Sail
Last Wednesday I went to the opening of Sail in Amsterdam. The company I work for had chartered a partyship to take a selection of my colleagues and our customers straight into the Sail armada. It was a wonderful day, not in the least because of the beautiful weather.
In the morning we sailed out to pick up the Tall Ships in the harbour of IJmuiden. Actually not that much sail is used during Sail since using the ship's engine is mandatory. Still a very pretty sight to see all those ships in the morning light. The atmosphere was very relaxed as we made our way to IJmuiden. I had a few chats with the customers, one of which turned out to know quite a lot about ships since he had been sailing for the better part of his life. Lucky him that he got selected to be on board. Not all of our guests made it to the boat in time, so some had to be ferried to our ship later on. Not everyone was impressed with the armada though. These swans could not be bothered to move as the ships passed.
When the armada reached IJmuiden all the ships turned around and waited for the Tall Ships to start their journey to Amsterdam. Most of the ships in the armada were assigned to sail along with a particular Tall Ship. Our assigned ship was one of the last to sail out, so we got to see most of the ships pass us by before we left for Amsterdam ^_^ It's amazing to see that so many ships can sail close together without anything going wrong. This was one of the unusual moments where heavy traffic doesn't lead to road rage, although sometimes a horn was blown to prevent a ship getting crushed by a bigger ship.
So after we saw Tolkien, Sinterklaas and even a train pass by, we headed back to Amsterdam ourselves. It was an event I thoroughly enjoyed and I hope to do this again one day.
Transportation and traffic jams sucked. I don't want to waste many words on that, but suffice it to say that it took me two and a half hours to get from the docks to the trainstation.. and did I mention I was sunburnt and it was still rather hot?
In the morning we sailed out to pick up the Tall Ships in the harbour of IJmuiden. Actually not that much sail is used during Sail since using the ship's engine is mandatory. Still a very pretty sight to see all those ships in the morning light. The atmosphere was very relaxed as we made our way to IJmuiden. I had a few chats with the customers, one of which turned out to know quite a lot about ships since he had been sailing for the better part of his life. Lucky him that he got selected to be on board. Not all of our guests made it to the boat in time, so some had to be ferried to our ship later on. Not everyone was impressed with the armada though. These swans could not be bothered to move as the ships passed.
When the armada reached IJmuiden all the ships turned around and waited for the Tall Ships to start their journey to Amsterdam. Most of the ships in the armada were assigned to sail along with a particular Tall Ship. Our assigned ship was one of the last to sail out, so we got to see most of the ships pass us by before we left for Amsterdam ^_^ It's amazing to see that so many ships can sail close together without anything going wrong. This was one of the unusual moments where heavy traffic doesn't lead to road rage, although sometimes a horn was blown to prevent a ship getting crushed by a bigger ship.
So after we saw Tolkien, Sinterklaas and even a train pass by, we headed back to Amsterdam ourselves. It was an event I thoroughly enjoyed and I hope to do this again one day.
Transportation and traffic jams sucked. I don't want to waste many words on that, but suffice it to say that it took me two and a half hours to get from the docks to the trainstation.. and did I mention I was sunburnt and it was still rather hot?