34 MAKE MY DAY - Plan: IJmuiden and turn left

Finally after 6 years planning, working and saving, we untied the lines at Amsterdam Marina. Our plan: IJmuiden and turn left.. go south. We will see how far we will come and how it goes this trip. Maybe we can pass Calais. It went so well that we continued and went for another night towards Dieppe. Before Dieppe we decided that it was still good that we will go yet a third night, heading for Cherbourg. Some exercise with longer passages for crossing the Bay of Biscay and later the Atlantic On our way to Cherbourg we heard a lot of securité broadcasts on the VHF for a gale warning the next day. We turned on our motor to increase our speed and tried to get in the harbor before the weather turns bad. That was a little mistake, we didn’t watch for the current in front of Cherbourg, so it turned out that we were in the middle of a big washing machine. Everything what we didn’t store well, it flew through our boat from left to right and front to back. We had 15 to 20 knots of wind from behind and current of 4 knots from the front. Our speed was 1,5 knots with our motor running hard. Our track was not straight ;) Lessons learned. Before leaving store everything well and check currents. In the end we safely entered Cherbourg and stayed for 2 cold, rainy days with thunder and lighting We didn’t explore that much in Cherbourg and left after 2 days, to go further south. But that you will see in the next episode! Music: Solitary ZEBRA & Troy and Paula Haag