After 31 hours crossing the south-western part of the North Sea, most of the crew jumped around like happy rabbits on the green grass under some shady trees when the Sea Stallion moored in a part of Den Helder’s big industrial harbour in Holland.
The crew had been at the oars against the stream for the last couple of hours of the run into harbour, so they were well warmed up. The mooring ropes went round the bollards at 3 o’clock. We need at least one night’s stay in Holland because the forecast is very light, changeable or no wind at all over a large part of the North Sea.
The 122 nautical miles from the English east coast at Lowestoft were spent in bright sunshine or under the Milky Way’s twinkling sea of stars, with quite a few oil-drilling platforms looking like giant insects watching us pass. Forgotten was the 12-day wait in Lowestoft due to the prevailing easterly wind.
The trip over to Holland was exceptionally varied sailing once we got started at 8 o’clock yesterday morning. The wind was up to 15 metres/sec. For some hours seasickness threatened, but the wind culminated in the afternoon and steadily dropped for several hours; the night saw mostly light wind from the south.
By six o’clock this morning, the Sea Stallion was gliding gently towards land with almost no wind and a speed of 2 knots. So the sail into Den Helder lasted four or five hours and ended with some tacking out in front of the harbour while we also rowed to speed things up.
For the 16 new hands who signed on in Lowestoft, it was their first trip. Eight of them had never sailed with the Sea Stallion before. The whole crew agreed that it had been an outstanding sailing experience.
“It was good to see how quickly the new crew got into the routines and other work. I thought it was great and last night it struck me how good we actually are at taking care of each other in these rather special and demanding circumstances. It’s almost as if we were here together for a social event rather than the voyage itself. Today I am a really happy man”, says project leader, Preben Rather Sørensen.