Angelasails.com

“My name is Angela, an experienced skipper and I would really like to do the delivery Enkhuizen 🇳🇱 to Orust 🇸🇪”

Long story short, I make the cut and last Sunday I step on board a Najad 395 as a first mate. The Skipper (H) and another crewmember (K) are already on board. The fourth member never shows.

5pm that same day we leave the marina.

We are somewhat in a rush because we want to make the weatherwindow to enter Cuxhaven.

Eventhough there are some small issues with this (new) boat I have no worries at all about our safety. Assisted by the engines we do a nice 7,5-8kn across the IJsselmeer, onto the Waddenzee, onto the North Sea.

When I wake up for my shift at 5.45am I thought it strange that we are doing only 4.3kn and I soon find out why: around 4.30am that morning we ran out of fuel! The weird thing is that the meters still tell us that the tanks are full..

So instead of pressing on to Cuxhaven we choose Lauwersmeer as our refuge. We plan to enter under sail which soon becomes a huge challenge due to the current and the wind dropping to 3kn.

We eventually make it into the marina thanks to a little private gust of wind just under shore.

Not long after we are moored up N. tells us he will not continue the trip with us because he does not feel comfortable with the boat and the weather ahead.

H. and I decide to continue nontheless and at 4pm we head out to sea again. All fueled up. The watches will be a bit harder (3 on 3 off) but we are confident that we will manage.

The sailing turns out to be awesome and in the middle of the North Sea we even get a new crew member, albeit she is very exhausted.. Right when I was thinking “don’t go inside” she found a resting place behind a pillow in the saloon

In the meantime waves are building but the boat is behaving nicely. We make it into Cuxhaven in the early morning of tuesday and our newest crewmember sees that as a good moment to leave us. Not much later we are treated with 38 knots of wind about halfway to the locks of the Kiel canal and truth to be told: I am having a blast!

In Kiel we decide to spend the night on a dock because of the wind prediction that night. After a very nice and well deserved sleep we leave at 10.30am with 20 knots NW wind and 9-12 feet waves. About 1,5 hour out I notice water dripping from the ceiling onto the instrument panel and on the sofa in the saloon.

We do not worry about our safety but we do worry about the boat which just came from the HISWA and is still looking for an owner. A few phonecalls later confirms our toughts and we head back to Kiel. We need to keep damage as little as possible.

We soon find out the water most likely is coming from the mast and this will probably be an easy fix.

We decide that H. takes the ferry to Gothenburg and makes his way to Southampton for another delivery to Sweden on Sunday and that I stay behind waiting for less winds (saturday?) to bring this boat to Orust.

Who would have tought that just yesterday evening I passed underneath the Kiel bridge to the locks as a first mate and just this afternoon I am passing over the same bridge (visiting Kiel) as a skipper!

Never a dull moment as a delivery skipper