Sunday, April 29, 2012

Rust

What seawater does to metal!

No kayakking today.

If it's not one thing it's another. The pressure on the foot braces in Theo's boat must be pretty heavy. The screws are tearing holes in the hull. Hopefully the repairs will hold tomorrow on the North Sea. We're heading for the beach at Noordwijk for an afternoon on the waves. The weatherman/ woman/ person promises a dry day on tomorrow, the Queen's Birthday. Cold and cloudy. But the partying will not be daunted.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Darker

  
The weather today was a  bit cold, a bit windy.  a bit cloudy, a bit sunny. Not bad enough to not kayak, but to be perfectly honest not  good enough to get excited about. It was however time for a workout on the water. We were out on the van Cleef quai by seven this evening. It started to drizzle after 20 minutes or so. No bother. We paddled out of the wind, warming up, and enchanted by the soft almost fluffy green of the early spring leaves. How many color greens are there to the spring? Birds were singing, chirping and peeping; two black meerkoet ran across the water and came to a screeching stop just in front of my bow.

In the dark

Coming back from the Westeinderplas via kleine poel
This weekend we DIDN'T kayak. At all. Theo made a vegetable garden. Snap peas, eggplant, pepper, zucchini, lettuce, strawberries, a fig, flowers and herbs to keep the bugs at bay. But it took longer than planned and we decided to paddle on Monday evening instead of Sunday afternoon as we had hoped.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Day trip from Muiderberg

Erik Oosterbaan from the Haarlem's Kayak Club sent a mail last week that he was planning a kayak trip on the Markermeer (this was a part of the Zuiderzee before the Afsluitdijk was built to close this huge sea arm off from the North Sea.) We don't like to miss any opportunity to kayak on big expanses of water so Theo and I decided to join Erik and our other clubmates. The day started out cold (neoprene gloves and "moffen"), a bit windy 3-4Bft but dry. We experienced a bit of anxiety just before leaving when C. discovered that she had lost the small dry bag with "everything" in it - money, creditcards, bank card, keys, cell phone. It took a while before we gave up searching and as a result C. called her husband to ask him to pick her and her kayak up. After which she proceded to have all her cards blocked by the bank.Back to the startoff spot. Muider-beach. We headed for the emergency harbor (no panic!) of Almere and found a delightful place on floating gardens to enjoy our thermos coffee and sandwiches.



 After lolling around out of the wind and in the sun for a while Erik insisted that we head for Pampus Island smack in the middle of the Markermeer and then change course toward Muiden in the hope of finding a cafe with cappucino e.d. We paddled slowly into the shelter of the harbor, only to be greeted by another kayak group from Heerhugowaard - OSSA. We chatted and generally caught one other up on kayak news and other tidbits.
Erik is calling C.
We continued our search for the ultimate cappucino, drifting past the Queen's sailboat - the Green Dragon, and a chique "café came into view. KNRZV the Royal Dutch Rowing and Sailing Club - the royal family's own yachtclub. As you can see we installed ourselves on the terras and ordered what turned out to be one of the best cappucino's this side of Milan.
Reluctantly we climbed back into our boats, and with the wind in our backs finished the trip arriving back at Muider-beach around four in the afternoon. A great day and an unexpected trip.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Het Twiske

The Haarlems canoe club opens the canoe and kayak season with a flat water kayak trip. This year in the Twiske.