Sailing the North Sea
Today we made it back home after a nice week of sailing. Our travels followed several little islands in the North Sea. The weather had everything from no wind at all, to a full out storm with 10 beaufort, which had us grounded in the habour in Spiekeroog for 2 days.
It had been more than 10 years that I sailed these waters. Some islands changed drastically, even whole habours had been moved to new locations, on other islands the time seemed to have passed without any changes. What hasn´t changed at all is me being drawn to the sea. I used to spend whole summers, months at a time crossing zigzag through the North and Baltic Seas. If it would not be for certains commitments this summer, I easily could have given in to the call of the North once again and just kept on sailing.
Long distance mushing and long distance sailing have a lot in common. While the rythm of the North Sea is dictated by the tides, the mushing rythm is set by the run and rest scedule of the dogs. Both being in a 6 hr time pattern. During both, sailing and mushing, I feel very volitale to the elements of nature and I have a great deal of respect for mother nature. While a 10 beaufort wind can make a short 5 mile trip from one island to the next to living hell, the same counts for a storm going over Eagle Summit . Even the speed is very similiar, 6 knots versus about 8 miles per hour on dogteam. Both activities are equally addictive to me. On saturday is Iditarod sign-up and I already wonder why I am not there to sign up again. Instead I will tour southern europe to give 2 more slide-show presentations about the Yukon Quest and Iditarod.
Happy trails and have a great summer.
Cheers Sebastian
Sab
