Harlingen, beautifully located on the Wadden Sea, is the home of 80 historical sailing ships for many years now. Clippers,Tjalken, Aachen, old sailing barges from the last century and the century before that. They’re all ‘flatbottom’ or ‘roundbottom’ boats, with no traditional keels but “zwaarden” (wooden lee board) along both sides of the hull.
And these boats battle it out on the end of the season while racing from Harlingen to Terschelling. The track is about 15 miles and can take, depending on the wind, 2 to 6 hours.
Chartering people is not the only activity of these old traditional sailing ships. Throughout the year they meet in several regattas. Kuiper Brandarisrace is generally regarded as the largest sailing event for classic sailing ships in the Netherlands.
This year we had the perfect wind - wind force 5 to 6 south west.
This is the regatta track:
This is the start line up - 72 traditional classic Dutch sailing vessels gather in front of the Harbor in Harlingen.
And of we go - our crew is hyped and ready
The captain / skipper, michael is tense because he know we have way to much sail for these conditions.
We had a decent start - everything worked as it should!
Rushing with around 8 knots away from Harlingen:
This is Noa, the 2nd mate and there is no bad weather, just bad gear.... yaaarrr
The syderzee and the bontekoe battle it out.
As always: Teamwork is everything that counts. We try to get the jib sail a bit closehauld... we tried
Harry keeps the oversight.
The fleet is on our tails!
If you are on a huge ship within a regatta it is ok to chill a bit as well, there are loads of people willing to give everything they have, so especially if you are older its cool to just enjoy.
I find the view on this many vessels just fascinating, dont you?
The klipper Isis geared up. I really like the popping colors.
