Before we leave Huizen behind some notable things we noticed when walking around the harbour – accompanied by Jay our dog, of course. This not only is the space we initially occupied but where asked to leave empty because its permanent berth holder would return that afternoon/evening. Now, when having a closer look at the ship that is the permanent berth holder, we discovered that the owner makes clear where his ship comes from by means of a sort of rebus: Huizen in English is simply ‘houses’. So he has got a picture of (one) house (= huis in Dutch) and makes clear we have to remove the ‘s’ and replace it by ‘zen’. Voila! Huizen.

Huizen was left on Tuesday the 28th of September at 10:30AM after a day's delay due to bad weather conditions on Monday. (We do no longer want a wind force above 3 on the Beaufort scale.) We approached the Stichtse Brug at half past eleven. This bridge connects the provinces of Flevoland and Noord Holland, carrying the A27. The bridge is admittedly not moveable. On the other hand, the vertical clearance is 13 meters (43 feet). Any ship, commercial ones included, pass the bridge uninterrupted. It separates the Veluwemeer (foreground) from the Eemmeer (background).

After passing the Stichtse Brug there is a rather big artificial island on the right hand side, macabre called De Dode Hond (‘the dead dog’). See https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Dode_Hond (only in Dutch, oh are we happy to have Google Translate!). This island still is a part of the Noord Holland province, while the lock-free (!) mouth of the river Eem (‘Eemmouth’), visible here and almost immediately on the starboard side after the island, is part of the province of Utrecht.

Before the river Eem was finally sailed into there’s was huge flock of swans visible on the right hand side. And a sign saying Laten Varen (‘let go’?? – or something). The meaning of this slogan eluded us – to be honest.

In the past (the Zuiderzee-era) navigating was not as simple as it is today. When approaching the Eemmouth from the sea, the trick was to see two bright lights in one line. We did that unconsciously - our tablet showed. That was just.....fun! (The two bright lights are still in working order, btw.)

We moored, again, close to Eemnes’ marina, still on de river Eem, at 12:37PM. For the exact spot: see week 15 (forgetfulness). This was the view on the 29th at 8:02PM. It was our plan to stay here 3 nights.

Because of the weather forecast -only Thursday the 30th was supposed to be a good day, weatherwise speaking- we indeed left on Thursday at 9:57AM. The weather on that day proved to be very good for cruising: not a lot of wind and clouds/sun in turn. We moored in Amersfoort, our wintering place for the 6th consecutive time, at 12:05PM. This is the exact spot where we are - again. It’s an over two year old picture, but it was too rainy this morning to make another one and this picture is absolutely representative, albeit that the trees are still in leaf at present. © Laurens Olieman