Lemmer to Urk

After our three nights in Sneek we had planned to spend one night in Sloten before returning to our homeport of Lemmer.   The forecast wasn't brilliant, but we were going anyway and would see how things panned out.   It was grey and overcast and once we had cleared the shelter of the town, we had the pleasure of a good 20 knots on the nose with rain.   Nonetheless, we carried on with our plan and approached one of the nature moorings just South of Sloten. This was a repeat of the fun we had at Adam Island and again had to heave the boat upwind on the warps until she was secure on the pontoon.  Half and hour of effort, but we got there eventually.   Lunch was leftover hot chicken pasta and was excellent - just what we needed on a day like today.  

Two hours later it was still blowing and WindFinder was predicting 30 knots.   The pontoon, in our opinion, was a bit rickety and the silly little rings to which we were attached were already beginning to pull out of the semi-rotten timbers so at 1620 we made the decision to clear off back to Lemmer.   By 1730 the breeze had eased somewhat but squally showers remained.   On the approach to Lemmer we could see a thick black line squall so reduced the revs to 1000 to allow that mess to blow through and as we arrived at our berth only light rain remained but better still, barely a breath of wind.   We calmed ourselves down  (and warmed ourselves up) with a Hibiki for the Nav and a Whiskey Mac for the Skip.   

For our trip out of Lemmer we couldn't have asked for better weather - a blue sky and almost no breeze; maybe pushing F2 on the Beaufort scale.

Lemmer, with a display of ex-lifeboats including an old RNLI vessel.

There were a lot of vessels clearing out of the town and onto the Ijsselmeer, no doubt to take advantage of the beautiful late summer weather, so it took us about 40 minutes to get through the bridges and lock out of Frisian waters.

Locking out (up!) of Lemmer in to the Ijsselmeer

Looking back towards the town

Locking out of Friesland is a rise of less than a metre; not much, but holding back an awful lot of water...

It was great to be out on open water once more.

The open waters of the Ijsselmeer

We increased the revs to 2000 to give the engine a good blast and a boat speed of 7 knots.

Steaming along

Two hours later we were in the outer harbour in Urk and moored up by 1415.

Moored in Urk

These are really good solid high quality moorings with built-in electricity and water.

We took a stroll around and onto the beach in the late summer sun.

We ate out tonight at 't Achterhuis - 60 metres from our mooring and a 1.3km walk through the town.   The place was packed.  From our table we had the interesting sight of a fleet of UFOs coming into land:

UFOs over Urk

… and were treated to a magnificent sunset:

/Rich