The plan was simple.
We wanted to visit Neeltje Jans park which was on the shore and we were anchoring. As usual, we took our dinghy to the shore.
But the shore was nothing like a sandy beach!Big, slippery building blocks, full of grass and mud, perfect for a skilled rock climber…which I am not!
I tried to climb up but I failed miserably, ending with both of my feet in the water and almost my whole body if Jelle didn’t catch me on time! Jelle tried first and he did manage to climb up and help me too and we eventually managed to get to the top and also drag our dingy and tie it against the wild grass.
Looks safe, right?
We walked through a picturesque forest to reach the Neeltje Jans Park. The park was absolutely beautiful and we had such a great time, albeit quite bad weather!
We learned about the flood of 1953, we had a “hurricane experience”, we even watched sea lions and seals shows!
The shows were amazing, but this crazy day was far from over!
We returned back to the “shore” only to discover that our boat was drifting away!!!! We had not left enough anchor line, so our anchor was not holding well in this stormy weather. As if this was not enough, the tide was low and it was almost impossible to set our dinghy on the water without damaging it!
Thankfully, another boat was anchoring close to us, the captain showed what happened and rushed over to us with his own dingy! He helped Jelle to place our dingy back to the water and both of them motored to our boat!
Meanwhile, I was still stuck in this slippery wall, with rain falling hard on me and wind making matters worse.
Jelle with the help of our lovely neighbour sailed Libra back to its original spot and set the anchor straight this time. He then jumped in the dingy and rowed his way back to me.
In the meantime, I had managed to go as low as possible in this nightmare of a wall, but the last building blocks were more slippery than ever and Jelle’s constant yell of “Jump! Jump!!” did not help his case at all.
After some consideration and lots of fear, I made an attempt to jump to the dingy which would fail miserably if it wasn’t for Jelle’s quick reflexes!
Needless to say, I got wet once more but none of that mattered anymore, because we were rowing back to our beautiful Libra, steady this time around and with the heater on.
Scariest day ever!!!