Zierikzee 51:38.820N 003:55.401E

Pelagia
Frans & Sarah Toonen
Thu 1 May 2014 10:15
1st May 2014 1115h. Wind Southwesterly 3 during the night pretty much gone now, cloud cover 4/8th.

Decided to enter the Dutch inland waters at Roompot in the south of Holland. Roompot has a lock and fixed bridge over it, we need low tide to gives us enough clearance. The original Contest paperwork states that we need 19m clearance and an earlier entry via Roompot in 2011 we touched the bridge with our aerial when the recorded height was 20m. I told the lock keeper that we would wait outside for the 20m. He called us through when the height was 20.16m but it looked like we were going to hit the bridge so we waited for the next lock when the height was 20.55. [Note to self clearance is 20.5m].
Once inside we headed for Zierikzee as I knew it had a fuel pontoon but more importantly a good mussels restaurant. We did fill up with fuel first 350l at €1.54 ouch! Tank was full when we left Holyhead. This meant that we burned about 4½l per hour doing around 5kts, however the hull did get quite a bit of growth during the winter which slowed us down about ½ to 1 knot per hour. Hopefully a good clean in Medemblik will improve the performance a lot.
Now the mussels… wrong! It’s too early in the season for mussels, oh well next time.

After being at sea for 5 days with a complete stranger, we’re still talking. Zierikzee, Holland, first beer in 5 days.