#seasthefuture Scotlands International Marine conference

Well what a wierd and wonderful few days i have had. Now if you have been following my blogs , you will know that Petra met her brother Johan in Hellevoetsluis[ pronounced Helli voet slous] to bring back Mark and Lal. That happened and we all went out for an indian to celebrate .
Johan was to get the ferry back and "tada"  plan executed to perfection and brought to a successful end.
But this is us , so no. Not to plan.

Silly [ and i am being polite ] Johan s Dutch ID card was out of date, and he knew. The dutch customs also knew and were perfectly fine with it. Fill in a form get anew one" ta dum."
Stena don't like out of date ID cards and wont let you on the ferry with one. Contact  Dutch embassy and yes no bother new ID card in 4 to 8 weeks.or take him back the way he came in..

NOOOOoOOOOoooo. Well he has a job and a life . So Petra borrowed a boat from lovely Sarah, called Palmera . Its a Westerly [33ft i think]. Very nice , lovely boat. And seeing as it our fault he came over in the first place. I went as crew.
Back to Hellevoetsluis . I did say i wanted to go back didn't i. So of we went on tuesday back to Holland. 20 hrs  approx sail, go through Stellandam sluis across to Hellevoetsluis. Drop Johan of spend the night, sleep have a shower and leave the next day. Yet another plan that didn't go to plan. We got there and i sill am not keen on night sailing . Tired looking forward to getting through the sluis to get a shower, but no the sluis is getting maintainence done and won't be open till 5pm and its only 11 am.
Johans allright he just buggers of back to his car. Petra and i are left to figure stuff out. No point going to Hellevoetsluis for such a short time. Need diesel . Too tired to think . SLEEP.. Get up and end up going through the sluis to the diesel pumps next the marina.. Pumps shut at 12.30 midday. Oh my god.Fine back through sluis .On our first wander we found and paid for some little milk cups for tea. Because  greedy Johan drank everybit of the milk even though he had been asked by me to leave some for our tea..
Next door to this wonderful cafe / yummy fish shop was a chandlers and diesel pump. Yea.
I have to say something about the fish cafe. Petra and i had a prawn rissole and fries [ twice cos we went for lunch today] The fish is amazing and i sat and watched a local pick up a fish by its tail

and swallow it almost whole. Its a normal thing to do in Holland but eating a raw herring covered in raw onion seems abit brave to me .The fish market which is suppled by local fishermen is right next door so you can't get fish much fresher than that.. Staff were lovely , which is why i took a photo..

We were sitting discussing the fact we were going to have to humpf the diesel a very long way . When a workman in a van turned up and started to do abit of fixing . We looked at the van , looked at the man, looked at the petrol station looked at each other and i got elected to go and talk the poor man in to being our knight in shining armour. I explained and he said yes . He saved us alot of sweat and as we were still knackered.. we were chuffed to bits and very grateful..

Well we  left to head back 1pmish thursday .This is a picture of the lovely Palmera.
The barge in the background, is used to suck up the sand to keep the main channel clear. The mooring we are on is a 3 day free mooring. I am telling you this as the sign cannot be seen from approach. Just incase any of you happen to go this way. Nice bit. Sometimes abit busy as the fishing harbour is across from it .

 Petra has certainly earned her wonderwoman status this week.
Holland - Walton-Walton - Holland. Holland - Walton .          I learned a
great deal from her and her sailing is brilliant . We sailed a good part of the way back with Palmeras Genoa and then motor sailed the rest of the way. Averaging 6 knots.I did a bit myself but struggled to keep the sail full and follow the GPS plotter at the same time. And i am not keen on night sailing but did try to motorsail while Petra changed  CDs etc. Which  ended up a bit laughable. I would struggle to keep on the boat road , get it and just before Petra came back screw it all up again.
We got back in really good time, 18 hours,    How do you get a whole container ship harbour to disappear in front of your eyes . Fog. It came down just as we were approaching and were left going" where are the buoys". That was abit of a scary moment. But wonderwoman did it again.

Now we are back , tired disorientated.  It took a lot of shampoo and conditioner to get my hair,salt and tangle free.And nowfeeling abit more human, i feel quite proud of myself that i managed to stay awake this time Well at least till dawn came in slowly .It wasn't till Petra asked me to help roll up the genoa sail that i realised i had been napping.How she does it is beyond me. Playing Tina Turner and Mel C at top volume in the middle of the night while passing the largest windfarm i have ever seen certainly helped. and getting clabbered in salt spray also wakened up the brain cells.
But where  i was a walking talking zombie ,Petra was cheerful and instructive and bloody hillarious at times . I had to fight the anxious nerves that were building up , because it was bloody dark and i could hear the sea rather than see it. Did see 2 fantastic shooting stars and the milky way was in full swing. and i wouldn't have got to see them if i had of been tucked up in bed.

We had an interesting hitchhiker when on our way to holland , we were passing through the windfarm. a little bird that my masters degree in Zoology first with honours wonderful daughter will be able to tell me, what it is. I thought  Bunting , or warbler.He was in a poor state cold and very tired. He stayed with us the whole night till dawn , when 10 miles of the coast of Holland ,he took his leave. There were worried noises coming from everybody, but he came back a little later and landed on Palmeras bow. I dont know when he left , but i did get the impression he had done it before. So thanks to Sarah lending her boat , a little innocent birdy far from land got a lift and was saved.                                                                                                               The radar picture is of the windfarm as we went through it. Handy bit of kit especially in the night time.i would appreciate it if container vessels could make there nav lights a little larger, for us little folk looking at them and not surround them with loads of little white lights that blur out the nav lights.
Had a good time with Petra , nice and relaxed . learned alot and just bloody amazed as always with her fantastic attitude to everything she does. I know she will be exhausted and should be after all she has done this week but i hope she is really proud of herself . A hell of a lot of people would just not even have tried to do what she has done and even if they had , they wouldn't have done its so well.
And a big thankyou to her for being ever so patient with the quite often a ditzy blonde who accompanied her for the trip..Even though the ditzy blonde did come in useful this time.