After a long journey from Iceland, having crossed many miles in the last 4 months and “winter” conditions upon us, we felt a sense of accomplishment. Though we still hadn’t arrived to our final destination, we had at least made it to France, which was our plan. We still had a way to go but in a way we felt as though “we made it!”
We arrived in Nieuwpoort, Belgium at night and had picked this place because it was suggested by friends of friends, who, to our knowledge, knew we were an engineless sailing vessel. They were also sailors so we took their suggestion and picked Nieuwpoort over the other ports in Belgium. As luck has it when we were at the entry to the Yser river which flows into the North Sea at Nieuwpoort, the tide was ebbing and it was upwind. There was a 2 knot current and wind was light, about 10 knots but constantly shadowed by buildings along the river.
