Category: Compagnon

I was downloading the photos from the previous 2 weeks so I could start writing this post, and was amazed at how much has happened in the last 2 weeks. We arrived in Grou to pick up the boat on June 4, and frantically spent 2 days cleaning, grocery shopping, and getting the boat ready for our first guests Kim and Mike. They arrived on June 6, and we spent 6 days here on the boat doing some cruising down to Sneek, and wandering back up a thin canal to Grou that required waiting for multiple bridges to raise as well as one bridge that was low enough we had to lower the windows and the mast to get under it. We delivered Compagnon back to the boatyard for a few other fixes while the 4 of us took advantage of being in Europe and we took a train to Berlin (well, it was more like multiple trains).

On June 6, Kim and Mike arrived in the afternoon quite tired after their long trip overseas. So, we hung out around the boat and on Tuesday, Mike (who is an engineer and can’t help himself) dove right into the electronics on the boat. David and Mike discovered that our batteries were dead (we were unaware of this, as we spend most of our time connected to a dock or the side of a canal). They went in search of batteries while Kim and I worked on our clients and the new company we’re building.

Once David returned, he also worked – ALWAYS doing his morning “Coffee and Stretch” at 4p (7a PST) (we call it “Wine and Stretch” from here).

We finally left for one of our favorite Frisian towns, Sneek, on Wednesday (see previous blog). It’s a short hop down the canal, and we were able to tie up in “downtown” Sneek, right next to the road. After a couple of lovely days there (and an incredibly delicious dinner at Mezzaluna), we decided to come back to Grou a different way and stay the night in Akkrum. Upon arriving in Akkrum, we discovered that it’s sort of like Tracy … full of RVs, full of people, lots of beer drinking and well… we thought we might be better off coming back to Grou (I’ll leave it at that).

We arrived back to Grou just in time to sit on the back deck of the boat and watch people dock

One of the pleasures of being here in Grou is sitting on the back deck of the boat watching boats motor by, or even better try to dock. This is better than Angel Island at high season. A lot of boat owners here simply do not know how to drive boats, and there are a lot of boats that are quite large. At 10.6m (about 36′), we’re on the “smaller” end for some of these, and it’s kind of hilarious watching people try to squeeze boats that are 2 times too big into some of these spots. Kim and I sat on the back deck and directed traffic because it was a super busy evening, and everyone was vying for a spot. We often saw full boats of people coming into a dock, and nobody had a line in their hand yet there were 4 cleats (“frogs” over here) to tie the boat to the dock.

Leeuwarden – The Provincial Capital of Friesland

On Saturday June 10 we took the 15 minute train ride to Leeuwarden, just to get out of the small town of Grou for the day. Leeuwarden is a 10th century town, and is the economic hub of Friesland. We can go by boat (David and I will likely go there next as of this writing), but we chose train this time since our boat was going back to the boatyard for a couple tweaks while we go to Berlin.

I like Leeuwarden. There’s a lot of things to do and good restaurants. Like a lot of Friesland, a lot of places here don’t take credit cards either… which makes it super important to always have a couple hundred Euro handy.

About the fountains… the eleven fountains correspond to the 11 cities on the Elfstedentocht (the ice skating race here when the canals are frozen). Each city has a fountain that was built by an internationally known artist.

Finally, after a hearty boat breakfast on Sunday, we packed and started to make our way towards Berlin.

Yes we are!

As I type this, we are sitting tied to the side of the canal in “downtown” Sneek in the Netherlands. Sneek (“Snits” in Frisian) has about 35k population, was founded in the 10th century, and is one of the 11 Frisian cities (also known as one of the cities of the Elfstedentocht). Sneek is also known for having the largest sailing regatta in Europe every summer, where 100k people invade the town. We won’t be here for that.

We’ve been on Compagnon for the last 10 days, and things are finally settling down. I’m getting up early and working a chunk of hours (this is a good thing as I’m keeping on top of Wicked Code as well as launching a new business with KimS). Compagnon is a really comfortable boat, even with another couple on it. We arrived to the boat yard to pick her up on Saturday, and immediately drove her to Grou, not knowing what we didn’t know at that point. Kim Stuart and Mike Maloney showed up on Monday afternoon in Grou, and we sat around for another couple of days in Grou until they were acclimated.

As it turns out, Mike is an engineer and David and he started in on some of the wiring and issues on the boat. We discovered on day #2 that the batteries were dead (they were over 5 years old). Thankfully, the chandlery in Grou had the batteries we needed, and they delivered them and took the old ones away. So glad that Europe returns the VAT you pay before you leave the continent.

The diesel heat works though we won’t need that the rest of the summer… the weather is better than California. Beautiful, dry, mid 70’s to 80’s, and sunny. No fires over here (sorry for New York). The boat is fueled (250L) and ready for cruising this summer, and we have a lot of water (300L) on board.

Today, we will head to Akkrum (tiny tiny town) for one more night before cruising back to Grou (best laundry and showers in the area). And on Monday, we take a train to Berlin for a few days with Mike and Kim, then they will go back to the US and we will be cruising north of Grou on our own for 3 weeks until Vince and Debby arrive.

Not much to report other than we actually have started cruising… always thought we would be sailing down the coast and around the world or something! But, I can definitely say that this lifestyle, at least for 3 months a year, suits us. Taking the “digital nomad” thing to a whole other level!

I did have an interesting thing happen earlier when I discovered that our main credit card has disabled our cards as of tomorrow and sent us new ones. We have a virtual mailbox in Seattle, so I’ve had the new cards FedEx’d to the Grou Marina. Small blip, but one more thing we had to figure out. It feels like it’s been a constant learning curve since we got here, and we are writing things down (especially if it has to do with the boat) so we don’t have to relearn everything over and over.