In Gouda Holland, sat in a bar about to watch Holland v Australia. The town is orange Gouda is a great little town with some fantastic buildings.we visited the big church to see the stained glass windows, they are 400 hundred years old. A big cheese market was on today. We are moving on in the morning towards Amsterdam. The town was quite for the England match.

Only another four miles today but not the easiest,first we found the tide to be stronger than expected. Then the big road bridge that should have opened regularly didn't so we had to wait around for 2 hours, there was nowhere to tie up so we went back about a mile and found a large steel post to tie too. We then had to wait another hour to get into the very small marina. The reason for staying at this marina was so we could visit the world famous windmills of kin...

We left Willemstad at lunch time, had a hard job getting out from behind all the Gin palaces. Only 17 nm to go to Dordrecht. Sailing for about half way before moving in to a narrow canal with lots of commercial traffic, some of it very big and very close. On arriving at Dordrecht we had to pass under a lifting rail bridge, it opens at 12 mins past the hour for about 2 mins. It will not wait!! The entrance to the yacht haven was through a tiny lifting bridge, once...

A short trip today, 3 nm. Just through the lock with another bridge, even less clearance 18 m. Then into the attractive formally fortified old town of Willemstad. We wanted to get in early as it gets very busy at weekends. There is a choice of marina or the old town harbour. We chose the later, we were directed to a space on the wall. We had made a fender board before leaving uk, this is a must here, as the wall slopes away and has large wooden posts about 18" sq...

Left at 08.30 just as the wind started to fill in, sunshine and light winds forecast for the day. We sailed out of the Veerse Meere into the Oosterchelde via a very large automated lock. We had to make to the north for about 8nm this was dead to wind in about 9 to 11 knots of wind, we had about 4 or 5 tacks before we we were able to turn and enjoy a free wind that stayed with us for the rest of the day. Our route took us through the keeten Mestgat then into the G...