Around de Kreupel

We started off without a clear goal on May 18th, 2019 at 9:40am out of Andijk with very little wind, 1-2 out of N. Weather was fantastic with around 18°C initially, then going up to 24°C. We headed NE - 40° for almost as de Kreupel, initially thinking we could make it to Enkhuizen. We soon realized the wind is dying so we decided to go for a circumnavigation of the island de Kreupel instead. We had to fight the light breeze coming from NE and zig-zagged until the SE corner of the island - which turned out not to be an island at all, but rather a collection of small islands declared as national reservation for birds and marked with 'Entry prohibited' on the map. As we got closer to the islands, the biting flies became a real nuisance, they were all over, green and red- depending on if they already got their lunch or not. We inched forward between the island and the cardinal signs making a shallow spot east of the island, and to our surprise we found out some boats actually sailed into the reservation/group of islands. Dan took a nap and Annette was busy with preparing lunch, so i had to tack myself a couple of times to manover through the nature channel. After passing the North cardinal buoy, we changed the course to NW to avoid entering a breeding area North of de Kreupel. Once we got to the NW corner of the area, we hove to and we started our coffee break - bad timing as it turned out, since the wind started blowing 4-5 and a lot of boats started coming from the south with us as a clear target. Even hove to, we still made 1.5kn SoG. So we decided to have our coffee break while on the way, we set course to SW and enjoyed a great sail with the wind. The waves also started building. At the port entrance, Annette took over the tiller, started the engine and kept the boat in the wind while i took both sails down and we got into the berth at 6:30pm.

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