Bruinisse
Saturday 27th June
As expected, we were awake early and after talking to the Harbour Master, readied ourselves to leave on the 10 am bridge opening out of the marina. We headed out with a good 5 minutes to spare before the main rail bridge at Dordrecht opened and we were off – next destination, Bruinisse on the Grevelingen Meer.
Now we were on our own; just the two of us and our charts. No bridges or locks now until the Volkerak-sluizen. The Oude Mass is very busy and we had to turn to port at a major junction into Dordtsche Kil. Chris thought it was like crossing the M25! The tide was against us for the next 5 miles so a little bit slow.
Because of the wind direction, we remained under engine until we entered the Volkerak. Once there, the wind had increased into the mid-teens and up went the sails, slightly reefed in, and off went the engine and we flew along at around 6 knots with a slight tidal push. That’s more like it, we said. Before we knew it, we were passing Willemstad. Once around the corner the sails had to come in and we were tying up to wait for the next lock. We joined half a dozen other boats going through and didn’t disgrace ourselves tying up to the wall (practice makes perfect). Once out of the lock, we had two more locks to go through before Bruinisse. We went through these without problem and, arriving at the marina in Bruinisse, and were greeted by the Harbour Master with his IPad allocating us with details of our berth for the next two nights. Our berth was a box mooring with finger pontoon and we tied up nicely with just the tiniest bit of help from one of our Dutch neighbours.
Our stay at Bruinisse was to catch up on laundry, scrub the boat, etc and for Carole to get a swim and we managed to do all these things. Note that the water temperature is still under 19 degrees, so is still cool for this time of year.
Sunday 28th June
Bruinisse marina was a good marina and no doubt it gets very busy in the summer holidays as it has been well planned for families. It has a big barbecue area, playground and even two shallow paddling pools for the little ones with a sandpit in between. Its supermarket, though not cheap, had a good variety including fresh bread and croissants and fruit and vegetables. Its restaurant looked good, but expensive, so we took a stroll away from the marina to see what local restaurants could offer. We passed a very well kept holiday village before we reached a restaurant and this turned out to be just what we wanted for our lunch out, although we ended up eating cheese croquettes instead of veal ones because the chef made a mistake. We enjoyed our walk back and stopped for a few minutes by the jetty to watch a group of children having fun, racing the crabs they had caught earlier. After Carole’s swim, we checked out our charts for tomorrow’s sail to Port Zelande and had a game of cards before heading to our beds.