The weekend of 6 and 7 August proved to be a bit of a disaster. The journey to IJmuiden from Zurich was marred with traffic jams in Germany (in the middle of the night, when we were supposed to have been nicely tucked away in a hotel) resulting in a late arrival in IJmuiden. The weather was forecast to be OK but thundery storms were presented instead. When early afternoon arrived the decision should have been to remain nicely in port, but to Scheveningen we decided to go, 25 miles to the south along the North Sea coast.
It was an OK trip, but the weather wasn't great, with Struana close reaching into the wet westerly wind gusting to 20 knots at times. We arrived too late in Scheveningen to still have a degree of enjoyment.
On Sunday the wind had backed slightly to south south west so it was a dead run back to IJmuiden. But by this time the wind had picked up to 25 knots or a good force 6 so on a full main we powered back to our temporary home port, reaching speeds of 12 knots as the waves started to build. It was nothing out of the ordinary but for a first experience it was quite hairy... These downwind tracks with a building sea are not dissimilar to riding a bike, you've got to keep steering to prevent things from swerving out of control.
During our debrief, reflecting on the weekend and the rather challenging weather we had had three weeks earlier, the seeds for hiring a truck and moving Struana to the Med in 2012 were sown...
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