Planning, planning

So slowly we are starting to get into gear and seriously consider options, at least for the delivery trip. Sometime between 27 May and 8 June we need to get Kalessin across the North Sea to IJmuiden and as far in the general direction of Germany as we can.

It is tempting to aim for somewhere within reach of Bremen airport as Ryanair does ridiculously cheap flights there to Stansted (down to as little as one cent per head, plus check-in of course). On the other hand they are ridiculously cheap because they are at horrible times of day, so easyJet from Schiphol might be a better option.

I spent yesterday afternoon looking at possible places to leave Kalessin, with many hours on the ever-helpful DeutscheBahn timetable and the Dutch transport site 9292. Naturally both of these include buses and ferries (and walking times) as well as trains. Favourites so far are Monnickendam (15km from Amsterdam and very friendly); Hoorn (direct trains to Schiphol); and Enkhuizen (station is almost in the marina) - all of these we know already. Then on the other side of the IJsselmeer in the Frisian canals we could go to Leeuwarden (pretty moorings and good trains) and Groningen (excellent connections to everywhere). The latter two only work if we take the inland standing-mast route. If we go round the outside, the stopping places are almost all islands, which are definitely not ideal for leaving Kalessin!

This morning I've been working out tide times for the Harwich to IJmuiden route. In 2009 it took us almost exactly 24 hours and is quite an easy passage, but is really dependent on a couple of days of confirmed settled weather.

I'm still waiting for delivery of both electronic and paper charts - we have some, but not all we need. Easter, Royal Wedding and May Day are all very lovely, but they seem to stop anybody from doing any work or delivering anything at all (except Amazon). Once we have these we can start to do a bit of further passage planning.