The crews of Wanderers 318. 1038, and 198, from Devon, Dorset and Hampshire respectively, met as planned at Dover docks on 20^th June to catch the noon ferry to Dunkerque and to embark on a ground-breaking and record-making WCOA cruise. In the 25 year history of the association, this was the to be the first  wanderer event outside the UK and the longest cruising event ( 6 days sailing and 120 miles sailed) ever undertaken by Wanderers. Fortunately, with the current chair and vice-chair, the designer’s daughter and founder chairman of the WCOA on board and out of the country, the anticipated coup in their absence, plotted by Philip Meadowcroft, failed to materialise. 

After  an uneventful motorway journey via Belgium and the ‘polders route’ through the Netherlands the Wanderer convoy, led by David and Jill’s  campervan and its trusty satnav, rolled in to Heeg in southern Friesland at around 9.00 pm, some 265 miles from Dunkerque. As we approached the village we were directed by signs bearing the familiar Wanderer logo, kindly erected by Ton Jaspers, Dutch Wayfarer guru, who was a mine of information and helpful source of advice during both our advance planning, upon our arrival and during the parts of the week when he was able to join us on the water. 

Southern Friesland is a magnificent area for small boat sailing with large lakes connected by canals offering a variety of routes. Significantly larger than the Norfolk Broads, the area is really well organised for sailing, and small sailing craft require no licence. On Ton’s advice, we based ourselves at the small, beautifully kept, municipal marina at Heeg where we able to camp on the grass adjacent to the moorings and slipway. Soon after arrival our tents were pitched, including Tim’s boat tent on ‘Joshua Slocum’ which for this first night he ‘launched’ on to the grass. 

The sun started shining the next morning and did so for the next seven days and T-shirts, shorts and sun-tan cream were the order of the day with wet / dry suits and foul weather gear all unused. After establishing the week’s routine of a leisurely open-air breakfast, we admired Ton’s well equipped Wayfarer, in particular its proper jib reefing spar and launched the boats into the marina. Very conveniently, they were not to come out of the water until the afternoon before our departure.

Soon we were following Ton out onto the open waters of the Hegemeer  a very long mere which, where it narrows at its south western end, opens onto the Ijsselmeer. In gentle winds we made our way to one of the many Marrekrite moorings, places in picturesque natural settings where you are free to stop and land; this one in a sheltered bay on Langehoekspolle island. The lunch stop gave us an opportunity to start looking at some of the local sailing craft. As well as a surprising number of magnificent restored sailing barges, there are abundant immaculate steel sailing yachts, built along traditional lines with lee boards and gaff rigs. On a smaller scale, there are numerous ‘falcons’ which are open keelboats about 18’ long, with sails, outboards and frequently a camping tent. They are readily available to hire, often taken by groups of students who sail between the numerous small harbours. 

The afternoon’s sailing was thirsty work and Ton guided us to Gaastmeer where we tied up by a bridge next to a café selling cold beer, the first of several we were to discover during the week! It was a fairly gentle sail back to Heeg before an exploration of the village, a chance to sample a local delicacy, raw herring, followed by fish and chips at a waterside café.  

Ton had to leave us to go back to work and we spent the next four days in a pattern of an unhurried departure when the breeze filled in at about 11.00, sailing through a succession of linked waterways and lakes, through manned lift bridges that opened to let us through, lunch on the grass by the water, village destinations with cold beer and sailing back to Heeg in the evening sunshine, sometimes not returning until 8.00 pm. 

We drifted south to the picturesque village of Sloten with a lively beat back across a choppy Slotemeer. En route, we encountered our first lifting bridge at Woudsend. Passage involved waiting close to the bridge until its traffic light turned green and a charge by the waiting boats to get through in the limited time before the bridge closed again. This waiting area was a constrained space in full view of the patrons of the waterside café next to the bridge who had a grandstand view of the resulting marine mayhem. Sailing through  this bridge was clearly inadvisable so sails were dropped and outboards started. Tim had no outboard with him and was reliant on getting a tow through bridges, though to his credit, mostly he persisted in tacking up narrow waterways where the other two boats used their engines from time to time. On this occasion, the Law of Sod and audience viewing figures dictated that Andy’s tow rope should get caught in the outboard prop and  by the time it was sorted  the bridge had closed again and a further wait ensued. 

The next day we headed west up the lake in a vain endeavour to reach Stavoren but with the wind on the nose David, Jill and Andy stopped after two hours at a pre-arranged  rendezvous at the hamlet of Elahuizen – where Tim eventually joined us having gone rather further  up the channel than where the numbered buoy system indicated we should turn for the shore. This allowed Jill to apply her expertise in physiotherapy to Andy’s dodgy knee and left him contemplating what injury might next occur during the Dart cruise. Tired of beating, we headed north and explored  the connected Groote Gaastmeer and Zandmeer lakes where we met the only other British boat encountered during the week and saw a man filleting the pike he had just caught for supper. 

The following day we headed east along the Johann Friso Kanaal to where it met the busy Prinses. Margrietkanaal where considerable care had to be taken to keep out of the way of a procession of huge commercial barges. Crossing the Koevordermeer into Langweerdenwielen we passed through a couple of swing bridges and a sluice, before reaching the popular village of Joure, where access to cold beer was via a self-operated  pedestrian chain ferry.

Retracing our route, the wind got up as we faced the beat back up the lake to Langweer. Whilst Andy reduced sail by furling the jib and carried on under full mainsail, a strategy which had served him well on the trip back from Sloten, Tim demonstrated his skills in reefing afloat. With two in the boat, there was no need for Jill and David to echo the tactics of the single-handers and they powered upwind under full sail. 

On the Friday we sailed 25 nautical miles heading north-west in the direction of Workum.before turning north and then east through the broad Aldegeaster Brekken to the village of Oudega. During this trip, the tiller extension on ‘Known Aim’ broke off and although no blame was publicly attributed, Jill chose to walk back to Heeg. As a result, all three wanderers were single handed for the two hour voyage home which provided some of the best sailing of the week. After an initial beat and a succession of runs which gave Tim the chance to fly his spinnaker, it was a long close reach in a steady F3-4 all the way across the mere to Heeg. David managed to cope without a tiller extension although subsequent physiotherapy to treat an elongated forearm was undertaken in private. 

Ton was able to rejoin us for our last day for a circular route to Woudsend and back, undertaken in very little wind. The fine weather had brought out a lot of motor boats and their numbers and wash made tacking up the canal problematic in the fickle light breeze. With Ton and David  and Jill long ago having resorted to outboards, Andy eventually decided to follow their example only to break a shear pin on an underwater obstruction and to be forced to follow Tim’s example of slow and patient tacking to the destination.  

At Woudsend, we visited historic working wind-mills for the production of flour and sawn timber, Jill lost her camera and then recovered it from the harbourmaster where it had been handed in and Ton emerged from a small shop clutching a bottle- shaped package. We hauled out in late afternoon and started packing for a 5.45 am departure the next morning, fortified by the local speciality ‘Woudsend’ liqueur, courtesy of Ton.  

Unbeknown to Andy, David secretly been harbouring a grudge over an incident at the windward mark in a Wanderer championship over a decade ago. In the middle of a Belgian motorway he almost got his revenge when he shed a metal trailer mudguard in the direction of Andy’s windscreen. We caught the return ferry at Calais with ten minutes to spare and were back on the UK motorways heading homewards as England were losing to Germany in the World Cup.  

We had an absolutely brilliant trip with excellent sailing in congenial company, lots of laughs and some splendid memories to look back on.

Those taking part were:

With the able assistance of:

Wayfarer      Ton Jaspers    10445  Swiebertje

Text: Andy Peter     Photos: Andy, Jill Davies and Ton Jaspers