boat, a 46 ft Hallberg-Rassy for their trip to Spitsbergen. Together with them and Vicky and Roland from Hallberg-Rassy, who also became our friends, we celebrated and christened Alegría. We had a wonderful party with Swedish delicacies and champaign. We were spoiled by them with champaign, hats and a survival pack. The weather was terrific, we were outdoors most of the time in our T-shirts. Later that week we met another Dutch couple from Bonaire, Andrea and Arjan with their boat Aquadraat, also an HR 42. They left Ellös heading for Norway. When we arrived in Ellös for the third time, our boat was ready waiting for us to start sailing. Vicky and Roland took care of our boat while we were in Holland and the people from the yard were always very helpful. To our surprise, Aquadraat was also in Ellös again, just back from Norway. Together we went shopping for our provisioning. Like us, they also wanted to sail to Holland. We had to wait for weather as a big storm was passing over Ellös, with gusts up to 60 knots. Apart from the storm, sailing your own new boat for the first time, with only the two of you on board, is really something else! I was quite nervous about it, I can tell you. So, on June 9th we headed out for our first day trip, an easy sail of 7.5 miles to Fiskebäckskil, just North of Ellös. Aquadraat had left earlier heading south. With all the little islands, made of very hard granite rocks, all looking the same and with narrow passages in between them, this was quite a new challenge for us. With help of our Yeoman chart plotter, we managed very well and did 7.5 knots on just the genoa, so we arrived in an hour. And how nice, there was somebody at the dock taking our mooring lines and helping us moore. I really like that. Fiskebäckskil is a very pretty town, so we stayed there for 2 nights in the nice marina and had a delicious meal at the Brygghuset restaurant there. On June 11th we headed for Käringön, just South of Ellös. This was a nice sailing trip. Upon arrival we had our next challenge: Mooring at the dock. This time there was nobody to help us. Normally this should not be a problem. However this time the mooring spots turned out to be too short for our boat. Besides, Marcel does the steering and I find myself jumping up and down the deck, to try and be in six different places at the same time. The timing is rather crucial, especially when to jump from the boat onto the dock and to grab the right lines and put them on the right cleats. I hope this will just be a matter of time and getting used to it all, so that one day I will be able to do this in a more relaxed way. So we had to do the whole exercise twice, when we found out that the aft mooring buoys were beside the boat instead of behind the boat. Käringön itself was again pretty, with lots of little red boat houses built at the waterfront, just like in Fiskebäckskil. We wandered around town in the evening. There were a few narrow streets to connect the houses and further there were just little footpaths from house to house. On June 12th we sailed across the Kattegat from Sweden to Denmark on a reach in 4½ hours. The weather was great and Alegría was sailing very well. She is very light to steer and sailed sometimes even at a speed of 8.5 knots. We arrived in Skagen at quarter to five and guess who was there: Aquadraat with Andrea and Arjan. It was great to see them again and to share our experiences. In Skagen we rented bikes and cycled around to see every little corner in Skagen and old Skagen and visited several art galleries. We saw beautiful impressionist paintings from Krøyer and Ancher and also some sculptures. Typical for Skagen are the yellow brick houses with red roof tiles and white decoration around the edges. On June 14th we sailed to Saeby in windforce 6-7. Saeby is an old fishing town with lovely 17th century timber frame houses and an old church with many frescoes from the Middle Ages and a model square rigger hanging from the ceiling. Here our GSM dropped in the water, just when Marcel had pulled a little boy out of the water, who had capsized with his Optimist dinghy in the harbour. No more direct contact with family and friends. And sending e-mails turned out to be more problematic then foreseen. There were no facilities to plug in our laptop. We said good bye to Aquadraat, who were heading south to the Kiel canal and we would go westward through the Lymfjord. From June 16th to 21st we sailed through the Lymfjord, a waterway through Jutland, connecting the Kattegat with the North Sea. On June 16th we celebrated Marcel’s 40th birthday with fresh bread, a present from our neighbours, chocolate cake, a drink on an outdoor heated terrace and a nice dinner in a restaurant in Ålborg. In the Lymfjord we passed through 4 opening bridges and under 1 fixed bridge. Especially when passing the latter, it was exciting to see the mast go under the bridge, even though you know it is high enough. Looking from the deck it seems as if the bridge is too low. Most of the Lymfjord is very shallow. Most of the time we had to follow a rather narrow buoyed channel, which is deep enough (4m) for our boat (depth 2m). So, often Marcel would sail and I would cross off the buoys we had passed on the chart. One night, we arrived tired after following such a channel in Løgstør and we decided to go to sleep early. As we were just asleep, we woke up because of fireworks, just above our boat! In Fur the birth we choose for our boat was too narrow, so we had to park somewhere else after a bit of panic on my side. We rented bikes again and had a great trip around the island, looking for fossils along the NW shore and finding none except for in the geological museum. We rode through wonderful scenery with rolling hills, which was a good exercise for us. The harbour in Jegindø was too shallow for us. The charted 2.5 meter turned out to be 1.7 meter only. So, we had to sail on to Lemvig. Near the Oddesund bridge we saw a seal just sticking his head out of the water and then diving under again! Lemvig turned out to be a nice harbour with the best restaurant sofar, right at the dock where we moored. Our dinner there was gravad lax with asparragus, followed by Wolffish topped with shrimpmousse, followed by a desert of chocolate mousse with whipped cream in between thin wafers of crusty nut caramel! Of course we had good dinners on board as well, but every now and then it is so nice when you can go out for dinner and don’t have to dig to the bottom of the fridge or freezer to find what you want to eat. Our last stop in the Lymfjord just before heading out to the North Sea, was Thyborøn, an industrial harbour. We visited the tourist attraction, “Sneglehuset” or Shellhouse, which is completely decorated with shells. We had been closely monitoring the weather on our weatherfax and decided that June 22nd was the right day to head for Den Helder in Holland with NW winds force 5 decreasing to 3. This was the real test: nightsailing with just the two of us. To be sure we would be OK, we took pills against seasickness as the sea still looked rough. We did four hour shifts. Marcel took the shift from 11pm to 3 am, which were the only hours of darkness at this latitude. So I was lucky and could see sunset and sunrise. In the middle of the second night we crossed the shipping lane north of Holland. We were both awake for this exciting event. With help of the ship’s navigation lights, our binoculars and the radar we managed to cross safely. In the distance we could already see the light houses on the Dutch Wadden Isles. Near Den Helder, the wind dropped completely, and we decided to motor the rest of the distance to IJmuiden. We arrived there on the 24th of June around 3 pm. In the evening we had a meal in a Chinese Restaurant, and Marcel was so tired that he almost fell of his chair. But we had a great sail and all went well. From June 24th until July 9th we stayed in IJmuiden and had many friends and family visiting us to see the new boat. It was nice to see so many friends from Oman, who happened to be on leave in Holland. We were spoiled with presents. It was like Sinterklaas! Some friends had the opportunity to go out sailing with us. On the 8th of July we had a christening party for Alegría which was a great success. On July 9th we sailed to Scheveningen, accompanied by Jan Zonneveld. When we arrived, we were surprised by my mom and Wim Sonneveld who were waiving at the pier.