Welcome. Some friends asked me to make an extension to the website. Now there is a link to a map which shows where we where and where we are. Sometimes it was hard to find us on the map.

In Middelharnis 2003 started in the normal way. With fireworks. We celebrated newyear on board and remembered the good year we had.

January and February passed without big events. Middelharnis is the centre of the island and has everything we need. Many and good shops, boatyard, library, warm swimming pool and perfect bus connections. We know a few people in the village and enjoy being here. There are only a few live-aboards wintering here.

From time to time it's cold and the canal freezes up. But with our diesel stove heating is not a problem as far down as minus 8C. Below that it gets tricky. And we need to sail to the tap now and then to fill up our water tank. And that does not work while in the ice.

We travel through Holland to visit friends and parents. And we often have visitors on board as well.

Regular activities are doing things on board. Els got her knitting machine from the attic and is knitting socks and pullovers for us and the whole family. Unfortunately (or luckily enough because it is very bulky) we cannot take the machine while sailing because at sea she would rust away within a month.

We installed and commissioned our new kerosene cooker and did a lot of repairs. The list never gets shorter. When the weather warms up we can start doing things on deck.

Liesje is doing well. She is a real couch potato and hardly goes outside because she does not like the winter weather.

A real important issue at the moment is this years' planning. We had planned for Iceland but dropped that idea because of the bureaucratic hasle of bringing Liesje to the UK and Ireland which is still a nightmare for sailors. We simply don't need that.

Instead we decided to start learning spanish in Spain next winter. Therefore starting in Mai, we will sail down Western Europe's coastline and visit Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal to end up in the Cadiz region for the next winter. We hope that that is a tempting goal as a winter trip for some of you in order to visit us there.

Probably we will not return to Northern Europe in 2004 but either do a circuit in the Mediteranian or sail further south to Madeira, the Canary islands and the Cape Verde islands. We ordered charts from here to Gibraltar and Pilots as far as South America.

Now the winter is over. In April we had beautifull weather during weeks and spring started off with green trees and lots of small ducklings.

We were able to attack our outside maintenance list, partly high in the sky.

We transformed Grote Beer back from living boat to sailing boat. The knitting machine went back to its case, the books were sorted into our bookshelf, we bought paint and spares, cleaned the main diesel tank, got the sails back up and dusted off Grote Beer's outside, which was quite necessary after 6 month in the canal.

During the last month we had many visitors. Jasper returned from India, Bastiaan and Evert as well as many of our friends and relatives visited us. We did enjoy having so many visitors and hope to see some of you in Spain.

We have said goodbye to the many people we met in Middelharnis this winter and are now waiting for fair winds to carry us down the Belgian coast. Probably we will shorten our wait by doing a trail day or two in the Haringvliet.

Well, there were no fair winds as yet. It is the end of Mai now und up to now we only had southwesterly winds. We sailed along the Belgian coast, replenished our diesel tank low cost in Nieuwpoort, and then got stuck for 9 days in Boulogne sur Mer.

During this period Boulogne had a tidal range of 8.9 meters. To give you an impression, the right hand picture shows high tide and the left hand one low tide with the bottom of the locks 4 meter above water level. But the city of Boulogne had a lot to offer and the other waiting sailors in the harbour helped us shorten our (and their) time.

Next stop was Alderney with an intermediate stopover in the outer roads of Cherbourg. It was a tough night because the weather was nothing like the predictions. But we survived it and found a quiet place at anchor in the bay of Braye at Alderney, the most northerly Channel island. Alderney is a quiet island with the small town of St.Anne where everybody knows everybody. And friendly authorities. We had thick fog during a whole day which made it a perfect day to write a piece of internet site. We did a cycle tour over the whole island with Dutch sailing friends. It looks a bit like southwest England on a small scale.

Now we want to reach the coast of Bretagne. Today we are at anchor near Sark. Enjoy the nature, read, bake bread, upload the internet site.